 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Josh Schultze
Date: 2001-12-26 15:30
How good can an aspiring amateur clarinetist become by playing duets and trios from the clarinet repertiore? Note that this is in addition to playing long tones, scales and arpeggios.
I am a young clarinetist. I don't intend to play the clarinet professionally. I would like to get as good as I can without dedicating my life to music. But good enough to achieve a respectable level of musicianship.
I had two teachers. The first insisted on playing etudes, Rose, Klosé etc. I advanced pretty well with him but I didn't feel inspired because I wasn't thrilled by playing etudes. My current teacher lets me play whatever I want and I am advancing much faster.
First I must specify "whatever I want" is. I prefer to play music that I can play with other people, duets with clarinet, clarinet & piano, trios, quintets. These are standard pieces are from the repertoire of duets, trios and quintets: to me they are very challenging in many ways, rhythmically and technically. I find myself working harder to practice these pieces because I know I will ultimately play these pieces with others.
When I would practice a Rose Etude for weeks, I felt unispired because I was practicing for two reasons: to get better and to impress my teacher. When I practice duets or trios I practice for three reasons: to get better, to impress my teacher and to improve my understand the piece so I can better share music making with others. And the best part of music for me is making it with other musicians rather than playing alone and in isolation. Playin scales, long tones and arpeggios is about all the solo music I can tolerate and I do these before every practice session (somewhat akin to eating my stringbeans before that delicious pork roast because I'll aways be hungry for that).
A friend of mine who is now at university said that his new piano teacher has recommended staying away from exercises because, "playing actual pieces from the vast repertiore of the piano is sufficent enough to learn all the theory you will need to know and to learn all the technical skills you will need to become an excellent pianist." "In essence", my friend summed up, "why would you waste your time studying excercises or etudes written by a relatively unknown musician when you can practice music composed by the world's finest composers?"
Is this also true of the clarinet repertiore? Does the standard repertore provide enough challanges that playing them alone will allow the student to become an accomplished player? Even piano etudes were written by the geniuses of the time: Chopin, Debussy to name a few. The clarinet repertoire is miniscule compared to the vast repertoire of the keyboard. So does this mean that etudes like Rose's serve to technically augment a relatively meager repertoire?
Thanks
Josh
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Author: MsRoboto
Date: 2001-12-26 16:58
I would classify myself as a mediocre but improving returning clarinetist. I have gone through the scales, arpeggio's, and am doing Rose now.
I find that Rose does help in my everyday band music because the stuff just comes up here and there. At least in what I have seen Rose does serve a purpose to get some different rythmns down. Which is a problem for me right now. Makes me think about fingerings and does improve your skills.
Do what is comfortable for you though. If it works.
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2001-12-26 17:59
Josh -
It's not either/or.
You get better by playing, regardless of what it is. However, the changes between certain pairs of notes are easier than the changes between others. An obvious example is the difference between going from open G to the A above, which involves just opening a single key, and going from A up to B, which involves moving a bunch of fingers to go "over the break."
If you want to play a melody smoothly -- in a way that lets you play along with other people -- you need specific, targeted practice to teach you to go over the break and make it be just as smooth (and seem to other people just as easy) as the simple changes. That's what practicing scales and arpeggios does.
Also, tonal music is organized around harmony. That is, there's a particular chord underlying each melody note, and these chords change in particular sequences that you need to get to know. Practicing scales and arpeggios teaches you to hear which notes go in each chord and also teaches you to recognize familiar patterns. You use those patterns to decide which notes go together into larger groups and how melodies are shaped.
Finally, these chords and chord changes fall into patterns, and you need to have these patterns "in your fingers" so that you're doing familiar things rather than coming to them for the first time every time. Practicing scales and arpeggios does this for you in an organized way. That's why all good players, professional or not, devote part of each practice session to these mechanical exercises.
The etudes your teacher assigns are also intended to teach these patterns to you and to recognize them as they occur within the music. Also, the best etudes are very fine music. The Rose Etudes, for example, are really excellent music, and clarinetists play them all their lives. The great teacher Daniel Bonade would start his freshman performance majors at Curtis and Juilliard on the Rose Etudes and keep them working on them for four years, always coming back and finding more to learn.
