 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Amanda S
Date: 2006-02-11 21:41
Friday, my high school band director started somewhat of a riot in the band hall. He decided that when you play softer, your air speed should slow. He said that the pressure should still be the same, but you have to slow down the air. He also said that every other band director and professional player he has talked to him has differed in their theories, but he insisted that since he couldn't do it, it was impossible. I've been taught to keep the air speed the same for all volume levels, but to increase or decrease the size of the hole it goes through. When I asked about this, he wanted me to show him that I could do it. Personally, I can't. I strive to do it, and it seems to help when I do. I know I can't reason with him, because there is no way to measure my air speed. I just wanted some of your opinions on this...
Thanks,
Amanda
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Author: John O'Janpa
Date: 2006-02-11 22:39
The following is my personal opinion of air speed, pressure, volume, support , etc. There will probably be others who disagree, and I'm surely no expert or great player, but I've given the subject some thought.
The three physical parameters of the air involved in playing are pressure, speed, and volume. Support is another way of referring to pressure.
Your lungs hold a certain volume of air. It disappears faster if you play loudly than it doe if you play softly. This means more vlume is expelled on loud notes than on soft notes.
The air escapes your lungs through the opening between the mouthpiece and reed. This is a tiny opening so the velocity of the air must be high at this opening. It then enters the relatively larger mouthpiece, barrel, clarinet bore where it slows down considerably, then escapes through any open holes and/or the bell.
If more volume of air goes through the same opening faster then the air speed has increased. The air speed on loud notes is faster than on soft notes.
I think what people mean when they say to keep the air speed constant is to keep the pressure constant. This can also be referred to as giving it support, or maintaining support.
Post Edited (2006-02-12 15:23)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2006-02-11 23:15
I wholeheartedly agree with John. You may be more conscious of support at low volume because your working just as hard (more or less) but only a whisper is coming out of your horn, but the AMOUNT of air is by necessity less. This is why the trick to breathing in long soft passages is to continue filling your lungs to capacity and expelling the large unused chunk as you refill your lungs again with fresh oxygen (oboists live this hell ALL the time).
So, the "air speed" remains constant (though less amount of air per unit of time), and the support remains the same, it is that the diaphragmatic "push" is less because a smaller unit of air is being pushed from the lungs per unit of time.
...........Paul Aviles
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Author: Burt
Date: 2006-02-12 17:36
I agree with John and Paul regarding air pressure.
Your band leader needs to distinguish between air pressure (forcing the air through the clarinet) and lip pressure (keeping the average space between the reed and the mouthpiece constant). If the lip pressure is not increased as volume is increased, you get a raucous flat sound. I'm sure your band leader does not want that.
Yes, I know that the faster the wind blows across a chimney, the lower the pressure in the chimney. But our experience tells us that we have to press harder (without biting), not easier when we play louder.
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Author: Bassie
Date: 2006-02-13 07:26
If I can just throw a spanner in the works here... :-D
The clarinet mouthpiece has some of the characteristics of a 'negative resistance device'. You blow, and the reed closes. That stops the airflow, so the reed opens again - and that's an oscillation. Blow hard enough, and the reed can clamp shut completely. Blow gently, and the air goes straight past the reed without disturbing it.
What this means in the current context is that you can get a quieter note with a lower airflow by *blowing harder*!
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Author: clarinet458
Date: 2008-09-14 19:05
Sorry to resurrect a veeery old topic, but this is an issue that I've been hung up on for a long time. What do people mean when they say "use slow air, but don't change the support"? I hear this everywhere, but it just doesn't make sense to me. Allow me to explain:
As a diligent student of physics back in my highschool days, I learned enough about hydraulics to know that if you have water (or air in this case) travelling at a certain speed through a cylinder (your respiratory system), the only way to slow down the movement of the water is to force LESS into the cylinder(therefore less pressure). This is the part that confounds me. To me it seems that if I want air to get to the clarinet more slowly, I have to use LESS, which I'm told is a very bad thing. Either someone is leaving out one very important piece of information, or all of my teachers have learned to defy the laws of physics, a secret which they have yet to share with me. Any words of wisdom?
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Author: BobD
Date: 2008-09-14 19:30
I think of air support like a storage tank on an air compressor. You keep the tank up to 90psi but then you "squeeze" the air out at different pressures using a "regulator" depending on the situation. What controls the speed?
