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Re: staying in shape

Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2004-10-25 14:42

Liquorice -

I'm sure you have Baermann III on your stand. Couldn't hurt to spend 10 minutes of your best time each morning cleaning up a couple of lines. If you find that any unevenness has crept in, try the Fernand Gillet technique described by Alan Vogel, which I summarized at http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=158256&t=158204.

I turned my technique upside down about a year ago, based on a suggestion from the brilliant baroque oboist Gonzalo Ruiz. Reverse the muscular effort, using strength to "pop" your fingers up, but let them drop only by gravity. This takes a while to get used to. Work on scales in thirds at 60 beats per minute, one note per beat. It's particularly difficult to learn changes that have one finger going up and another going down, but after a few days it starts to feel right.

Once you get the feel, you can reduce the effort you use to raise the fingers and let them float up as well as drop down. Alexander Williams told me that when he was at his best, his fingers felt weightless, and for me, that's the ideal. You should use as little effort as possible.

Also, relaxation lets you reduce finger motion. It's exciting to let your fingers fly around, but much more efficient to have them barely move. The saxophonist Sigurd Rascher said he tried to keep his fingers always in contact with the keys. Anything more is wasted. Imagine you're trying to mystify the audience by not letting them see your fingers move at all.

Throwing your fingers around also has another bad effect -- you start moving several fingers when you only need to move one. It's like pinball players who hit both flipper buttons instead of just the one where the ball is. I watched Stanley Drucker from just a few feet away at a recital a couple of months ago, and I was amazed at how independently his fingers moved. I found that by relaxing the muscles on the back of my hands, I could reduce a lot of unnecessary motion and just move the fingers that I needed to.

Finally, try Kalmen Opperman's Intervalic Permutations. The exercises are ordinary looking arpeggiated patterns, but each of them is altered so that they're different from the familiar ones in Baermann III. You feel like a beginner, since things are not programmed into your fingers. Kal told me that Harold Wright used them whenever he needed some exercise. Ordinary things feel much easier when you're done.

Best regards.

Ken Shaw

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