The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Gibbero
Date: 2004-11-05 01:20
I was wondering if anyone knows how to smear?
And if so they could you tell me how if at all possible. I mean I am listening to the music and trying to copy what is being done, but it is just not working.
P.S. Thanx
-Terrance Brekne
Post Edited (2004-11-05 01:54)
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Author: hans
Date: 2004-11-05 02:52
If you'll do a search, there is plenty of advice available on this topic.
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Author: BobD
Date: 2004-11-05 11:42
If you mean an upward "smear" you have to think of your fingers as points on a wave...but actually gradually lift your right and then left hand fingers successively in groups. It's very difficult to explain....but if you keep trying you'll get it....if you live long enough. Try to find someone who can do it...show you how.
Bob Draznik
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2004-11-05 14:22
Echoing BobD, do you mean an upward "low attack" for one [or just a few] notes, or a glissando of many, that in Gershwin's Rhapsodie In Blue is prob the most famous. Or, what I think of as a "rip" [ ? from the IT, ripieno?] downward, as in the "Cuban Rhapsody" [bass cl part] which our comm band is now practicing [hoping to be able to play it], its TOUGH !! Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2004-11-05 14:31
Just thot of what could be called a downward "smear" [the donkey] in Grofe's Grand Canyon, comments, D S ?? Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2004-11-05 15:35
There's another downward smear, for Eb, in Copland's El Salon Mexico. It's not easy. I heard Peter Simenauer, who's a fabulous player, break into a horrible squeak on it.
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Author: DavieCane01
Date: 2004-11-05 15:38
If I can tack a related question onto the back of this one:
My students and I were wondering if there are any modern recordings where the clarinetist has replicated Ross Gorman's feat of playing the gliss from the low G? That'd be a nice trick to learn.
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Author: Carol Dutcher
Date: 2004-11-05 16:25
I think of it as "sliding" rather than smearing because that's what I do with my fingers. I'm still trying to learn how to "growl."
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Author: MTitus
Date: 2004-11-05 20:25
Once you get the hang of smearing, like anything else it's easy.
My private instructor taught me to, as the previous poster said, slide your fingers.
With your hand, starting on your ring finger, slowly slide your finger sideways off towards your right, following with your middle, and index finger.
Once you get up to your left hand, it's the same thing, except your sliding your fingers off the to left.
Don't actually lift your fingers off the rings/tone hole, just slide them off to the side.
At first you'll get a lot of squeeks and such because your making like 3 half-holes at the same time lol. But just keep working through it note by note until you don't get any squeeks anymore.
Once you get it, and look at your hands in the mirror, it's not just each finger moving seperately, it's almost like your entire hand is sliding off the clarinet... it's just really fluid once you got it.
The infamous Gliss from the throat tone G to the high C (or D) is done by 'simply' making an overtone on an open G, opening your throat and dropping the pitch so, so far down that it hits the G. Then like a normal bend, your just tightening up your embochure to bring it back up to a D. Personally, I can only go down to an A or G just above the staff, I can't imagine going down THAT far lol.
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Author: RAMman
Date: 2004-11-06 09:42
I would like to suggest....that the fingers provide nothing more than a scaffold for the gliss, smear or whatever else you want to call it.
Most of what goes on is within the throat, so my advice is practice manpulating pitch without moving any fingers.
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Author: BobD
Date: 2004-11-06 12:45
Yes, like using just the mouthpiece as a duck call....
Bob Draznik
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Author: John Morton
Date: 2004-11-06 15:47
You got it right there, Bob! I'm working on glisses now, mostly between 8 and 10 pm. I have imagined that my neighbors assumed I was perfecting my duck calls for next season.
John
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