Bob Draznik
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-09-14 21:57
Actually, clarinet458 has it right (or is rightfully confused, to borrow a phrase from Tony Pay). All this talk about keeping air speed constant while varying pressure or vice versa is basically baloney from a science/engineering standpoint.
The clarinet reed/mouthpiece/embouchure system is a resistance, as Bassie pointed out. A resistance, by definition, mathematically relates pressure to flow. So if you control one parameter (pressure or flow), then in the presence of a resistance the other parameter is determined by the one you controlled. You can't control the two independently from one another without actually changing the resistance you are blowing into.
When people talk about air speed and pressure as if they can be varied independently, they are really talking about the player's subjective experience--i.e., what they feel like they are doing based on the forces they are applying--rather than what really happens. What we like to refer to as "support" is perhaps better described as "control." There's actually a discussion of this concept going on in another thread--see Tony's later posts in the following thread: http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=282835&t=282835
To answer Bob's question, the overall resistance of the system formed by the reed, mouthpiece, oral cavity, and instrument is what determines what the speed is (as a function of air pressure applied). The reed/mouthpiece system acts like a regulator. Unlike a tank, which is rigid and is pumped up to a certain constant pressure by an external pump, your muscles and lungs together form a pump themselves, and this pump can apply variable pressures. When you inhale, you fill your lungs with a certain amount of air, but the pressure is determined by what you do with your muscles (the forces your muscles apply), not simply by the amount of air in your lungs (as would be the case with a constant volume tank, for example).
In other words, the analogy of your lungs as a tank charged up to a certain psi is not valid. Your lungs are bellows (variable pressure, variable volume), not tanks (fixed volume, pressure varies with amount of gas in tank and temperature). You have to control the amount of squeeze (force) you put on the bellows to get the pressure/flow combination you want.
Post Edited (2008-09-14 22:14)
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Author: BobD
Date: 2008-09-14 22:11
Precisely what my sump pump is experiencing right now as it pumps against the head of water outside and I pray it doesn't quit on me.
Bob Draznik
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Author: crnichols
Date: 2008-09-15 02:25
Find a university teacher/professional that says to use slower air at soft volumes and you've met someone that is inaudible in a large ensemble...
Christopher Nichols, D.M.A.
Assistant Professor of Clarinet
University of Delaware
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2008-09-15 06:08
Maybe this is all backward, but try to play softly THEN analize what you are doing instead of the other way around.
Also, there are different kinds of playing softly. Are you starting from nothing and building crecendo to forte?, OR are you just playing a section at piano? ... or something else?
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2008-09-16 00:48
Amanda, This is the way I have often explained it to my students so they can understand it in basic terms. It’s easier explaining it though then putting it in writing.
I relate it to a water hose. When you turn a hose on at some point the hose is %100 full of water. If it is not full then it trickles out of the nozzle. Think of that as being “unfoced”. As you turn the spout and get more water pressure the water goes further because there is more pressure at the source, think breath support pushing the air from the diaphragm, but there in no more water in the hose than when it initially was %100 full, just more pressure pushing it out so it goes further. At some point it is at maximum pressure, think fortissimo. Now, if the nozzle is on the right setting the water goes as far as possible in a steady stream, think focused. (If the nozzle is set to spread it doesn’t go as far but has a wider spread, think tone spreading). So the pressure behind the water, your air, has more focus and you can play louder but need to keep your embouchure support firmer as you direct the air into the opening between the reed and mouthpiece as you get louder so your tone doesn’t spread. If you’re playing soft you still need to have the “hose” %100 filled with water, in your case air in the air pipe, you just don’t use as much pressure pushing it out. I don’t believe one has to “increase or decrease the size of the hole” as you put it to get more support, you just have to keep your air passage %100 full of air and embouchure secure and not choke or let your tongue close of the passage way. ESP www.peabody.jhu.edu/457
Listen to a little Mozart
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2008-09-16 01:24
Analyzing air speed to this extent is detrimental to what the ear should hear and then make the body do.
I believe that when teachers start talking about "open throat" and a stiff diaphram, students end up more often hurt rather than helped.
The more natural the body relates to the instrument, the better the sound.
