 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: JUstin
Date: 2000-05-02 23:36
I'm a bad boy. :-( I Havn't been practicing lately. No excuses. I've been VERY lazy the past two weeks. It is time for me to give up my sinful ways. I have a three part question.
1. What are people's preferred practice routines, and what would people reccomend?
2. What are some excersizes or techniques that I can use to improve my sightreading?
3. I need help with my fingers!!! What is the ideal hand position, the ideal way to move fingers etc...
Any and all advice would be EXTREMELY appreciated.
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Author: Kim
Date: 2000-05-02 23:45
When I entered college last year, I was surprised to hear that my technique needed improvement. It actually did! My fingers were not curved as they should be and my pinkies would curl back away from the clarinet, slowing down my technique. The only way to improve your finger speed is to drill yourself with scales SLOWLY! It was tedious for me, but now my technique and fingers are so much better.
To improve sightreading, you can look for patterns within music. Always look at the key and time signatures. Another way is to just always sightread!
My practice routine is to start off with quarter note one octave scales. I then go to a Rose Etude, then to my band music, and solo I'm working on. The amount I practice varies. Because I had to break-in reeds and have juries coming up, I've been practicing 3 and 4 hours a day! My regular daily practices usually last around an hour and a half.
My suggestion with practicing is to warm-up your fingers and embouchure and then go to something harder. After that go to the hardest thing you're working on. I also stress practicing with a metronome. Always practice with a metronome no matter how annoying that beeping thing is.
Good luck and have fun!
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-05-02 23:55
Justin,
I've almost finished off John Cipolla's Web site - he's got some really nice ideas about practicing. He's (unofficially, of course - the site's not quite finished yet) at http://www.johncipolla.com
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Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-05-03 14:23
JUstin wrote:
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1. What are people's preferred practice routines, and what would people reccomend?
2. What are some excersizes or techniques that I can use to improve my sightreading?
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For help with both sight-reading and overcoming the inertia of getting started, you could try establishing a ritual to get the practice session going, by choosing a different key signature every day. Rotate through one key signature every day and start the session off by playing several repeats of the scales and arpeggios in that key. Good grasp of music theory is the key (in more ways than one) to good sight-reading. Try playing the repeats differently every time: staccato, legato, marcato, etc. -- to work on coordination between tongue and fingers. I find the Klose exercises make very good warmups, too. I rotate them the same way, by working on a small group of them at a time. I don't try to force myself to *perfect* them before I let myself move on. I just try to *improve* them, because I know I'll come around to them later and work on them again.
Here's some advice I should probably take myself, and probably won't ;-) -- find a teacher. Preparing assignments gives practice sessions purpose and structure, if you're having trouble getting motivated.
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Author: Roger
Date: 2000-05-03 19:09
I start with long tones. I start on the low E and after playing it a good while add the register key. I work (of course) on making the register jumps smooth and not having the upper note pop out. I do this thought the low note being the first space F
I then do move on to other things that cannot be describe without music. The above, however, is excellant for developing tone and stamina. I also do scales and variations like scales in thirds. I good practice session should be 45 minutes minimum
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Author: Pam
Date: 2000-05-04 13:46
Good ideas all! I especially like John Cipolla's website which Mark posted about. I hope to make my practice sessions more profitable with some of the ideas presented there.
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