 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: SecondTry
Date: 2021-10-02 22:27
Attachment: excerpt.jpg (58k)
Hi All:
The attached passage is taken at 104 bpm when performed (if not, of course practiced slower.)
The 32nd notes at the end are really throwing me for a loop to play accurately, and on meter, at anything pushing 60 bpm.
I have tried most of the tricks I know, psychological or otherwise to get this under my fingers. One trick I may have not fully exploited, I admit, is enough patience. It may take weeks sitting with the metronome, slowly bumping it up.
I have broken the passage down, I have practiced the 32 notes in isolation. I have made arpeggio practice out of the 32nd notes, I have memorized it, I have left out and introduced notes, but the bottom line is I can't rely on the entire passage's accuracy beyond 60 bpm.
Of course I could (by mathematical definition) take the 16th notes at 120--it's those 32nd's though that force me to slow down the meter.
I've even considered playing the first few and last few notes of the arpeggio, I'm not sure anyone would even notice but me, but it's not my preferred method of addressing this.
Any strategies you might be able to offer would be most appreciated. Thank you in advance. 
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-10-03 00:31
Perhaps the biggest lesson to be learned from this example is that the 32nd note passage ought not to look unfamiliar. That is because it is a B minor seventh, flat five harmonic pattern played in a downward direction into the lower register. This pattern is frequent in music and ought to be a familiar part of every clarinetist's daily practice routine.
The 32nd note series can be loosely identified as a B minor seventh, flat five harmonic pattern. Anther reason why clarinetists should include chord and extended chord patterns (jazz and commercial as well as classical) in their daily arpeggio practice.
The 32nd note passage does not contain any of the usual mechanical challenges that limit technique. No sliding of fingers off keys or change of fingering on the same note or difficult contrary motion in the fingers. On the contrary, the note sequence in the passage is idiomatic to the clarinet and should fall easily under the fingers. If this passage looks and feels formidable, it is likely that you are not practicing the right scale and arpeggio patterns in your daily routine. To a player practicing the Baermann or Jettel scales or the Stark Arpeggios and Thurston Passage Studies regularly this passage should require only a few hours practice to get up to performance standard.
Try chunking and transposition techniques to tame the passage. Transpose the passage into all keys. The B minor, seventh, flat five pattern is common enough that it is worth memorizing transcendentally. Then to help the fingers remember the pattern, play it in all keys as a series of very distinct dotted eighth and sixteenth notes. After doing this for a few weeks. your fingers will lead the way fearlessly and surely. It might also help to look up some of the pentatonic scale patterns that jazz players like to use. These have a similar feel to the fingers and should also be practiced in all keys.
One excellent compendium of chordal structures to practice daily is Joseph Viola's Chord Studies, vol. 2 (for saxophone but easily extended throughout the clarinet range). When these same patterns appear in music, they will already feel natural under the fingers because they have been regularly practiced.
Post Edited (2021-10-03 02:33)
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-10-03 00:51
The problem, as I see it, is that you haven't yet completely grasped the location or nature of your issues with the passage.
Quote:
The 32nd notes at the end are really throwing me for a loop to play accurately, and on meter, at anything pushing 60 bpm.
This diagnosis is far too nebulous. What exactly does "throwing me for a loop" mean? Are you experiencing a mental block? Does your muscle memory not seem to work? Are there unwanted grace notes between your thirty-second notes? (And if so, where? Between the first and second pitch, second and third, etc.?)
Or, do you not yet possess the finger dexterity and facility to play a musical passage in thirty-second notes at this speed? If so, it might take a rather long time, even years perhaps, to get to the point where such a passage is possible for you.
All you'll get here in terms of advice is what someone else might find difficult about the passage and how he or she might remedy it for his or herself (in other words, nothing particularly helpful for you because you're a unique human being and player with your own unique problems). If you can be much more specific about your problems, though, you might get more applicable advice and more important still, you might figure out ways of addressing the problems yourself.
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Author: Ken Lagace
Date: 2021-10-03 01:26
This works for me.
