 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: clariguy
Date: 2006-09-10 08:31
I have a junior in school who is playing very flat, regardless of the registers. She has piror exp. in primary school but only for less than a year. I have tried various methods to correct her embouchure and she knows how to breath very well. However despite all the efforts (and a few months of suffering from hearing out of tune playing) the problem presisted. Have anyone of you come across such cases? All suggestions welcomed and I thank you in advance.
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Author: donald
Date: 2006-09-10 11:08
with beginner level students i check for.....
- upper teeth on mouthpiece (if single lip player)
- lips against teeth (ie no gap between lip and teeth)
.... as the two most common causes of flat intonation in younger/learner students.
from your post it looks like you probably have these bases covered, all i can think of to try next is that the student is playing with a overly low tongue postiion.
ask them to say "fffffrrrrreeeee" instead of "fffffooooood" (free vrs food)
or "sssshhhoooes" instead of "wwwwoooooooof" (shoes vrs woof)
i hope this was helpful
donald
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2006-09-10 11:50
Have you played her clarinet? Is it possible she's using an instrument that nobody could play on pitch? At flea markets, and even in music stores selling used clarinets, I often see "marriages," clarinets put together out of parts of different brands of instruments or even instruments from the same manufacturer but from different decades. Not all clarinets have logos on each section; most don't have serial numbers on all parts; and therefore the problem isn't always obvious if, for instance, a repairman has replaced a cracked barrel with a no-name one that's too long for the instrument.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-09-10 16:09
I'd also consider taking a look at the reed. If the reed is too soft for her set up this could make it impossible to play at pitch.
-Randy
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Author: pewd
Date: 2006-09-10 16:15
too much lower lip in the mouth can also cause you to play flat
also, reach up and jiggle the barrel while the student is playing - make sure the mouthpiece is firmly set in the mouth
plus what lelia said - make sure the barrel is correct length for the clarinet
- Paul Dods
Dallas, Texas
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Author: clariguy
Date: 2006-09-11 10:43
The clarinet belongs to another senior, so i am sure it plays fine. For reed, is rico 2.5 too soft? Correct me if i am wrong, i taught reed stiffness only affect higher registers (in terms of pitch).
Also, i would like to add that her sound is really thick.Does this mean it is an overly low togue position???
Thanks for the reply. I,ll try them, hopefully it wil work.
Post Edited (2006-09-11 10:51)
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2006-09-11 15:42
My guess, given the "thick" description you used, is indeed tongue position. Embouchure also might be affecting it, so check that too.
Katrina
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-09-11 19:03
Just a shot in the dark - I have heard/read of people with a rather unusual metabolism who breathe out a more CO2 than the average person. This would result in an overall lower pitch.
Maybe just have your student blow through a recorder to rule out tongue, reed and all that. (if the recorder is in pitch, proceed with the suggestions above).
--
Ben
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-09-12 02:16
I hate to disagree, tictactux, but the metabolism thing doesn't make sense. Under standard temperature and pressure, inspired air weighs about 28.58 g/mol, or roughly 7 grams per lungful. Expired air from a normal individual weighs 29.1 g/mol, or 7.3 grams per lungful. Let's say that our fast metabolizers have double the CO2 content that our normal metabolizers do (this would actually be pretty painful as the brain would constantly be saying, "YOU ARE SUFFOCATING"). This would give a gas mass of 29.64 g/mol, or 7.41 grams per lungful. This is about 110 mg per lungful difference between normal, which wouldn't cause enough change in density to lower the pitch. Helium, in contrast, which has noticeable density effects, weighs in at 4 g/mol, or about 1 gram per lungful. On the practical side, one of the groups I work with does a tremendous amount of human indirect calorimetry and I've never seen anyone's expired gases vary by that much.
Also, the recorder test doesn't necessarily work because recorders are exquisitely sensitive to pitch with varied breath pressure...it's one of the issues with dynamics and recorders that causes you to either not play dynamics or use mechanical means or finger finesse to play dynamics.
-Randy
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-09-12 04:20
Taking a look at that, I find a number of issues
1) The paper talks about the difference between inspired air (that remains in the tidal space) and expired air. In that case there is a larger difference between density then what I was specifically looking at (the so-called high metabolizer). Still, the difference is minimal (300 mg per lungful, as I pointed out). The difference in CO2 between room air (0.04%) is substantially different than expired air (~4.5%)
2) The paper minimizes the effect of water vapor on density
3) The paper minimizes the effect of heat on density.
4) The paper doesn't mention the effect of expiratory pressure on density.
These last three points can be summed up in the pilot's rule of H's...if you're high (low pressure), hot, and humid, you'll have a long take-off run (due to low density).
5) The hugest error in the paper is error with respect to molar weights. nitrogen is diatomic, with EACH atom weighing 14 amu's. Same with oxygen as each atom weighs 16 amus. When you deal with gases it really doesn't matter how many atoms are there, a mole is a mole. Thus, gaseous nitrogen weighs 28 g/mole, gaseous oxygen weighs 32 g/mole, and CO2 weighs 44 grams per mole. He ends up with the same proportions (and correct densities) but it throws the reader for a loop.
6) The paper overestimates the separation of tidal air with pulmonary air. There's a fair amount of mixing, even though tidal oxygen isn't considered to be available for respiration. If you are breathing in quickly (remember that we are taught to breathe quickly and fully at every breath) or breathing out against resistance (as in the clarinet) the mixing will be more substantial.
7) The paper assumes that humidity and temperature of tidal and pulmonary air will be constant. If anything, there would be at least as much variance in these parameters as in CO2. Tidal air does not have the same surface area contact as air in the alveoli. Particularly in the case of mouth-breathing (a lot of moisture and heat is picked up in the nose) the increased surface area of the alveoli will foster more humidity and temperature modulation than will tidal air. As I said in 6, the amount of mixing probably negates this factor, but the paper needs to be consistent.
8) In section 6 the equation given shows velocity to decrease with increasing CO2 (also density)
9) Although velocity increases with density, it also increases with heat
I'm not sure I like all the mathematical tricks he played...things could have been more straightforward.
To be honest (and I invested time reading this so I feel its okay to be honest) I don't think it would pass peer review. It's basically mathematical conjecture drawn from an anecdotal source unsupported by experimental method. I know that I offer some of the same here (in this board) but I'm not writing a scholarly paper.
If you are interested in the way gases behave in the lungs take a look at
"Animal and Human Calorimetry" by McLean and Tobin from Cambridge University Press, 1990....a little old but it's the classic in the field
-Randy
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-09-12 06:27
Randy,
....that's why I wrote "shot in the dark". I don't mind being wrong, no problem. I simply believe one shouldn't easily dismiss a possible cause just because it appears improbable.
--
Ben
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-09-12 07:58
No worries....that's what I thought you meant...I give full (nauseatingly so) answers to science questions because I know there are often issues from other posters (I don't mean you, by the way, Mark) and so I like to get all my cards in the open. Nobody can accuse me of not showing where I stand!
-Randy
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