 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Gretchen
Date: 2003-05-18 02:48
Hi...I don't write here often, but I normally read posts here and really value the opinions and recommendations of those who normally respond on the board. 
So...my problem is...you guessed it: dealing with frustration. I just got back from my second year of college three weeks ago (took one week off) and now am here at home trying to continue to practice my material from school. It doesn't seem to be happening...and it's as if I'm getting worse instead of better and i've fallen into a HUGE rutt and I can't get out of it. Has this happened to anyone before? and if so, how did you deal with it? how did you get out of it?
At the moment, i'm just taking pieces I know and enjoy and am just playing them; but when i go to practice my very difficult stuff, I can't play it to the level that I did at school and feel like throwing the clarinet across the room and get up and leave...there's no point in practicing when you're really frustrated, right?
What should I do!? I can't go through the whole summer like this, I'll go nuts. any suggestions?
Thanks for any input!
Gretchen
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2003-05-18 10:03
Gretchen writes: "Has this happened to anyone before?"
I know this isn't a solution, but this happens to absolutely everyone who tries to learn any skill more difficult than doing up his shoelaces. I'm amazed you've got as far as college without experiencing it already.
Doesn't matter if it's music, maths or marathon running, there are times when you won't progress.
All I can say is, don't despair, and be careful where you aim if you throw your clarinet across the room. Those things can cause a lot of damage.
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If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2003-05-18 11:57
Oh yes, I deal with this often. Almost daily!
1. My favorite method is to have a tall glass of water with plenty of ice in it. If you get frustrated, look at that glass of water, and think 'Cool, like ice'. If you're VERY frustrated, take a sip.
2. Also, realise there are times when you won't be able to play to your best ability. You've probably just got too high standards for yourself. Take a few moments to sit down and think about what you're trying to do and that you won't be able to do it first go, second go, maybe more than 10 times.
3. Nothing great happens overnight. One of my favorites!
4. Improvise. You're halfway there by taking out your favortive pieces. But, improvise, make a little tune up, or try to imitate your favorite clarinet player for a few minutes. Experimenting is also a great form of learning new things with your clarinet.
5. Listen! Your favorite admired clarinetists can help you through. Antony Pay, one of my favorites, and a very inspiring musician, has actually helped me through a lot, and all I have to do is listen to a recording of his!
6. Go into your lesson and talk to your teacher about something OTHER than direct clarinet technique. For example, recently I've had a few lessons just about breathing and how the diaphragm works, we talked about recordings, or tried each other's clarinets. Just talking about it can make it better.
Hope this helps!
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Author: krawfish3x
Date: 2003-05-18 12:54
I've been through this experience before when i slacked off in the summer. the only real way to solve this is to try playing slower and then build the speed back up as you go. work on a few different things like long tones, tounging, and etudes. try for a day or too just doing sustained playing and then doing your scales and arpeggios.
just remember if you are frustrated, you will play like your frustrated. take a couple of deep breathes and stay calm.
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Author: Synonymous Botch
Date: 2003-05-18 13:44
I wonder if the balance set up by school schedules has tipped...
You still need to get away from the charts, and refresh your mind.
Physical exercise has been recommended as part of a higher ed curriculum since Aristotle...nothing breaks stress like sweat.
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Author: BobD
Date: 2003-05-18 13:59
"PSS" Post School Syndrome: The normal letdown following final exams, daily study habits and competition. The student feels he should be doing something but can't seem to." Take a break, that's what summer is for.
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2003-05-18 16:11
BobD wrote:
> "PSS" Post School Syndrome: The normal letdown following final
> exams, daily study habits and competition. The student feels he
> should be doing something but can't seem to." Take a break,
> that's what summer is for.
I agree with bobD wholeheartedly. Take a week or two off from clarinet. Then come back. A lot of times, you'll come back slightly stronger than before!
Alexi
US Army Japan Band
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Author: Bob Schwab
Date: 2003-05-18 23:27
This reminds me of when I took golf lessons. You'd have thought I never swung (swang?) a club. It made me really have to revisit the basics and work on my fundamentals. After a while what used to feel so strange begins to feel like second nature.