You're a genuine athlete when you play clarinet. There are lots of muscles you need to strengthen and patterns that you need to learn and practice, exactly the way a basketball player needs to practice jumping, cutting, jump shots, set shots and free throws. You can do well just by playing the clarinet, but it'll be a lot easier and more efficient when you practice the small skills as well as the "game" as a whole.
You always need to play the music you love, and you need to sing on the instrument all the time. Being a musician involves making music out of whatever is in front of you, especially including etudes, and even scales. When you can play a scale musically, it's easier to play the great music musically.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: ron b
Date: 2001-12-26 18:36
Looks from here like you have a good teacher, Josh. Your teacher is tuned in to your needs and goals and is working with you to achieve what you want to do. From what you say I think there is more than enough clarinet music so that just practicing and playing a standard repertoire will keep you on your toes.
In high school our first chair clarinetist was the best I'd ever heard at the time. Nobody else was even close. I don't think he ever had a formal lesson. Being second chair, I asked him if he practiced a lot to get that good.
"I don't practice... I play," was his reply.
And, you know, I never ever once heard him 'practice' anything. I did hear him play a lot when demonstrating to others how it 'should' be played. He confided to me once, while helping me with a difficult passage, that he was disappointed that he hadn't made first string on the football team. So, he dropped the (foot)ball and was 'first string' in the band instead :]
To the best of my knowledge, after 'Tom' graduated, he married his grammar school sweetheart, became an oilfield laborer and never played another lick.
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Author: GBK
Date: 2001-12-26 19:16
The speech that I continually give to my students is that the most important muscle to develop when practicing is: not the fingers, not the embouchure, not the diaphragm, but THE BRAIN.
All learning and performing of any musical notation starts with the repeated recognition of patterns. When the recognition by the brain is not instantaneous, the fingers fail to react on time.
Only through constant repetition, so the brain can learn to immediately react and send the required motor signals to the fingers, can this be accomplished.
Fingering, embouchure, breathing are all extremely important to develop - but all learning begins and ends with the brain...GBK
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Author: Jim S.
Date: 2001-12-26 22:48
From the great Buddy De Franco (The Clarinet, Spring, 1983):
Question: Do you find that if you're off on tour for awhile and then you get back in, it starts to flow more as you do it, or is it at this point for you pretty well from the beginning?
BDF: No, no. You're slow in starting, no matter what's your experience. I don't know, it seems to me it's like practice--there's not that much residual benefit from practicing...there's very little money in the bank. Even though you've had experience and everything, you've got to practice...Some guys operate as a unit...other guys must practice more...I'm in that category. I don't have fast fingers. And I can play fast. But it takes hours of practice for me to get to that point...if I lay of for four or five days...I sound like a ninny.
This from one of the greats: massive musicianship, improvising creativity and technical ability. So take it from there.
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Author: Jim S.
Date: 2001-12-26 23:53
BTW DeFranco was specifically speaking of Klose chromatic and chord exercises.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2001-12-27 03:33
Suzuki method for violin is just what you and your friend talk. Learn by playing tunes not exercises.
I play Bach partitas and sonatas transposed from violine and cello. THey are beautiful and good exercises. But not suitable to play in front of audience. It is like a child driving Rolls.
If we listen to mediocre pros or music major students, they play often scales very smoothly but not fluently. I think they forgot the purpose of exercises, i.e. play music even whey then play scales. This is quite often true.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2001-12-27 03:35
I forgot one thing. Rose 32 etudes are beautiful if we look at them not as etudes but true musical compositions.
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Author: Jim E.
Date: 2001-12-27 04:50
Thanks Hiroshi,
As I read down, I knew I was going to write that there is some really great music within the Rose etudes, you beat me to it! I find myself enjoying them as my son plays them. (I may have a diferent perspective in listening to someone else play them.)
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2001-12-27 05:19
Stephany,
I meant.
Smoothly = mechanical perfectly, fluently=musically expressing.