All the great players have a very natural way of relating to their respective instruments. Witness YoYo Ma, Glenn Gould, Drucker, and Perlman.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2008-09-16 03:10
Well Dileep, I can't speak for other teachers but I've never said "stiff diaphragm" to anyone. I have taught them how to breathe low from their diaphragm but stiff, never. Open throat, yes, that's one of the basic problems many students have, choking or closing their throats. If we as teachers don't correct their problems correctly, how will they ever know how to play correctly. Everyone can't be a "natural" player and I'm sure some fine players had to actually learn how to do some things correctly, especially if they’re doing it wrong as a student. ESP www.peabody.jhu.edu/457 Listen to a little Mozart
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-09-16 10:53
I think this manages to be a very confusing thread.
Whilst I applaud the idea of a band director engaging in technical exploration in order to further the abilities of his band, it should be realised that talk of slow air and fast air is just one of at least two metaphors designed to help a student in difficulties. It's not something that you NEED OBEY when you play.
To see this, recall that the clarinet tube is a column of air that is excited by the vibrating reed. That air passes down the tube is actually INCIDENTAL to the process, because THE AIR THAT VIBRATES IS ALREADY IN THE TUBE. All that is necessary is that the air-column be coupled to a driven oscillator -- in normal cases, the reed.
In support of this, I can report that I have a horn-playing friend who has mastered the trick of having his lips vibrate when he SUCKS as well as when he blows. He can produce a quite respectable note on his horn doing this, even though the air is moving in the opposite direction.
Now, given a steady air supply, you produce air at varying speeds at the reed by having a large or a small mouth cavity -- which is equivalent to having a low or a high tongue -- which is equivalent in turn to 'saying' AW or EE. Thinking of your mouth as a continuation of your wind pipe, you can see that if your tongue is high, the tube doesn't change diameter as it reaches your mouth as much as it does if your tongue is low. And obviously, increase in diameter lowers the speed, decrease in diameter raises the speed.
But, equivalently, 'high' tongue raises the resonance frequency of your mouth cavity (EE) and 'low' tongue lowers the resonance frequency of your mouth cavity (AW). So you can consider the vibrating reed as lying between two cavities: your mouth cavity and your instrument. Here we have an immediate explanation of why a throat G on the A clarinet can 'stick out' so much -- its frequency matches the resonance frequency of your mouth. But if you put your tongue high, you make your mouth cavity smaller, and the G behaves much more like the notes on either side of it.
It's not such a surprise -- we know that we can distinctly change the character of a throat note by using a resonance fingering that effectively 'hangs' a small length of clarinet tube (roughly corresponding in length to the length of the bit of the instrument from the mouthpiece to the first open tonehole of the throat note in question) WELL DISTANT down the instrument. It's rather like the resonance you get from a marimbaphone as compared to a xylophone. Small wonder that we can affect the vibration of the reed by altering the cavity it's vibrating in.
So what that means is that you can describe the action of the tongue using either of two metaphors, which are equivalent. You can talk about airspeed, or you can talk about vowels and resonating cavities. Some people respond intuitively to the one, others to the other.
And, there's no SHOULD about any of this. It's all designed to help out someone who isn't playing the instrument as they want.
Here is a short conversation between myself and Margaret Thornhill, on the Klarinet mailing list this year, that touches on 'fast' and 'slow' air, as well as more general considerations:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2008/01/000048.txt
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2008/01/000091.txt
Tony
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Author: nes
Date: 2008-09-16 11:51
so you don't have to 'push' around the abdominal area to support? As long as you use a higher frequency of air when you play softer, than that in itself is support?
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-09-16 12:50
nes wrote:
>> so you don't have to 'push' around the abdominal area to support?
I'm sorry, I don't understand your question. You always need to 'push' around the abdominal area in order to play at all -- that's what blowing IS.
Support is an independent, and in my experience, tricky topic. But you may find some illumination of the matter in the thread titled 'bottom of air column', in particular the final post I just made:
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=283289&t=283162
>> As long as you use a higher frequency of air when you play softer, than that in itself is support?>>
I don't know what you mean by 'a higher frequency of air' -- but whatever you mean, it certainly isn't support.
Have a read, and come back with any questions you have.
You might also find the thread 'Support' in the 'Keepers' section helpful.