Play the 32nd notes as fast as possible with a metronome and without any mistakes. Then mark down the mm speed.
When you can play it three times in a row without mistakes at some tempo, add only one to the mm speed. Eg. mm 60 is now mm 61.
Continue until you cannot play it three times without mistakes, then quit.
Next practice, start at your last best speed and repeat the process and work daily until it is faster than your performance speed.
For performance, play it slower than your best practice speed.
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Author: Tom H
Date: 2021-10-03 01:41
Try practicing the last 4 notes of the run over & over (low D,B,A,F). Backwards & forwards, faster & faster but even each time. There is a tendency to add some "slop" (a C, a G, etc.) because you are going from a left hand only note to one that needs two more fingers going down-- but one from each hand (B). Then, 2 rh fingers down to go from A to F. Part of resolving this is mental and part is physical. It's something that's not really as easy as it looks.
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Post Edited (2021-10-03 01:42)
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Author: SecondTry
Date: 2021-10-03 02:32
seabreeze wrote:
...
> The 32nd note passage does not contain any of the usual
> challenges that limit
> technique.
So true...and yet I flop: perhaps the true source of my frustration here.
> If this passage looks and feels formidable, it is
> likely that you are not practicing the right scale and arpeggio
> patterns in your daily routine.
I am @seabreeze, Baermann 3 in specific, but perhaps not at a comparable metronome rate to this passage, that would otherwise prepare me for it. I don't play my etudes slow (I also don't play them at 120), always going for accuracy over speed.
Funny, far more difficult arpeggios are under my fingers. I must have learned them when I still had brain cells!
Thanks for your further approach and etude resources.
brycon wrote:
> This diagnosis is far too nebulous. What exactly does "throwing
> me for a loop" mean?
I don't hit the right holes at the right times. Sometimes I throw in an accidental G3 ![[G3]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/g3.gif) . Sometimes I skip notes. It's like the passage is faster than my brain can process.
Are> you experiencing a mental block?
I think so. And I say this because taking the last measure is easier than the whole passage.
>Does your muscle memory not seem to work?
Yes.
> Are there unwanted grace notes between your thirty-second notes? (And if so, where?
Yes, like a occasionally discussed above , and missed notes otherwise desired too.
> Between the first and second pitch, second and third, etc.?)
>
The mistakes are in random places.
> Or, do you not yet possess the finger dexterity and facility to
> play a musical passage in thirty-second notes at this speed?
I can play accurately at this speed on easier and other arpeggios. Not that I consider this one hard.
One that comes to mind is in the first movement of Spohr's 1st https://youtu.be/Pmlit4IRFfo?t=271
Thanks for the rest of your thoughts. It's true, nobody but me is in my head.
Ken Lagace wrote:
> This works for me.
> Play the 32nd notes as fast as possible with a metronome and
> without any mistakes. Then mark down the mm speed.
> When you can play it three times in a row without mistakes at
> some tempo, add only one to the mm speed. Eg. mm 60 is now mm
> 61.
> Continue until you cannot play it three times without mistakes,
> then quit.
> Next practice, start at your last best speed and repeat the
> process and work daily until it is faster than your performance
> speed.
> For performance, play it slower than your best practice speed.
Okay Ken..this is what I've been doing. My question is, "what's your plan for me for integrating these 32nd notes, once at a particular metronome speed, into the rest of the passage that comes before?" When do I do it (the integration)?
Tom H wrote:
> Try practicing the last 4 notes of the run over & over (low
> D,B,A,F). Backwards & forwards, faster & faster but even each
> time. There is a tendency to add some "slop" (a C, a G, etc.)
> because you are going from a left hand only note to one that
> needs two more fingers going down-- but one from each hand (B).
> Then, 2 rh fingers down to go from A to F. Part of resolving
> this is mental and part is physical. It's something that's not
> really as easy as it looks.
>
>
> Post Edited (2021-10-03 01:42)
Thanks Tom. I am trying the single note integration but your thoughts on left/right hand coordination, also raised by @brycon is noted.