This may sound very strange. But I feel the scales played by superb players sound really musical.
Jim,
Rose 32 etudes are all originally composed for violin. Rose modified them for clarinets. Only J&D Hite book of Rose 40/32 combined book denotes the original composer for each etude and expected duration. He thinks modern players play these etudes too fast. I really recommend Bach partitas. Let's play them as Henrik Schelling play violin.
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Author: Josh Schultze
Date: 2001-12-27 15:14
GBK -
You are entirely right about the brain being the most important muscle to build.
Right now I'm practicing Schubert's Arpeggione. For me this piece is very challenging. I've played through the first movement several times and circled the difficult passages. At my instructors suggestion I play the circled passage forwards and backwards many, many times until I have it memorized, also forwards and backwards. What has resulted is that those difficult passages have now become the easier parts of the piece. Now my instructor has circled passages that I can play reasonably well yet still need to play more smoothly. I've begun playing them forwards and backwards. What is happening with the Arpeggione is that my weakest points are becoming my strongest points. Psychologically, after working on such difficult passages and in the end playing them well, all other areas of the piece seem much easier.
For going over the "Break" I had been practicing Debussy's Le Petit Piece. I hear that this piece was written by Debussy for the Paris Conservatory as an excercise piece to facilitate fluid playing around the "break". I continue to play this piece many times: forwards and backwards, at extremely fast tempi, with syncopation: all in the effort to have fun. But what draws me to this piece is its beauty and because there is also a piano part.
Debussy's little musical excercise has become a part of the performance repertiore. I've never heard the Rose Etudes performed live. (Living in Manhattan and having many opportunities to hear both pro and student concerts, I've got my ear to the ground in terms of clarinet performances). While many clarinetists would probably pay to hear someone like Stoltzman play these, I suspect that the larger majority of concert goers would pass these tickets by.
Being an amateur, one of the great advantages is that we can play music that we love. If I were a student majoring in clarinet performance, like my best friend, I would have to play all sorts of distasteful atonal pieces. He finished a semester of Berio's Sequenza's which for him was utter agony. He is an excellent sight reader so his agony was significantly less than his fellow students. While he learned to appreciate the music intellectually, he would never play it for pleasure. He sold his score back to the music shool book store. It is amazing how many used copies of the Berio Sequenzas there are at the book store. Yet there are never any used copies of the Brahms Sonata for clarinet 120 number 1 and 2.
Ultimately, music must be enjoyed. If there is no enjoyment then the interest wanes and the music must be force fed. Psychologically we must make concessions to our idiosynchosies. And generally the better we like doing something, the better we get at it.
I love chatting with you guys. The wealth of information here is astounding.
Josh
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Author: Jim
Date: 2001-12-28 13:22
Sigurd Raschers daughter did not study "exercises", but did work out the partitas and and such material. Bob Barnes, a high school band director from North Carolina back in the 50's, used almost no e xercise books for his bands. Meldodies were his basic materials. IMHO, exercises and the preperation of ensemble music is a must for all students. Solos are great for those who want to perform them. Basic solos should be studied by all for the inherint beauty therein, but this can get to be rather boring for the average player. I was and am an average player. My happiest performances are always ensembles.
Jim(M)
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Author: Mindy
Date: 2001-12-28 18:55
I don't like doing etudes either but my teacher says that if I can play the etudes and scales I can almost play anything. Maybe also try to exaggerate the music it might help a little bit. Think of the etudes as a piece of music. But I do know what you mean with player with other people......it is fun doing that. I find it sometimes also that it helps me play I don't mess up as much well good luck!!
Mindy
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Author: Suzanne
Date: 2001-12-29 22:39
You get better by working on the things you are bad at. This is an age-old debate (i.e., whether or not one really "needs" to learn exercises or etudes to get better). If you are only playing "real music" that does not target your weaknesses, you won't get better. If you play loads of exercises and etudes that do not target your weaknesses, you will also not get much better. I prefer to play etudes, exercises, and solo/chamber/orchestral music, and approach it ALL as "real music," and make sure that I am working on some of my weaknesses in everything I play.
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