Tony
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-09-16 15:54
Tony wrote:
<<Now, given a steady air supply, you produce air at varying speeds at the reed by having a large or a small mouth cavity -- which is equivalent to having a low or a high tongue -- which is equivalent in turn to 'saying' AW or EE.>>
I'm sure Tony realizes this (he's a very technically minded sort of guy), but it occurred to me that it might not be obvious to some readers that his statement above is also consistent with my discussion of pressure and flow above. In fact, without some additional detail, one might get the false impression that my post and his contradict each other, when, in fact, they do not. Since I left that detail out of my original post, I thought I'd explain how varying the oral cavity plays into my "fluid dynamics" clarinet model.
To link what Tony said above into my previous post about the physics of pressure and flow, changing the size of the mouth cavity also means changing the overall resistance that your lungs see. This allows you to make changes to the overall airflow while maintaining the same air pressure in your lungs. Recall that I said you can't vary pressure and flow rate independently without changing the resistance. Well, changing the size of your oral cavity is one way you can change the resistance your lungs experience without changing the resistance of the reed/mouthpiece/embouchure system. Your tongue and palate act as a nozzle that couples a high pressure environment (your lungs and windpipe) to a lower pressure environment (your mouth). You need (relatively) low air pressure in your mouth to play softly, but you need higher air pressure in your lungs to sustain a steady airflow with support.
Put another way, it means that by placing your tongue high, you can reduce the air pressure incident on the reed/mouthpiece (which is necessary in order to play soft) while maintaining a higher pressure in the lungs/windpipe. You can perform the reverse (lower the lung-side pressure relative to the oral cavity pressure) by lowering your tongue. But as Tony pointed out, these tongue movements also change the resonance characteristics of your oral cavity, so that's another factor you have to take into account (extra-consciously, perhaps, but you still have to deal with it). Now you can see why it takes years to get the hang of all of this--you change one thing, it causes multiple effects, and you have competing constraints on what you are trying to accomplish.
If you are more comfortable with electrical analogies, you can think of the tongue/palate system as an adjustable "transformer" that steps you down from a high voltage, low current sytem (lungs) to a low voltage, higher current system (oral cavity).
BTW, please don't think that because I have written the above, that I have perfected the art of applying this knowledge to the practice of clarinet playing--just because you know the theory, doesn't mean you have it down in practice. Understanding it and making it work are two different tasks. I am still working on familiarizing myself with many of the quirks of my A instrument, for instance. However, this is basically how it works from an engineering perspective, so if you find the various metaphors out there confusing, perhaps understanding this "fluid dynamics" approach to this topic will help you sort things out.
Post Edited (2008-09-16 20:37)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-09-16 17:33
Well, with all due respect to your technical know-how, Mike, I think that it's more than likely that airspeed is too low to be relevant to an analysis of clarinet behaviour. I think it much more plausible that the only really significant parameter is the pressure difference between the mouth interior and the inside of the mouthpiece, which is what causes reed vibration.
But quite aside from that, I don't think such analysis is any help to a player. The only point of my 'support' analysis is that it leaves you with the wonderful realisation that you can't TRY to DO anything -- you have to let your diaphragm learn how to do it by itself; all YOU can do is to go on repeating and listening.
And the only point of the 'airspeed' metaphor -- or for that matter, the 'vowel' metaphor -- is that it may increase the variety of tongue positions that you TRY OUT in order to see which ones work best in different circumstances.
In the end, it's all simple, experientially.
Tony
Post Edited (2008-09-16 18:26)
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-09-16 19:13
Tony wrote:
<<Well, with all due respect to your technical know-how, Mike, I think that it's more than likely that airspeed is too low to be irrelevant to an analysis of clarinet behaviour.>>
You're right. Airspeed itself isn't all that important, but the relationship between pressure and flow rate (which is related to airspeed) is what we experience as "resistance," which IS important. Airspeed is always going to be low because reed instruments are "high resistance" instruments, with high pressure and low airspeed. (There's also a difference between airspeed through the instrument--which is low--and airspeed through the tongue-palate passageway which may be higher).