:)
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2021-10-03 05:14
One trick that sometimes helps me is to stop on each note and think about what specific finger changes are needed for the next note. Feel every finger motion that's required in advance, and only after you clearly feel those actually do them and play the next note. Proceed this way note by note. It's REALLY slow, and can feel a bit stupid. but even just a couple passes this way seems to set the feeling of the sequence in better.
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Author: SecondTry
Date: 2021-10-03 07:49
Philip Caron wrote:
> One trick that sometimes helps me is to stop on each note and
> think about what specific finger changes are needed for the
> next note. Feel every finger motion that's required in
> advance, and only after you clearly feel those actually do them
> and play the next note. Proceed this way note by note. It's
> REALLY slow, and can feel a bit stupid. but even just a couple
> passes this way seems to set the feeling of the sequence in
> better.
Thanks Phillip. It's interesting to read people's approach and know, like yours, that to some extent, I tried them.
I guess it feels bad to not get this right yet but good to know I'm trying the right things.
Perhaps I need to follow your suggestions slower and more repetitively for them to stick in the 'ole noggin.
It's not so much practice that makes perfect, it's correct repetition, which takes practice.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-10-03 20:00
Quote:
The mistakes are in random places.
Perhaps instead, there are a number of issues that sometimes occur and sometimes don't, therefore giving you the impression of randomness.
Quote:
I don't hit the right holes at the right times. Sometimes I throw in an accidental G3
This issue, for instance, makes it seem as though your muscle memory wants to play a G dominant arpeggio rather than a B half-diminished one (B half-diminished, by the way, is not a "jazz harmony"; it lives on the supertonic of any minor scale). Perhaps, then, your mind and fingers need more familiarity with minor keys.
Quote:
I think so. And I say this because taking the last measure is easier than the whole passage.
If you can play correctly the arpeggio out of context, though, it's a different sort of problem. (And again, there might be several problems happening simultaneously with the passage.) You'd have to game plan for this problem in a different way. Perhaps you could play the passage up to the arpeggio, rest for several quarter notes, give your mind a chance to catch up with the music, and then play the arpeggio. As you get more comfortable, you could shrink the amount of rest until you're playing the passage as written.
With getting rid of the unwanted G, however, you might need to play different rhythmic variations, play the arpeggio ascending in addition to descending, stretch out the pitch before you tend to mess up to give your mind time to catch up, etc.
So much of practicing is figuring out exactly what's happening. Most of us, though, jump to solutions before we've completely analyzed our playing: "Oh, the technique here is bad. Time to slow the passage down to half speed and work up from there." But if we don't really understand the issue(s), in getting advice here, trying out practice techniques we find on YouTube videos, etc. we're just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks.
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Author: Bennett ★2017
Date: 2021-10-03 20:41
I've got a totally different suggestion - perhaps anathema to you and the other respondents. If you don't need to get this perfect for an audition or solo, fudge it. The question in my mind is how much time to spend on this one arpeggio when you could be working on or enjoying something else. There's nothing wrong with perfection but at what cost.
I'm reminded of a librarian's 100 Minus rule - Take 100, subtract your age - that's the number of pages to read before deciding to go on to another book, because life is too short. Works for movies too, and mutatis mutandis for music practice as well.
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Author: SecondTry
Date: 2021-10-03 21:17
brycon wrote:
> You'd have to game plan for this problem in a different way.
> Perhaps you could play the passage up to the arpeggio, rest for
> several quarter notes, give your mind a chance to catch up with
> the music, and then play the arpeggio. As you get more
> comfortable, you could shrink the amount of rest until you're
> playing the passage as written.
>
Now this I hadn't thought of, and I think it's a brilliant ideal. Thanks! It's very on point for me because I can play either the 16th notes or the 32nd notes with far greater accuracy in isolation.
So like you said, I need to start at a level of isolation of each that I'm comforable with, and bring them closer over practice time.
Bennett wrote:
> I've got a totally different suggestion - perhaps anathema to
> you and the other respondents. If you don't need to get this
> perfect for an audition or solo, fudge it.