Just trying to validate your experience. No one ever accomplished anything great without having been there. Even Jesus had His moments of frustration.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2003-05-19 15:18
Gretchen -
Everybody's eyes glaze over at times. You can't break out of a rut just by will power. You need to do something different. If you want to do it with your clarinet, forget about "practice" and do something else.
Play the most beautiful music you know -- Schubert songs, lullabies, hymns, Christmas carols, folk songs -- just for your own pleasure, or for a special friend. Bring that beauty back into your "normal" playing.
Play the nastiest stuff you know -- heavy metal, grunge, or whatever will drive your parents up the wall, or even drive you up the wall. Practice squeaking, with the most awful sound you can make. Then bring that energy back into your "normal" playing.
What makes the difference is doing something you wouldn't think of doing if you were playing "straight" and then making a "force fit" between the two.
Do something silly. Sit with a friend and play through something alternating notes, with you playing one note and your friend the next. (You probably won't be able to play more than a few notes without dissolving in laughter.) Switch lower joints on your Bb and A clarinets and play horribly out of tune duets with your friend. Then, sit facing one another, turn the mouthpieces upside down and finger each-other's clarinets.
Play contrabass for a rehearsal. Pick up a sousaphone and learn to play a few scales.
Take a walk. Take a bubble bath. Climb a tree and practice up there.
You'll be fine. Just give yourself a chance.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: John Morton
Date: 2003-05-19 16:23
Marvelous advice, a topic like this brings out the best supportive advice of this community.
My approach to this frustration problem is to pick up another instrument and play it for awhile. I keep a tenor ukulele out on a stand right next to my clarinet. When I am discouraged about my playing, or simply fatigued from fighting a gnarly reed, I pick up the uke. Next to the uke is a list of tunes whose melodies I know by heart, mostly jazz standards from 1910 to 1940. I have an ongoing project of learning to voice these melodies on this very simple and friendly instrument
I never feel that I am turning my back on the clarinet when I do this, even if I don't touch it for a few days. I have always found that my entire musical life is driven forward by these digressions, and that when I return to the clarinet I am farther along, in some way ....
John
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Author: Tim P
Date: 2003-05-19 17:34
Ken Shaw says: play the nastiest stuff you know --
I like to get a copy of "the Star Spangled Banner". I over blow and try to pay it Jimi hendrix style. Usually get some laughs from my wife and growls from the dog. I hope Jimi can forgive me
If you are in college you might have to do a search in order to find this classic.
Basically--- just cool-it.
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Author: Gretchen
Date: 2003-05-20 16:10
Thanks guys! All these suggestions are great.
David: Yes, i have experienced this before...but just not at this level of frustration. I think it's because so much of this year has been dedicated to my teacher trying to get me to play more "soloistically" and increase my sound. Now, we're starting a newer broader thinking and trying to get me to play the way i have been playing, but with a finer legato and smoothness...so yeah...it's HARD! Normally I pick up stuff pretty fast, and this just isn't seeming to get any better...I work hard every day. So that's what I'm frustrated with.
Ken...I think I'll take up that advice...that actually sounds like loads of fun.
As for taking up an instrument, i've decided to try the oboe...my mom plays oboe and gigs in my area. She's also a middle school teacher...so she's gonna give me some oboe lessons for the summer...should be interesting. What do you think??
Gretchen
Post Edited (2003-05-20 16:11)
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Author: diz
Date: 2003-05-20 22:40
Did you just reach a plateaux - in which case - one day you'll just leap ahead again (seemingly without reason). It happens to most of us I guess. Please don't throw your clarinet across the room - you might hurt its feelings.
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Author: D Dow
Date: 2003-05-21 11:47
Sounds like frustration is the norm for any musician....I would say that all players arrive at a certain point and then feel they can find very little that appeals musically to do-so to speak.
Sight reading the toughtest music should become a part of a daily routine. Don't allow yourself the luxury of playing the same music all the time. This stunts growth-kind of like my coffee habit.
Play alot of recordings of different clarinet players. Find out what you have to say on your instrument through listening. Look for music that is deliberately different. Playing the Mozart concerto everyday is a good example of boredom. The rondo maybe, but the other movements I find not suited to repeated practice.
Get the following books for learning
Jettel All of his stuff
Afred Uhl clarinet studies
Stark books for clarinet
Thurston Passage studies
Orchestral experpts books 1 to 10 Alot of fun stuff in there!