The reason why I wrote this latest post was that somebody earlier on in this thread wrote about how he/she didn't think the "fast air--soft dynamic" metaphor made a lot of sense from a physics standpoint. I said he/she was right to think that it didn't make sense, but since I didn't address the resistance modulating effect of tongue position, I felt like my previous post was incomplete and potentially made it appear that we should address all problems associated with the resistance of the instrument by changing what we do with our diaphragm and other ab muscles (obviously, from experience, we know that's not right). In reality, we have more than one "degree of freedom," if you will, in that we can use tongue position to change the relationship between pressure and flow (which would otherwise be dictated solely by the mouthpiece/reed/instrument/embouchure system.)
Admittedly, the point is a bit academic, but I didn't feel entirely truthful having left out any discussion of tongue position. I feel better now, so it's all OK. Thanks for putting up with me. 
<<And the only point of the 'airspeed' metaphor -- or for that matter, the 'vowel' metaphor -- is that it may increase the variety of tongue positions that you TRY OUT in order to see which ones work best in different circumstances>>
Exactly. Only experimentation will reveal what best to do. The useful part of what I said is simply that you CAN use your tongue position to adapt to different resistances at the mouthpece by changing the way these resistances appear to the lungs. In other words, this is something you CAN experiment with.
What we don't necessarily need to know is that this happens by trading pressure for (real, not metaphorical) airspeed. Since we play a high-resistance instrument, airspeed itself doesn't really matter all that much, but the tradeoff is still there--that's perhaps part of the reason why the metaphor works, because it does have at least some relation to what really happens, even if it is not representative of what it is that we ourselves are actually controlling.
Of course, getting any of this to work is purely a matter of experimentation. It's nice to know what you can affect by making adjustments, though, so you know what to experiment with. For me, anyway, I find it very useful to get a handle on the details of how things work so that I know what to fiddle with if I'm not getting the results I want. I get the sense from reading your posts that you tend to take a similar approach, yourself, where you analyze how things work and then use those principles as a guide to experimentation in practice, rather than taking a completely prescriptive (always do this, always do that) approach.
Of course, I'm probably overly analytical, but when you make a career out of analyzing things to a pulp, like me, you start to get that way. Clarinet playing is my escape from that world, but I guess it's only a partial escape.
(I also realized I mentioned "airspeed" in a place where I meant flow, so I have corrected that in the prior post).
Post Edited (2008-09-16 21:30)
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2008-09-16 22:04
I’I’m sorry to throw a wrench into this interesting conversation but I don’t agree
I’m sorry to throw a wrench into this interesting conversation but I don’t agree that one “has to” use the EE vowel to play the clarinet. I myself never do that nor do I teach it and although I’m not a soloist I think I’ve done pretty good for myself. I advocate an open throat, thinking low all the time, or at least as much as possible. That doesn’t mean that my tongue never goes a little higher, especially in the altissimo register, but as little as possible. That way I, and my students, get a richer, darker, warmer tone and they don’t sound shrill, once they get it. I’m not suggestion it is wrong to use the EE vowel, I’m just saying you don’t have to do it to sound good. I can honestly say that I get as even a tone quality throughout my clarinet, including the throat; break and altissimo register as anyone I’ve ever heard, richer than most. As least I think so, others may not agree. I learned to do it that way playing bass clarinet and adopted it to the clarinet, getting a fuller, richer tone. I use my breath support from my diaphragm but never make it tight or stiff. I simply keep a steady air stream. ESP www.peabody.jhu.edu/457 Listen to a little Mozart
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-09-16 22:57
Ed Palanker wrote:
> I’m sorry to throw a wrench into this interesting
> conversation but I don’t agree that one “has to” use the
> EE vowel to play the clarinet.
I don't use "EE," either. My teacher never prescribed a specific vowel sound to use, so I have never really given it much thought. She did give me some pointers on using your tongue to make smooth slurred transitions between the clarion and altissimo.
If you were to transliterate what I do most of the time (which I've never done before), it's probably something like the German "oe" (or "o" with an umlaut over it). Tongue only slightly raised in the back, with an open throat. It's neither EE nor AW but somewhere in between.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-09-16 23:20
Ed Palanker wrote:
>> I’m sorry to throw a wrench into this interesting conversation but I don’t agree that one “has to” use the EE vowel to play the clarinet.>>
But, what makes you think that I (as the one who mentioned EE) hold that one 'has to' use the EE vowel to play the clarinet?
You can play the clarinet how you like.