I agree Bennett that from a performance perspective, especially with accompaniment, if not from a piano then concert band or string ensemble, a missed note isn't going to be noticed by the listener.
It will likely come to this even if I can get the passage perfect in isolation. I say this because exhaustion at play, at least for me, negatively effects accuracy, and by this point in the piece I am winded.
I really owe some context here. It's the Mangani Fantasy I've been talked about prior here, at this point:
https://youtu.be/YJdypWTGFEw?t=189
Thanks all!
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-10-03 21:39
Just fudge the notes? Surely there are better ways to proceed. If you can't play a passage as written, write a simplified ossia passage with similar harmonic and melodic contours and play that substitute well. But don't fake playing the original. If a composer writes a B half-diminished (thank you Brycon for that terminology) arpeggio, that's the harmony the composer wants in that spot and not some blurred substitute or approximation. Playing the chord the composer indicated is not "perfection"; it is mere adequacy. Playing the chord with exactly the contextual phrasal inflection intended--that would approach perfection. In playing a musical instrument, one cannot let the fingers decide what notes to play. The object of the musical game is to train the fingers to follow the music. Speaking metaphorically, the mind and heart perceive the work to be done, and the fingers fall in to do it. Telling the composer, "well my fingers just didn't feel like playing this combination of notes" is as poor an excuse as telling the teacher that the cocker-spaniel noshed on the homework.
The German clarinetist Josh Michaels worked with students to help them play not what their fingers wanted to but what the composer actually set on the page.(He may have been going through Richard Strauss excerpts with them). Out of his struggles to help students corral those wandering fingers, Michaels wrote a couple of study books that are worth looking into. The one most relevant here is Erganzungen zum Skalensystem or Supplemental Scale Systems (published by Zimmermann - Frankfurt). Michaels combines patterns that look familiar with little unexpected alterations to train the player to pay rigorous attention to what is on the page and direct the fingers to move accordingly. The book is even more tedious to play through than the Baermann Scale book but the result of sticking with the torture is that after a few months the fingers do indeed (for the most part) make great progress in doing what they are told to do rather than what is easy to do. This is a great book for any clarinetist who wants to go beyond the easy bad habit of fudging and reach the greater joy of playing the music.
Post Edited (2021-10-03 21:56)
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Author: SecondTry
Date: 2021-10-03 21:59
seabreeze wrote:
> Just fudge the notes? Thumbs down on that suggestion. If you
> can't play a passage as written, write a simplified ossia
> passage with similar harmonic and melodic contours and play
> that substitute well.
Agreed. Mine, need be, deliberately will skis a note or two of the arpeggio center likely not heard by the casual listener. But it will be a well thought out and routinely played compromise, not a haphazard one like that I suspect you seek me to avoid
(Corrado Guiffredi makes it sound so easy!)
> The German clarinetist Josh Michaels worked with students to
> help them play not what their fingers wanted to but what the
> composer actually set on the page.(He may have been going
> through Richard Strauss excerpts with them). Out of his
> struggles to help students corral those wandering fingers,
> Michaels wrote a couple of study books that are worth looking
> into.
Thank you for these thoughts. Funny enough, one of our contributors to this thread, Tom H., wrote what I think is a wonderful book that I own which seeks to do a lot of what you describe:
The Most Advanced Clarinet Book--Austin Macauley Publishers
tomheimer.ampbk.com/ Amazon, Sheet Music Plus
Tom's etudes are not unlike facing a knuckleball pitcher in baseball.
Tom, I hope you take that as its intended complement.
Interspersed with what your brain thinks is a pattern in the music, by I am sure design on Tom's part, all of a sudden some E# or fancy rhythm throws you off balance.
Funny enough, one of the things I think I need to do here is hit the gym and develop some of the wind I lost not going to the gym during Covid (thankfully something that I haven't been sick from.) Aerobic exhaustion can definitely trip me up on notes!
