 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Exiawolf
Date: 2018-07-07 12:21
After a productive practice session where I’ve regained a lot of my chops after taking a short break to enjoy the start of summer, I realized something about air support that I wanted to share with others.
For the longest time I equated “supported air” with tensing up in my stomach/abdominal region and blowing hard. At some point I realized that this was not producing the sound I wanted so I looked to change my thought process.
From there I focused less on the blowing hard and more on just tensing what I thought was the diaphragm. This helped a little bit, however I found I actually had lots of trouble on altissimo notes in general. I thought I was biting, but it turns out that was not the case.
Fast forward 4 years and I read something on the board that said something to the effect of “just relax and blow there’s no science formula” and realized that just in general I was trying too hard. After practicing just blowing in and out and focusing on the relaxation of my air stream, my sound has improved ten fold (rounded out, warmed up). I’m not advocating for slow or unfocused air (the air you put in should still have speed and high tongue position), however if you’re struggling with achieving a warmer more relaxed tone, then perhaps “relaxing” may just be the way to go.
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2018-07-07 15:16
Dear Exiawolf,
That's a good point. Much like a full balloon begins with a "whoosh" when let go, you have that natural pressure when you take a full breath of air. Approaching a sound this way is a wonderful thing. You find though that much like the balloon, the full resonance (projection) may not last long enough. The key is to keep the natural flow of air (and associated sound) and continue to control it closer to the last drop.
............Paul Aviles
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Author: Kalashnikirby
Date: 2018-07-07 17:30
Problem with air flow "strength" vs. "speed" is that we have no means to objectively measure them, but only to literally feel them in a totally subjective manner, and it was through some excellent yet unexpected advice from some people that helped me getting a better idea on articulation.
A very good conducter told us to make more of a forte sound than actual loudness, by changing our air support. Hard to retell en detail how he explained it and why I suddenly had the exact idea what he meant, but it helped a lot.
So we need to paraphrase our ideas of a physical phenomena and translate them to a bodily feeling. I love how "unscientific" this can be
Best regards
Christian
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2018-07-07 19:12
One should be careful if focused on tightening the abs. It is easy to tighten the throat and the whole body. So the tension in the abs must be independent. Tight abs with relaxed arms, throat etc.
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: gatto
Date: 2018-07-08 23:39
Funny. Just a few weeks ago I had my first (and so far only) lesson after a long break of many years. The teacher also figured out that I should much more relaxe my whole "air way". Since this lesson I try to focus on that, and I find my tone much improved. Of course, this can be even more improved, and it will take some time to really adopt this new habit constantly and automatically.
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