The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: W_Wysocki
Date: 2005-01-04 18:12
Soft palatte; some folks say you can just close it, or you just can't. Kind of like who can roll their tongue and who can't. However, I would enjoy some opinions and suggestions on what your take on this is, and if you believe it can be taught, how do you teach it? What are excercises that you suggest?
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Author: bob49t
Date: 2005-01-04 22:56
The soft palate is an extension of the hard palate which which falls to the back of the mouth. There are muscles which serve to depress or elevate this structure mainly during the process of swallowing, when the posterior part of the tongue contacts it and initiates the swallowing sequence.
(Those individuals- most of us- who have this structure intact ie without cleft - are able to swallow without food/ saliva entering the trachea (wind pipe) and causing a choking episode.
Just as some individuals can learn to wiggle their ears, most of us with practice, will be able to actively change the position of the soft palate. If this is what you mean by "Closing" the soft palate, I would venture a guess that this is someone's term for altering the openness of the "throat" in order to create a different sound when playing clarinet (or any other wind instrument) It's not the full picture however.
Hope this helps.
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