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Fingering for whole-tone scale

Author: fieldofcows
Date: 2023-08-15 01:33

Hi all. I've recently started playing clarinet again after many years' break, working mainly on early jazz - or actually mostly music from the 40's, 50's UK trad revival from Sid Phillips and the like. I've found the best way for me to learn and improve is to transcribe some of the recordings and learn to play the clarinet parts myself.

When working on Sid Phillips' version of Twelfth Street Rag I found one simple sounding ascending/descending scale passage that sounds simple enough but is very hard to play cleanly with the standard fingering. Have a listen here https://youtu.be/A8PkKhRRhWQ?t=102. It's a whole-tone scale starting from clarion E up to C and back down again. I've looked at some alternative fingerings but haven't found anything that makes it easy to play cleanly.

How would you play this? Any suggestions for alternative fingerings?

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Re: Fingering for whole-tone scale

Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2023-08-15 02:31

HI fieldofcows. I don't think there's any way to improve that beyond standard fingerings, playing A# with the rh 1st trill key. The only alternate fingering that would make any fingering sense (that I can think of) would be the special A# fingering for trilling G#/A# (lh TO 23g#, similar to altissimo F), but the sound & intonation with that fingering might be problems.

The Jettel scale book has 8 or so pages of whole-tone scale exercises. He took an interest in jazz, but I don't know if that's why his book covers whole-tone scales so comprehensively.

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Re: Fingering for whole-tone scale

Author: fieldofcows
Date: 2023-08-15 22:04

Thanks Philip. I didn't know about that trill A# fingering so I'll give that a try but I'll probably just keep practicing the standard fingerings to see if I can improve accuracy.

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Re: Fingering for whole-tone scale

Author: ghoulcaster
Date: 2023-08-15 22:17

I don't have a clarinet on me, but something fun to try might be
from the A# as: TR XXO A# side key OOO
to a C fingered as TR XXX A# side key XXX Eb

So just putting down LH 3 and all 4 RH fingers down from the A# fingering, keeping the side key open. Gives an interesting, dark sounding C.

Sid played a plateau albert system, and would have fingered C as
TR OXO/OOO

The C fingered on German/Albert clarinets like that has a different sweeter sound than the thumb only version on Boehms which can be a little strident, and is tougher to play because of the need to balance the instrument without support from any of the fingers.

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