Author: Taxijazz
Date: 2004-03-19 14:34
Wow, help me with this. Pain, tape, and all. Some of this makes clarinet playing sound more horrible than ever. I haven't got a clue what all this means, but there are a number of things that other people experience with their clarinets that I don't understand. I've seen mouthpieces with gouges on the top from the teeth and I wondered how that would happen. People talk about squeaks that beginners experience and I don't know why that would happen except if I forced a clarinet to play that leaked--I don't know.
The first time I picked up a clarinet I figured out how to play "Dark Town Strutters Ball" after about a half hour, and I just kept practicing. I practiced a minumum of 10 hours every day and for a couple of months I was looking for a teacher. I made an appointment-- the teacher was sick. Another teacher didn't show up. I kept practicing 10-15 hours a day, and people asked me how long I had been playing. When I said 2 months this lady laughed at me and said "You mean since you were two", but I thought she was kidding to be nice, and I knew I needed a teacher. I finally got togeher with one and the guy said "Oh, no, I was told you were a beginner--"I'm a trumpet player, and I figured you just need to know the basics, but you are already beyond what I know" So I just kept practicing--whatever worked, and continued to practice. At another music store I finally got an appointment with an actual clarinet teacher--She asked me to play for her, and then looked at me like I was silly and asked "What do you need me for?" I said I wanted to learn the clarinet. "She asked what I wanted to play" I said "Like Artie Shaw" And she just raised her eybrows and said "Why don't you just keep practicing". This was very frustrating, and the next time I met with a teacher--I suggested to be careful, but the teacher got a rag stuck inside of my clarinet, and it took him and the store staff two hours to cut it up with little scizzors and pull the rag out through the tone holes (this was an Eb clarinet I was playing all along). I decided to forget about a teacher at this point and continued to practice 10-15 hours every day for 18 months before I took a day off. I met people who said they played clarinet before and asked if I was doing it right and they all agreed--That's all I had to go on. A player with the Cleveland Orchestra, and one with the San Francisco Symphony were among the people I met, and this gave me confidence that I must be doing it right. But nobody ever told me anything about double-lip/single lip, and I don't really know what that means. Now I say all this because don't say ask a teacher now--I enrolled in college as a music major after practicing for 4 years on my own, and the teacher I was assigned to never answered his phone. I just gave up on the thought of a teacher, the other teachers with other parts of the music program seemed to be nuts with ulterior motives, so I didn't need that (But I was inspired to study Cognitive Psychology for another six years). I still played the clarinet, but I gradually cut down to only 30 hours a week practice, and I really want to know what I missed. A book indicated differences in the saxophone embouchure--Is that like double-lip? I can switch from sax to clarinet with the same emboucher, but it doesn't work the other way around. And I thought it was the airflow and the reed that made the sound not the lip. And how do you get pain?
A gang of clarinetist might be able to help me unravel a mystery-- because twice I sold clarinets that I thought played quit well, and one of them insisted that an expert laughed that nobody in the world could play that clarinet. It disturbed me for a long time that this guy was bent out of shape about this clarinet that I thought was great--a Noblet that I sold him for only $150. I thought I was doing him a favor and he fussed like crazy that the clarinet wouldn't "speak", and sent email pictures of the pads (after he removed them!) to all sort of people--And these pictures were supposed to tell me something, but they were just discolored and certainly of no use after being removed from the instrument. I never could figure it out. When I play clarinet I can feel resistance and identify where a pad needs to be replaced, and if the instrument doesn't leak--Well I don't know, but I don't think the color of the pads makes a difference. There may be quite a lot I don't know, I just went for what works, and by trial and error alone selected a Kaspar mouthpiece and a Selmer Centered Tone. With no help at all, and just lots of practice and trial and error with everyting imaginable it seems that a lot of people agree with my choices. There still may be a lot I missed--How could I know? And this lip thing is something I never even heard of. Lots of talk about it here though, so maybe it's real important. I'd like help if I could get some kind of description so I can figure out what it is that I do that seems to work, and if there is something I overlooked.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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