However, using a high tongue position has an effect on the sound; that effect is sometimes appropriate, just as the vowel EE is sometimes appropriate in speech, though other vowels may very often predominate; why limit oneself by deciding at the outset that one should never use it?
The resultant sound quality I find very often useful to achieve clarity in fast passagework, for example; and quite apart from that, there are many moments in the clarinet literature where the emotional tone is anything but "rich, dark and warm."
And, how about the accents of the final piece of the Stravinsky 'Three Pieces'?
>> I myself never do that nor do I teach it and although I’m not a soloist I think I’ve done pretty good for myself. I advocate an open throat, thinking low all the time, or at least as much as possible.>>
So, good for you.
I prefer to avoid, HERE, telling other people what they 'should' do. I say the opportunity HERE is to describe the options as clearly as possible, open people's ears as much as possible, and then leave it up to them.
What you do yourself, and with your own students in your own course, is -- of course -- your own business.
But here is another question for you: how could you POSSIBLY throw a wrench into this conversation, just by telling us what you prefer?-)
Tony
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2008-09-16 23:54
Sorry about that Tony, I think you took that a bit personal and I certainly didn't mean it that way. I was simply saying that people play different ways and the EE way, which I know many players advocate, is not the only way. I repeat, not the only way. So I was pointing out that I consider myself successful doing it and teaching it another way, it was no dig on you. I'm sorry I wasn't as elegant as you often are. That's a compliment by the way, not a dig either. The wrench statement was just a way of my saying there is more then one way to do anything. If you've read some of my other posts you would know that I am a big advocate of doing what works for the individual, that there's always more than one way to do anything, clarinet wise or other wise.
I don't recall telling ANYONE here what they should do, I told them what I do so they can see there is another way. so yes, good for me because another way actually works, so now our readers know that.
When I teach I work with every student to find what works best for him or her, not for me. I advocate the open throat and not using the EE to voice but if it doesn't give the student the best result, we experiment with every possible way I can think of until we both agree that the result is positive. Sorry you took it the way you did, I obviously did not express myself correctly. I’m not going to look for a response, and don’t expect one. I was simply giving another option to our readers. I don’t answer these posts to start a disagreement, I do it to help others find an answer and sometimes that answer is a different view from what some others say. I’m just not always so elegant but I do make my point. ESP
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-09-17 13:57
Ed Palanker wrote:
>> I don't recall telling ANYONE here what they should do, I told them what I do so they can see there is another way. so yes, good for me because another way actually works, so now our readers know that.>>
You don't see the point. You claimed that YOUR way, which tells a player to use essentially only one specific tongue position whilst playing, is superior to an approach that offers a player the choice of obtaining different results by using different tongue positions at different moments, according to the demands of the music.
That's not 'showing our readers another way'. It's artificially restricting their possibilities, because the second approach INCLUDES yours, if the player wants.
There are passages of music in which I use very little variation of tongue position -- even passages throughout which I could be said to go 'your way'. But it's very clear to me that there are also passages in which tongue movements are a key component of the expression.
So I know from personal experience that your restriction DOESN'T 'actually work', in any sense of the word 'work' that allows a player to do proper justice to the very great variety of our repertoire. In fact, I gave you some examples of what I meant by that, none of which you addressed, I notice. Instead, you said (wrongly) that I had taken your post personally.
I took exception to what you wrote not personally, but intellectually. I say that it's not acceptable here to give such a blanket instruction -- 'keep your tongue always low' -- to an anonymous someone whose problems could very easily be helped by giving them quite the opposite advice. And in my view, you compounded the offence by seeking to establish your credentials as securely as possible, so as to be more readily believed.
You mentioned 'the 'EE' way'. What is that, exactly? Is it the idea that one should ALWAYS keep the tongue high -- the exact opposite of your assertion?
Rest assured -- if anyone had suggested here that a player should do THAT, I would have complained about THEM just as strongly.
Tony
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-09-17 17:52
Tony Pay wrote:
<<You mentioned 'the 'EE' way'. What is that, exactly? Is it the idea that one should ALWAYS keep the tongue high -- the exact opposite of your assertion?>>
I found a post about this from about 7 years ago, talking about different embouchure styles (in particular, look at the dialogue between Gretchen and Greg Smith, which is interesting):
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=42392&t=42225
If I'm interpreting the posts correctly, it sounds like the use of the "EE" vowel was something that Robert Marcellus used to describe his preferred tongue position, but even he found that not to be a completely satisfactory metaphor because students were taking the metaphor too literally. So later he switched to describing it as "teu" or "deu," which sounds more like the umlauted "o" vowel I mentioned earlier. There is apparently some relation between this teaching and what Bonade taught, but I can't quite tell from reading the posts whether Bonade taught "teu" or "hee." Maybe Greg is reading this--he'd know the answer.
