The Clarinet BBoard

Re: Newbie questions

Author: igor  Date:   2005-06-07 23:50 Yes, I know that I will need a teacher sooner than later. But I am hesitating for the following reasons (not necessarily in the order of importance): 1. I heard from others that many teachers are college students/grads themselves. I don't really think it is very common for many of them to teach a 40y.o *foreign* dude Don't know how to put it better, but I am sure you know what I am talking about... 2. Finding a teacher doesn't always mean finding a good teacher. That's an additional stress... I am not the kind of person who can easily fire a teacher if he/she doesn't meet my expectations. Plus, how do I know? It is like the NFL draft. We don't know till 3 years later 3. A lot of people who do have a teacher ask exact same questions on the web. 4. I am not sure about the clarinet playing, but in other activities bad habits are easy to develop even with a teacher. As an extreme, I read of a saxophone player who had been studying with a teacher for 2-3 years but had nevertheless been tonguing on the roof of the mouth. 5. I roughly divide all people into those who absolutely need an instructor even in a butt kicking contest and those who tend to achieve more success in teaching themselves. I surely belong to the latter category. Of course, I realize that the importance of having a teacher varies based on a specific task. Probably music is one of those tasks. I once tried to teach myself to play tennis based on videos and books and I must admit that that was a horrible idea ;-) On the other hand, I taught myself most things I can do reasonably well, like speaking English or computer programming which I do for a living (yes, still). I came to this country just a few years ago on my own and I had very little guidance so I had to figure out a lot of things myself… That might explain my tendencies… Plus internet changed life drastically… Sounds obvious but the more I think about it the more I realize that it’s thanks to internet that a lot of things are a lot easier to achieve for this generation… 6. Speaking of the clarinet playing, I did a lot of reading and analyzing months before buying the clarinet. I could certainly be wrong, but I think that I am aware of most common mistakes beginners tend to make because people discuss the same things over and over again. I think about those things for a while before and while practicing. You know, things like the lower lip/bottom teeth relationship, jaw position, amount of jaw pressure, length of the mp in the mouth, tongue position, the air flow, the breath support, etc. etc. Of course as they say the final test is the tone quality and that definitely requires a teacher. Plus I can make a rough comparison with the sound on instructional CDs. I also use an electronic tuner to check the pitch accuracy. I tried playing on the mouthpiece + barrel to make sure I get a steady F#. I totally agree with the concept of learning to walk first. I am just not sure about one thing. It seem to be possible to play chalumeau reliably even though the embouchure is slightly imperfect, for example not enough reed in the mouth to vibrate. This would become immediately obvious if one tried playing higher clarion tones. So I just thought of it as a “reality check”: play some chalumeau tones then open the register key and finger the same notes to see if they come out cleanly and the embouchure is unchanged… But I agree if a note is too high I should give up and try later. Yes, I can read music. To an extent, of course. That was an ideal thing to teach myself. I’d been messing with my child’s recorders (soprano and alto) for a month or so. Since recorder is so easy to blow and I was not concerned with the quality of my tone, I mostly concentrated on the musical notation. I still have some difficulties with things like syncopations and shorter notes but for the most part rhythm is not a problem for me. The pitch is another story. I had always been thinking of myself as having a tin ear because I was never able to sing in tune. That’s why I was considered to be “hopeless” and I’d always believed that music was not for me. Anyway, it turned out to be really helpful to learn both soprano and alto recorder fingerings. Since clarinet overblows in 12ths, it is perfectly natural for me that the same fingering is used for say, C, and G. Plus, it was a pleasant surprise for me that basic fingerings in the chalumeau and clarion registers are really similar to those of the recorder! Another positive side effect of learning musical notation along with the recorder fingerings was that I felt completely relaxed. As a result, my fingers were very relaxed, too, no stress, no stiffness, so I learned to finger really fast and I am hoping this will help me with the clarinet fingering too. No I am not an oboe player, but see above. I guess the nature of my work somewhat helps in being analytical and observant (well, sometimes over analytical though ;-) Thank you all!

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