 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Anon
Date: 2008-08-14 02:10
Any thoughts on how to learn quickly? I'm not well-versed in extended techniques but find myself in need of these two for a concert in October.
The composer gave me the fingerings for the multiphonics but some pointers would be appreciated.
Thanks
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Author: srattle
Date: 2008-08-14 05:52
multiphonics you just have to find in your mouth and support.
For some, I can just breath and play relatively normally, and they come out, others I have to blow harder, some I can only make sound very quietly and with a completely miss shapen embouchure. Just play around with them and you'll get it.
Slap tongue, I'm still trying to figure out, but can't get it to work.
Sacha
P.S. from my own experience, I've noticed that composers tend to have a very bad working knowledge of multiphonics. They get a book which lists figurings and notes, and then write them, often as though they are chords on a piano, with no knowledge of how the individual multiphonics will speak. Sometimes I find pieces with fingerings that don't work (or don't work for me) and other times I find a multiphonic that I can only play ppp written fortissimo with an accent.
Goodluck!
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2008-08-14 06:42
Where can one get this book of clarinet muli-phonics with all possible fingerings and their expected results?
Post Edited (2008-08-14 07:52)
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2008-08-14 07:53
For slap tongue you basically hold your tongue on the reed (create a vacum). Not like regular stacato, but actually a lot of the tongue is on the reed. Then you suddenly release it. It's a bit similar to making that clicking sound with your tongue on the top of your mouth. Notice it has nothing to do with air or sound. You can slap tongue with sound or without, if you blow air too then it will simply be a slap tongue attack instead of regular attack. One mistake that I noticed some make is that because of the tongue movement they accidently suck air instead of blowing air.
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Author: Danny Boy
Date: 2008-08-14 10:23
I forget the title but believe it's by Roger Heaton. Henri Bok's 'New Techniques for the bass clarinet' is also a valuable source of multiphonics (plus timbre changes and extreme registers) many of which transfer to the clarinet. This also has a (short) section on slap tonguing.
Good advice from clarnibass - methods from others are always helpful, so here's how I learned.
Slap tonguing should be learned very slowly. I was set the task of learning several extended techniques on the bass and it was suggested that I should take 5 minutes at the start of each session to make many strange noises.
You'll get less frustrated learning to slap on the bass or another low reed instrument, as it comes more easily.
1) Suck on your index finger, then release the lips by dropping the jaw to create a pop.
2) Move to mouthpiece and reed and repeat process. The tongue should be very flat against the reed as you big the suck.
3) The hard bit is coordinating beginning to blow with the pop - as clarnibass says, sucking seems more natural! The air attack must be quite sharp and precisely times with the release of the pop.
Good luck!
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Author: lowclarinetman
Date: 2008-08-14 18:50
How I slap tounge, which is the same method taught to me by Henri Bok is not a sucking motion.
THe "suck" slap tounge can work and a lot of saxophonist use it, but can never be really fast.
I close the reed HARD with my tounge. Apply air pressure and release very fast. Then the rest is physics. The air pressure equalizes creating a sound. I have the option of adding air(creating the type of slap tounges at the start of Spasm by M. Lowenstern) or just letting the note sound.
(you can even practice this w/o a clarinet)
The technique cannot be mastered overnight. It took me about 6 months of daily practice before i could get a good consistent slap tounge.
Start with just the mouthpiece and close the reed as hard as possible against the mouthpiece table. (note you will have a lot more tounge touching the reed than for a normal attack) and the very beggining I just practice with holding a reed and getting used to using more tounge.
Attempt to apply air pressure behind the closed reed. But DO NOT APPLY THE AIR TO THE INSTRUMENT. Just let it exist and move the tounge fast.
Hope this was some help.
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Author: Danny Boy
Date: 2008-08-14 21:52
lowclarinetman - can you please send that to Henri Bok to replace his section in his book? I always new he produced his slap tongue differently from 'the suck' (and as you say, it's much more useful) but I couldn't for the life of me work out what he was actually trying to explain.
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2008-08-15 07:05
To clarify, I do it the same way as lowclarinetman, but he probably explained it better. No one taught me how to slap tongue and I didn't know there was another method to do it, which is why I was a bit confused from Danny Boy's explaination at first. I don't move my jaw at all when slap tonguing.
>> as clarnibass says, sucking seems more natural!
Not exactly what I said (or at least not what I meant). It never seemed more natural to me, but when I recently taught someone slap tonguing I noticed he did that and it caused problems (and the same for another person a while ago). You couldn't actually know they did it, until they tried to also play a note with the slap and couldn't. The problem is you don't know you are doing it because it sound mostly the same. So as lowclarinetman says it's important to seperate the air from the slap tongue.
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