 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: clarinetwife
Date: 2005-06-20 19:10
Clarinetist focus a lot on the physical nitty gritty as beginners: getting a sound, fingering, hand position, embouchure formation, etc. Beginning pianists also work through many physical issues as they learn how to play. It seems to me, though, that the piano is somewhat different in that people who have banged around on the piano at all sense how touch sensitive the instrument is. It is easy to demonstrate that how you physically approach the keys affects the sound you get out of the piano.
Do clarinetist separate their fingers and their sound more than pianists do, and how does that affect the beginner's experiences making music? Also, what are some aspects of musicality that can be approached and understood from the beginning on the clarinet?
I think that right away, clarinetists can work on
1) phrasing, including dynamic shaping, making repeated notes "go somewhere", breathing, and beginning and ending phrases in a pleasing way
2) keeping the musical energy going across bar lines as an expressive aspect of rhythm
3) Of course, tone quality intersects with embouchure and airstream just as pianists learn how to make the piano make different sounds with their fingers, hands, wrists and arms.
Anybody have other thoughs on keeping the beginning lessons musical and not so "mechanistic'?
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Author: BlockEyeDan
Date: 2005-06-20 19:50
Your post brings up an important point about the relationship between mechanics and musicianship in playing an instrument.
Although it can take more than a lifetime to master the piano, the basic mechanics of doing so are learned on the very first day: depress the key with the finger. Of course it's A LOT more complicated than that, but that is the essence of it. That is why I, for instance, have been able to make slow progress on the piano by playing every day since I returned to school. I could definitely USE lessons to become a better player, but I don't NEED them in order to expand my own facilities. The linear and equal arrangement of all the pitches on a keyboard lend themselves to a more intuitive understanding of how to get what you want out of a piano.
The clarinet offers none of these advantages. You can't 'plink out' tunes on a clarinet with no prior knowledge because the clarinet requires its own unique set of fundamentals that have to be grasped in order to move to the next step. I feel that those who bemoan an emphasis on mechanics when learning the clarinet aren't being fair with themselves regarding what they have to accomplish before being able to focus on the 'musicality' of their playing. I began teaching a 10-year-old this past fall (my first pupil ever). She plays quite well for her age, and shows initiative by wanting to learn various songs she knows, etc. I encourage her enthusiasm, yet I am able to witness firsthand the consequences of a desire to be musical that encounters music that is beyond her technical facilities. She has begun to realize that as well, and it has made our efforts on her technical areas more fruitful; she understands WHY it's important that we study scales, embrochure, BASIC theory, and so on.
By no means should any of us discourage the development of 'musicality' in those whom we teach. But to believe that this can overcome technical shortcomings is doing a disservice to those we teach, and ultimately ourselves.
Thanks all,
Dan
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Author: Meri
Date: 2005-06-20 22:03
I find that even though beginners are mastering the basics, even the earliest beginners can be taught to play the music expressively. For some it happens earlier than others.
For example, one just-turned 10-year-old clarinet student I have (she's been studying about 4 months now), I expanded her range of dynamic levels starting about three weeks ago first by doing crescendos and decresendos on long tones, and then using the idea of different dynamic levels in her method book (Galper's Clarinet Method) and solo pieces. Most of the typical clarinet beginner problems haven't occurred, she has a beautiful sound, plays with good posture, rarely squeaks, she knows four each of scales and arpeggios (and is starting to recognize them in her pieces) her mom is good with getting her started practicing (and asks her to occasionally show her the pieces she has been learning). She is playing Paul Harris' Spanish Memory from "Summer Sketches" on Thursday for her school's talent show--with myself at the piano.
Meri
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2005-06-20 22:42
downbeats downbeats downbeats downbeats downbeats downbeats downbeats downbeats downbeats downbeats
downbeats.
I've been playing clarinet 9 years, and STILL the concept I have the most trouble with musically (and what I hear other people have the most trouble with) is proper treatment of downbeats.
Energy goes from downbeat to downbeat, always. It doesn't stop, ever.
Know where the downbeats are, in time, in the phrase, and on the clarinet.
Do this, and other facets of musicality begin to fall into place.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Markael
Date: 2005-06-21 01:05
I like the way that this thread makes comparisons between clarinet and piano, because I teach both. It takes more imagination to teach the clarinet, because so much of the action takes place inside the mouth.
All beginners in music have many things to think about at once—rhythm, notes, dynamics, etc. But beginning pianists don’t have to worry about intonation, or squeaks, or whether they can make a sound on the instrument at all.
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Author: Brenda
Date: 2005-06-21 15:01
I'm just gathering more information for our orchestra's education program, and my focus is on newborns and very small children. Those who are rocked, cradled, danced with, and so forth have a very strong sense of rhythm. New parents are urged to have music of all kinds in the home with the exception of "head-banging rock" that even animals and plants have a hard time accepting.
Music in the form of Mom and Dad's singing, instruments, recordings, and being moved to rhythms help to form vital brain circuits that include learning vocabulary (phonological awareness). This early exposure trains the brain to have an appreciation for music, and even an emotional attachment to one or more songs. So even if the baby doesn't grow to become the next Mozart, at the very least he'll be building needed tools to soothe the soul later on - and play music when he's in school!