Post Edited (2021-10-03 22:01)
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2021-10-04 22:38
Here's a couple further ideas for working on a difficult passage. These are either for the advanced or for the desperate. I've used them all at one time or another. Results have varied.
Play it 100 times. Or more. Ricardo Morales was quoted as suggesting this. A passerby once stop and listened to Vladimir Horowitz practicing, and reported that the great pianist spent over two hours intensely focused on a single bar. For another example, as one of the young Sviatoslav Richter's early lessons with great teacher Heinrich Neuhaus, he was assigned Liszt's Sonata, a monumental and demanding work; the next week when Richter played if for Neuhaus, the teacher pointed to a passage known as one of the piano literature's touchstones for difficulty, and he asked how Richter had dealt with it . . . Richter said he just kept repeating it until it came out right.
Practice it on your instrument with fingers only, no tone. You can tell by sound and feel if your fingers are timing it right. Watch tv or something and just keep your fingers on the clarinet, repeating the passage over and over. Again, you'll know when it's right, even if you mind is focused elsewhere. The neuro-muscular mechanism operates, ideally, without conscious thought.
Watch your fingers, either directly or in a mirror, to make sure they're not doing something silly without telling you. I reached a speed plateau on descending scales, especially articulated, and it was only when I eyeballed my fingers I realized that my lh was doing this: when I lowered my index finger the middle finger would fly up, and when I lowered my middle finger the ring finger would fly up. Etc. The faster I was playing they higher they'd fly, and it looked like insanity. That came out ok at slower tempos, but broke down at fast ones. Ha, probably had been doing that since I started clarinet.
Play the passage all tongued instead of slurred. This seems to turn up the glare on timing issues.
Listen to someone that's really good, then just play your bit like they would! Seriously, inspiration is a thing. Your appreciative response to great playing helps focus your own efforts, and, again, it's partly unconscious.
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Author: Larry Langsam
Date: 2021-10-05 00:42
Giuffredi seems to be playing the passage at quarter=84 when I listen to it on UTube. Also note that he begins the 32nds with the first 2 notes about in the tempo of the previous 16ths and then accelerates. The whole passage ends up taking the same amount of time as if it had been performed as written This is a very musical thing to do and is commonly done. It you suddenly double the speed of the notes when you start the 32nds,it sounds quite mechanical. Additionally, it's a lot more difficult to perform that way. Perhaps the finest example of a passage lending itself to Giuffredi's appoach is the ascending 9-note arpeggio preceding the Più lento section of the Adagio movement of the Brahms quintet. How many times have you heard this terribly rushed or otherwise botched. It's actually not that difficult. The whole measure should be a flowing accelerando and Brahms attempts to show that. But please don't try to play sets of 4, 5 and 9 notes with each note in a set having the same time value. Your brain will find it much easier to gradually increase the speed of notes within the sets so that the next set begins in the tempo of the notes at the end of the previous set.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-10-05 01:31
Quote:
Play it 100 times. Or more. Ricardo Morales was quoted as suggesting this. A passerby once stop and listened to Vladimir Horowitz practicing, and reported that the great pianist spent over two hours intensely focused on a single bar. For another example, as one of the young Sviatoslav Richter's early lessons with great teacher Heinrich Neuhaus, he was assigned Liszt's Sonata, a monumental and demanding work; the next week when Richter played if for Neuhaus, the teacher pointed to a passage known as one of the piano literature's touchstones for difficulty, and he asked how Richter had dealt with it . . . Richter said he just kept repeating it until it came out right.
To me, sheer repetition seems like a terrible way to approach practicing. Science indicates that skills are strengthened by the acts of remembering and recreating proper body movements. Indeed studies show that interleaved practicing--jumping from task to task and perhaps back again--results in more long-term improvement and retention than blocked practicing--repeating a single task many times over. Blocked practicing, however, gives the impression of greater progress made in the moment and therefore can be hard to get away from.
