 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Aussie Nick
Date: 2003-11-07 00:01
At the moment the 2 main problems I see in my playing are my embouchure, and my tendancy to play quite sharp at times (which I believe is mainly caused by playing on a european viotto mouthpiece). At the moment, after a short time of constant playing my embouchure will start leaking air, and eventually my lips will end up looking almost as if I am smiling. It's like a continuious slipping action. Wit my end of year recital at college in a week today, I'm concerned!
At the beginning of the year when I transferred universities and started with this new teacher, he changed my embouchure by having less lip tucked in my mouth over my bottom teeth, and having more sitting naturally on the reed (in other words, he said don't try to tuck any in because enough will go on its own anyway). This worked for a while, until it went to the extreme and I had far too much bottom lip hanging out. Throughout the year, we have tried to fix it twice, but it has never been the same again. I have tried reverting back to my original embouchure so that my lip doesn't slip but its very difficult. I really don't know what to do. Does anyone have any suggestions. I'm willing to try anything! THanks
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Author: Karel
Date: 2003-11-07 08:05
Have you had a look at Tom Ridenour's book ? It has a nice description of the "friction" type embouchure (to me it looks like a double lip), which may help to solve your problem.
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2003-11-07 11:30
I would double lip it. Then remember the bottom lip position and change the top lip to teeth if you are more comfortable with teeth. Another way to "measure" how much lip is curled is to gently (and I stress gently) bite down with your top teeth and see where the teeth hit your bottom lip. Pick a spot, bit down and remember where they touch. Then hold it as you apply your clarinet. If it was too much/little curl, adjust and measure with your teeth again. After a while, hopefully you'll settle to an almost instinctive embouchre. That is until you change mouthpieces and you have to figure it out ALL over again.
GL on your recital.
Alexi
US Army Japan Band
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Author: Ron Jr.
Date: 2003-11-07 17:32
Aussie Nick,
I have noticed something myself in this regard.
About a year and a half ago I got braces for terribly crooked teeth. In addition to straightening my teeth, the braces pushed the front teeth, top and bottom, much deeper into the bone. Also, the dentist filed away some of the tops of the front teeth to make them all line up height wise. The result is that much less "tooth" is visable.
Now when I play, my jaw is not open as much as it was prior to the braces. As a result, my lips don't start losing air until much later. This is especially noteworthy because I only recently returned to regular playing.
This leads me to conclude that the more open the jaws are, the more the mouth muscles have to work to hold the embouchure.
Perhaps a mouthpiece with a slimmer profile will help you. I wouldn't recommend braces, but I have noticed the immediate benefits with having straight, deep set teeth.
Good luck
Ron Jr.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2003-11-07 17:54
At this time, I have the problem [similar to playing Reed4+ in a musical], to, in a few measures, go from a moderately-firm double-lip emb on bass cl to a loose-lipped [single] emb on bari sax, am still trying to re-learn it!! Suggestions? Cant play more than a couple of hours any more! Don
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