One little guest in our home came into the studio while I was teaching, and once he heard us playing in time to the metronome he started bouncing right in time to the music! We had a good laugh, but that's what I'd wanted my student to feel inside her soul, the rhythm! But this little 3-yr-old was born to Salsa music, literally, in the delivery room. Being from Columbia the boy had plenty of exposure to delightful rhythms.
www.scholastic.com/familymatters/read/age3_5/singing.html
www.babycenter.com/refcap/baby/babydevelopment/6548.html
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Author: clarinetmaniac101
Date: 2005-06-22 02:09
you know your statement or question is excellent.
learning the piano somewhat gives you an advantage on musicality. You know how to make better phrases you know you take what you learned from playing the piano into playing an instrument. I have a good since of playing with musicality and still have the perfect(almost) mechanics. But to have a clear tone also deals with musicality in pushing and pulling phrases and things like that. you know that tone is everything and on the clarinet having an airy tone is not excepted in the clarinet world and I am telling you the truth you realy don't need to play with an airy tone and when you have a clear tone it shows that you have control over you emboshure and that you know how to play as well. But musicality is something that take development you know it does not come over night. there are some studies that are made for you to develope your musicality but you know learning musicality you just need to sit down and learn how to phrase but I guess that is why there are studies and things like that but that is all I can tell you right now I am still working on phrasing and things like that but those are tips my teacher has taught me and I am passing it down to you.
Rashad
*clarinet
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Author: Markael
Date: 2005-06-22 12:05
I don’t think you can make a blanket statement that people transfer their ideas about musicality from piano to another instrument, especially when you are speaking about children. Some do this better and more naturally than others.
Note reading, especially treble clef, is the one thing that most everybody seems to “get.” But even that does not always carry over 100 percent. Some beginning clarinet students have trouble recognizing, say, a “C” as “C,” but they do associate the notation with the proper fingering of the note.
I find it very exciting and rewarding when a student really starts to connect musical knowledge from piano and another instrument. I had a piano student who was also taking guitar, and his musical interests covered an interesting mix of material. He was playing an arrangement of the standard tune, “Serenade in Blue,” and I pointed out a passing sharp 9 chord at the very end of the song, noting that it was the same kind of chord Jimi Hendrix used in “Purple Haze.” I love to point that out, because the chord has a totally different feel in those different contexts. He understood immediately what I meant.
Post Edited (2005-06-22 12:18)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2005-06-23 22:36
I think the most important thing we can teach our students is the relationship between melody and song, and thus the relationship between melody and *speech*.
(It's best learnt at our mother's knee, of course, or at any rate at an early age. Still, most of us have some experience of this.)
In song, the rhythms of the words animate the long line of the melody.
I once taught at a foreign music school in conjunction with a quite well-known pedagogue. I was horrified to encounter a student just out of a class with him, who had crescendos pencilled in on all the odd bars, and diminuendos on all the even bars of some classical piece.
To teach so-called 'expression' in that way simply blocks the student's natural understanding of how melody functions, and subverts any possibility of their appreciation of the appoggiatura-governed aspects of how we show consonance and dissonance even in simple tunes. That sounds complicated -- but it's just a description of what most musical people do quite naturally, if we're not scared or otherwise overwhelmed.
Another aspect: I want to argue against clarinetwife's example, "making repeated notes go somewhere", understood separately from speech.
If I say,
"I am the King!"...triplet repeated quavers and crotchet say a fourth up, then I do something rather like,
I am the King!
..where 'King' is louder than 'I', but 'am' is not louder than 'I', and 'the' is not louder than 'am'.
So the repeated notes don't 'go' to the crotchet on their level.
Here is some related material of my own, for anyone that's interested -- not if you're not, of course (but then, shame on you;-)
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/1998/10/000412.txt
http://www.woodwind.org/clarinet/Study/Phrasing.html
(reference for first article), then
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/1998/10/000440.txt
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/1998/10/000421.txt
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/1998/10/000437.txt
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/1998/10/000447.txt
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/1998/10/000474.txt
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/1998/10/000834.txt
..and finally:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2001/05/000572.txt
Tony
Post Edited (2005-06-23 22:46)
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Author: clarinetwife
Date: 2005-06-24 03:04
Maestro Pay, I think it is mostly my expression of what I mean, in a few words, perhaps simplisticly, that is the issue. Since high school I have done a good portion of my playing with vocalists, particularly choirs, and this has had a great influence on my phrasing. The big issue that I find with beginners, and even not-so-beginners, is that they allow the rectangular look of ordinary bars of music define how they approach phrases that are much longer units if one is thinking in terms of speech or singing.
As far as repeated notes go, I think that again one needs to think in terms of vocal inflection when deciding how to execute them on a wind instrument. I remember last winter the community orchestra I am in was playing the Russian Christmas Music. There was a section near the beginning where the trombones were playing a Christmas chant. This chant has many repeated notes and it sounded very flat and uninflected when they first playied it. They needed to decide what to do with the repeated notes in order to get to the moving parts that followed the repeated line. They were fairly quickly able to hear how the line would sound sung and use that concept to play the passage. Of course, chant is especially vulnerable to being broken up when it is notated metrically, but the concept can apply to music of many eras and places.
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