Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-09-02 01:44
mrn wrote:
>> You can play a really fast scale with slow-moving fingers as long as the beginning of one finger movement is soon followed by the beginning of the next. In short, it's the phase of the fingers that matters, not the speed.>>
Yes. It's easy to see this if you think about an F major scale in the lower register. There, NO finger has to move faster in order to play the scale faster. All that happens is that each finger begins to move SOONER. All the fingers can move at exactly the same speed -- up to the limiting case when the scale is infinitely fast, and all the fingers lift (slowly if you want) at exactly the same moment.
So, I find that this is the psychological key to playing fast passages, rather than what vin wrote. Because, it divides finger movements into two categories -- (a) those that need to be fast, because the finger needs to move again to produce the next note but one (as in a trill) or (b) those that can be slow, because the finger is uninvolved in the playing of the next note but one (as in the ascending F major scale in the low register).
This further divides the passage into a number of relaxed, fluid movements joined by precise, poised transitions, which you can practise independently.
Of course, you can be unlucky, and have to play a passage that consists almost entirely of these transitions. Then, it's extremely difficult to play the passage fast:-(
So, turning to the case of this chromatic scale from C'' to C''', the most 'fluid' finger sequence is the best, even if some notes are of slightly dubious intonation. For me, I find that is (speaker key and thumb on throughout, and other keys labelled according to the notes they generate in the chalumeau):
C o o o / o o o
C# o x x / x x o
D o x x / x o o
D# o x x / x o o plus B sliver key
E o x x / o o o
F o x x / o o o plus LH C# key
F# o x o / o o o
G o x o / x o o (an alternative to RH1 would be Eb trill key, slightly less fluid, though)
G# o x x / x x x plus RH F# key
A o x x / o o o
A# x x x / x x x plus LH F key and RH Ab key
B x x o / x x o plus LH F key and RH Ab key
C x o o / x o o plus LH F key and RH Ab key
I've divided the run at G, because that's a pivotal note, and a rather unusual and even resistant fingering, related to the much better speaking, and very useful:
G x o o / x o o
...which is part of the solution to many problematic high passages, as it involves no added little fingers, and so can serve as a pivot between notes that DO involve those fingers. (I haven't used it here, though, because it would involve a non-fluid flip between LH1 and LH2.) The rest of the fingerings are pretty standard, but where they've been changed the idea is to mimic the smooth pulling off of fingers that Vann Joe was after in his idea of using the higher partials of lower notes. (In fact, if I were doing that, I'd start off with the C played as an overblown chalumeau Ab rather than an overblown chalumeau E, and then proceed as above; but the move from C to C# using the standard fingering counts as fluid because it's right at the beginning, so I found that it wasn't necessary.)
I used my 'three-note exercise':
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=218262&t=218262
....on the notes F#, G, G# in order to learn the transition between the two halves, and found that that worked well -- as it very often does, I'm pleased to say:-)
Tony
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