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Exercises for my spastic fingers?

Author: Irwin
Date: 2000-05-14 22:27

I'm playing Copeland's Hoe Down, and I'm having trouble coordinating my fingers with my tongue on the 16th note runs. Any advice or suggested exercises would be most appreciated. Thanks.

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RE: Exercises for my spastic fingers?

Author: Megan
Date: 2000-05-14 23:26

Would it be possible to slur a couple of the notes to give your tongue a rest instead of tonguing every note? I played a band arrangement of Hoe Down and the tonguing was insane so I ended up doing some slurring to make life a bit easier.

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RE: Exercises for my spastic fingers?

Author: Kim
Date: 2000-05-15 00:21

I hate it when there is a lot of tongueing! Try slur two, tongue two. It's a lot easier and you won't be pulling your hair out because you can't play a part. Tongueing well will come with time and practice.

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RE: Exercises for my spastic fingers?

Author: Signe
Date: 2000-05-15 04:09

Part of good tonguing is attitude. You should practice being relaxed, but aggressive. It's really important to keep the air projecting forward through your clarinet, just as if you were blowing a long, well-supported tone. Most often, people will minutely interrupt the airstream between notes. It's something you have to think about. Sometimes I'll be tonguing along and start getting sloppy, so I know to check for forward moving air. It always helps.

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RE: Exercises for my spastic fingers?

Author: steve
Date: 2000-05-15 21:40

signe said:
Part of good tonguing is attitude. You should practice being relaxed, but aggressive. It's really important to keep the air projecting forward through your clarinet, just as if you were blowing a long, well-supported tone..

yep!!!! relaxation is a major part...the tongue is a muscle....relaxed, yet ready to strike agressively!!!! and air support is a major part of the battle....everything is really a long tone, after a fashion...

for finger and tongue coordination, ask any bonade student or student of a bonade student about the stop-tongue excercise, and stop-tongue with prepared fingers...this allows one to couple and recopule tongue and fingers at will as needed in the passage...if you tongue two and slur two and the conductor hears it, he may throw the baton at you and shout "Mr Clarinet play the correct Articulation!!!" (spoken from personal experience)

good luck...s.

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RE: Exercises for my spastic fingers?

Author: Mary
Date: 2000-05-16 15:12

I had to play the band arrangement this year too, and also had trouble with the tonguing. Someone suggested practicing the four sixteenth note groupings as a triplet figure, eighth-eighth-sixteenth-sixteenth, then putting the two sixteenths in the middle, then in the beginning. It took a while to practice all the passages that way, moving up the metronome, but it did the trick- I didn't stumble in rehearsal or performance!

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