Rachmaninov Vocalise
Rimsky Korsakov orchestral parts 1st and 2cd clarinet
Stravinsky 3 pIECES mEMORIZE THEM
Also listen to as much different styles of music and relax and enjoy the experience.
David Dow
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2003-05-21 14:46
Following up on David's excellent advice, a good place to get sight reading material is the clarinet parts from school orchestra and band library. Since you're on summer break, make friends again with your high school band director and librarian and borrow the parts. When I was coming up, there were voluntary summer band rehearsals, which I used to sit in on playing flute or contra.
When you hit a plateau, another thing to try is learning something new, such as transposing. Play through stuff a step up, a step down, 1/2 step up and 1/2 step down. If you haven't learned to read bass clef, now's the time. Alto and tenor clef are necessary, too.
If you're really ambitious, you can do yourself a big favor, and make a big jump in your understanding, by working through Hindemith's Elementary Training for Musicians (which, despite its title, is ferociously difficult). You need to do this with a friend, since it's too difficult to approach without teamwork.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Gretchen
Date: 2003-05-22 18:10
Ken-
What does the hindemith study? is it theory? or ear training? or everything having to do with music in general? It sounds interesting...just wondering.
Gretchen
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2003-05-22 18:44
Gretchen -
Hindemith's Elementary Training for Musicians is the best method book I know to nail down basic skills. It starts out with basic rhythms, clapping one line and singing another on a monotone. Then it's singing simple melodies and clapping rhythmic accompaniments, clef reading,mixed rhythms and much more.
Even the easiest looking exercises are amazingly difficult the first time. It's like learning a scale you don't know. You feel like a beginner again, until you get it into your muscles. Once you do, you get a big boost in confidence.
The book comes from a famous class Hindemith ran at Yale, where he put some of the finest young musicians of the day through a brutal regimen. The New York Pro Musica was made up mostly of his students, all of whom worshiped him. I was introduced to the book by the great lutenist Joseph Iadone, who ran a summer workshop in Putney, Vermont where he ran a daily Hindemith class.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Dante
Date: 2003-05-23 05:54
Hey Gretchen.
I'm just ending my third year in playing clarinet, and believe me, I KNOW your frustration. (Thing is, see, you've probably got a decent horn that plays in tune. I have to fight mine all the time in the altissimo to keep the right partial, as I have to lip up to play anything above a high G. It's a real pain trying to play the 3rd movement of the Poulenc on a freaky clarinet.)
Anyway. What I do when I'm frustrated is I go and pick up my Eefer (Eb, my baby that I've named Virgil, as the Bb is named Dante. Loooong story. Y'know, Dante's been through hell, Virgil's taking me through it trying to get her in tune.. lah de dah.) and make stuff up. I sit around with people and jam sometimes, that really helps. I've also found it VERY helpful to play along with recordings. It helps intonation, and teaches you different ways to play the same piece. I know I have fifteen different copies of the third movement of the Poulenc sonata in my Kazaa folder and in my CD rack. *grin* (It also let me know that the low A on my horn is 34 cents sharp! Yikes!)
I also play flute, guitar, piano, pennywhistle and all ranges of recorder. Oh. And Bari-Sax (Jazz band's fault. I hate that thing, but it's fun to scare the neighbors with. HONK!!)
..so I have a lot to do when I'm NOT practicing on my clarinet. In 7th grade, I used to practice for about three hours a day, sometimes four or five, usually until I'd start bleeding and have to stop... And.. don't do that. :P It's stupid and it just makes things worse.
If you've been working on a certain passage, and can't seem to get your fingers under it after about the fifteenth time, move on and try a part of the piece you LIKE playing.
Oboe seems like a good idea. I'm going to probably take it up when I get into High School. I'm also asking if I can march Eb. (Hah... hah. hhahahaa.. Ahem.) It's fun to play, but pretty hard to keep in tune, so good luck!
Also Morrigan's ice water idea is crazy. :P I just put up my clarinet and go play piano, or throw myself in the pool.
Take care!
-Jen.
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2003-05-25 11:34
Oi! Is NOT Dante! lol! It worked for me, anyway.
Where can you get this Hindermith book from?
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