Invoking Morales, Horowitz, and Richter is a bit of a survivorship bias and ignores the scores of young piano students or Suzuki violin kids for whom sheer repetition bored them to tears and led to them quitting their instruments. Moreover, Christian Tetzlaff practices only 1 hour a day, Paganini did much of his practicing without his violin, the trumpeter Mark Gould used to advise against practicing excerpts before an audition to keep them "fresh." Just because these things "worked" for a few people doesn't mean they'll work for very many others.
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2021-10-05 06:29
Hi Brycon. I mostly concur about brute repetition; it's never worked well for me, possibly because my concentration doesn't have the stamina. I tend to repeat a passage until there's some improvement, then do something else and come back to it later. Most often, tomorrow.
You mentioned Paganini and practicing away from the instrument. There are others (probably many, but Gieseking comes to mind) who practice(d) by mental visualization with good or great results. It's a fascinating idea.
Maybe the point is, there's many tactics that might work, some well known and widely used, others less so. If one method is hitting a wall, come at it another way. Be creative, and persist.
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Author: SecondTry
Date: 2021-10-05 07:44
Philip Caron wrote:
>
> Play it 100 times.
There's a "run" in the first movement of the Mozart Concerto involving Bb5 to D6 and back. I think I made my parents postal as a teen, many years ago, adopting this very technique. I will say, that which I couldn't play at the time, I can barely screw up today even if I tried!
> Watch your fingers, either directly or in a mirror,
> Play the passage all tongued instead of slurred.
> This seems to > turn up the glare on timing issues.
Excellent ideas! Thanks
>
> Listen to someone that's really good, then just play your bit
> like they would! Seriously, inspiration is a thing. Your
> appreciative response to great playing helps focus your own
> efforts, and, again, it's partly unconscious.
I've been trying. I'm sure (not) the problem isn't with my abilities but because my wife won't let me buy one of these
https://backunmusical.com/products/cg-carbon-bb-clarinet?variant=12299511201845
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Author: SecondTry
Date: 2021-10-05 07:56
Katrina wrote:
> I find this particular technique to be effective when other
> approaches (chunks, alternate articulations, or swing rhythm)
> are not working fast/well.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9X4h-cY1uw&t=26s
>
> Yeah, he's a trombone player. But don't let that stop ya.
No, it's great, thanks!
Mr. Sulliman really understands what's going on in our heads and how to leverage it to get to the goal of playing a difficult passage correctly in the shortest amount of time.
I have tried this, but not understood WHY, until I watched this video, the technique has the validity it does. With this mindset I'm going to go back and retry this approach.
It's also helped me understand how when someone asks me to play a hard passage I can nail at tempo, at a different even slower speed, I screw up.
I've always felt to really play a passage that I should be able to play it at tempo and slower accurately...but maybe that's wasted time, and maybe being able to play it accurately at tempo is enough, especially since there is only so much time in a day.
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Author: SecondTry
Date: 2021-10-05 07:58
brycon wrote:
> Indeed studies show that interleaved practicing--jumping from
> task to task and perhaps back again--results in more long-term
> improvement and retention than blocked practicing--repeating a
> single task many times over.
Studies of me have also showed that your described "switching gears" has resulted in my need for less instruments, as less are sacrificed being thrown into walls in frustration.
Who knew I could also learn faster! Thanks.
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Author: SecondTry
Date: 2021-10-05 08:02
Larry Langsam wrote:
> Giuffredi seems to be playing the passage at quarter=84 when I
> listen to it on UTube.
I clocked it at around 100 but that's not nearly as important as the point you make below:
> Also note that he begins the 32nds with
> the first 2 notes about in the tempo of the previous 16ths and
> then accelerates.
By gosh you're right! He also emphasizes the 1st note of the 16ths.
Artistry: that's something I add after/if I can master the notes!
The whole passage ends up taking the same
> amount of time as if it had been performed as written This is a
> very musical thing to do and is commonly done. It you suddenly
> double the speed of the notes when you start the 32nds,it
> sounds quite mechanical. Additionally, it's a lot more
> difficult to perform that way.
Wow, play more artistically and get the passage under my fingers. Thanks!
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