Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-01-05 19:21
Some reactions:
Sylvain wrote:
>>Setting aside the musical training and focusing solely on the technical aspects of clarinet playing (if it is possible at all) do you think there is a set of rules or concepts that can be applied to most students on embouchure, tongue position, breathing, finger technique; or is there absolutely no rule and only one on one teaching can be done?>>
So, here's a sort of answer to that.
I've spent a lot of time over the years writing some 2000 posts to the Klarinet list, and quite a few here, so I don't exactly think that nothing can be written.
But if I may quote what I actually wrote at the beginning of this thread:
>>Something that strikes me about THIS BOARD....is that it tends to be about what to do when we play the clarinet.
I think THE BOARD would be a much better resource if it were MORE about what's so when we play the clarinet.>>
So what I'm on about is changing the balance of what happens in a medium like the internet -- hence the capitalisations 'BOARD' and 'MORE' which weren't there in the original.
Now, there's lots of stuff here that is fun, amusing, lighthearted, opinionated, argumentative and so on.
But if you're concerned to help people, to set them right where they're having trouble, then what you can do most easily here is to provide INFORMATION. That information can be more or less detailed, of course.
But I say the best information is the information that refers to the area of the problem, but is independent of the actual problem being faced.
Because we don't really know what the actual problem is! We know what the player wants to say -- one of them said, her throat was too tight -- but that doesn't tell us how to go about helping.
What we can do, though, is to tell someone how the diaphragm works, we can tell them how the embouchure works; we can outline how embouchures can fail -- because they don't do what embouchures need to do, and how 'biting' may be a part of that failure; we can say what is absolutely true about the action of the tongue -- not, notice, that you 'should always touch the tip of the reed with the tip of your tongue', because what if the person has a very long tongue? -- and beyond that, what playing music consists of, which involves responding to the various contexts -- other players, what you've just played, how what you play relates to all that ....and so on.
I can tell you a strategy to find out about 'grunts' that applies to many other aspects of playing -- namely try PLAYING the grunt! Play it loudly! You find out by experience what you need to do to play it, and thereby what you need to do not to play it. And you find it out confidently, not wussily.
I explained the reason why you don't pull your abdomen in. But, try playing with your abdomen pulled in! You may find that you can do the opposite more consistently if you give yourself the freedom to experiment, and you'll have a direct experience of it being better.
The characteristic of all these tips is that you have to be able to recognise that they are helpful. Why? Well, because I'm not there to tell you that they are helpful! How could I be?
They're quite specific, though. They don't have the laissez-faire quality that vjoet implies:
>>In teaching advanced students, I think Mr Pay's approach--self-discovery of what works--is totally correct. For beginners through intermediate, I'd say if a teacher can't make suggestions and tell how the student might be able to achieve what the music needs, then that teacher is too frigid to be of much benefit to that level of player.>>
Who said this frigid teacher was talking about teaching?
I WAS TALKING ABOUT POSTING ON THE INTERNET. There, 'self-discovery of what works' in the suggestions made is the only possible route. And THAT FACT NEEDS TO BE MADE EXPLICIT. Otherwise, we have people thinking that the purpose of playing the clarinet is to have a flat chin, or have a high tongue position that makes them want to puke, or other nonsense that people put about.
>>In the masterclasses that Mr Pay teaches, it is my belief that he seeks to develop the artistry of his students by having them find solutions for themselves, for as he states there are many solutions, and the player often is not consciously aware of what it is he is doing to overcome the problem.>>
I suggest that NOBODY here knows ANYTHING about the masterclasses I teach. They don't know the extent to which I demand that some students show that they are able to follow my instructions exactly. I do sometimes do that, in detail, both technically and musically. How else are they to grow beyond what they currently can do?
They don't know that after many years of helping students towards their idea of the Mozart concerto, I now rather show them another way to look at it, that they have to develop a technique in order to find expressive. Some find that quite hard.
They don't know that sometimes I interfere with the instrumental setup that students have, because I can hear -- yes, that's right, unlike on the internet -- that they will be better off changing.
In one-on-one teaching, you're much freer to intervene, of course. (It's possible to tell someone not to play anything staccato for a month, say, if you judge that that will benefit them. I heard that Deinzer sometimes did that.)
Tom wrote:
>>Tony in the UK and Europe, are clarinetists as hung up on getting the "super" mouthpiece?>>
Yes, we like to play with ourselves, just like everybody else:-) I always say it all depends where you want your problems. Sometimes a change is nice.
>>Eachtime I play I always go back to basics, what's my hand position, how am I breathing, how does my embouchure need to react to this music, this reed, the pitch of the piano. I can truthfully say that anything that has gone wrong in a public performance has never been because I had chosen the wrong ligature.>>
Sounds like good wisdom to end on.
Tony
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