There is an interview with Sidney Forrest where he talks about this as well. Go to:
http://www.unitus.org/SEACLAR.html
and do a Ctrl-F search on the word "vowel" and you'll eventually find it.
I get the impression, from reading these posts, and based on my own experience that no one actually literally sticks to just one syllable, anyway--I know I don't, even if much of the time I'm doing some kind of German "o" thing. Nobody taught me how to do this--I just listened to recordings (especially Jost Michaels' Mozart) and tried to sound like what I heard. If I want to sound brighter than that, I can do that, too--I just figure out what I want to sound like and do it. I don't think about vowels. If it wasn't that hard for me to figure out how to do that on my own, then I imagine that probably a great many players (if not most) adopt their own "natural" habits, perhaps without being fully aware of it, even if they have been taught some kind of general rule like "use EE."
Of course, does that mean that prescribing a syllable for a student to use is a good idea? I don't know the answer to that. Perhaps it can be compared to the practice in music composition instruction where they give you a bunch of rules in the beginning, all of which they expect you to break by the time you're done. I suspect this whole business about using a particular vowel is really more of a departure point rather than a set of rules etched in stone.
I didn't study with Marcellus and never met him, but I'd be surprised if even he didn't vary his voicing of notes from just the "EE" or "EU" syllable--it seems that you have to do that at least somewhat in order to make big leaps. Too bad we can't ask him. He'd probably be interesting to talk to about all this impedance, resistance, flow, etc. stuff, too, because he was an extra-class amateur radio operator, which means he must have been at least somewhat familiar with impedance matching, resonance, standing wave ratio, etc. You have to know about the electrical versions of these concepts to pass the extra exam (and also to operate an amateur transmitter without causing your equipment to self-destruct!).
Post Edited (2008-09-17 17:55)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-09-17 18:54
Mike wrote [some pertinent things, but one of them was]:
>> If I'm interpreting the posts correctly, it sounds like the use of the "EE" vowel was something that Robert Marcellus used to describe his preferred tongue position, but even he...>>
Oh God!!! More of what these famous old geezers were REPORTED to have said about what their preferred whatsits were!!
Enough, already!!
Listen to them play the clarinet, let them inspire you if they do...and perhaps WISH you'd been able to have a lesson in which they might have tried to help you, and so probably would have listened to YOU and said what it occurred to them to say about YOU.
This stuff drives me crazy.
Tony
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2008-09-17 22:14
Difficult subject if for no other reason than we are dealing with a nonlinear problem. The University of New South Wales, Sidney, Australia has a web site of interest titled "Clarinet Acoustics, An Introduction" But, it seems that many commentators have satisfactorily worked out their own solutions, without having to confront the theoretical difficulties.
richard smith
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-09-18 00:09
Tony wrote:
<<Oh God!!! More of what these famous old geezers were REPORTED to have said about what their preferred whatsits were!!
Enough, already!!>>
You asked what the "EE" vowel thing was about. I tried to supply a partial answer based on what I found (posts by former Marcellus students about what he taught).
Just to be clear, I didn't post this to advocate for Marcellus' and Bonades' teachings--just to show where they came from. Despite my being American, I do almost nothing "the Bonade way," and I dispute the notion that the only "American school" of clarinet is the Daniel Bonade school and "one-size-fits-all."
I don't like Legendary Teacher Syndrome, either.
Mike
Post Edited (2008-09-18 01:05)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-09-18 11:37
mrn wrote:
>> You asked what the "EE" vowel thing was about. I tried to supply a partial answer based on what I found (posts by former Marcellus students about what he taught).>>
Yes, sorry Mike. The fact is that when I asked the question, I did 'sort of' know that there is some faraway, outlandish school of thought that PRESCRIBES the 'EE' tongue position; and when you took me literally, I thought that playing to the gallery with a rhetorical gesture best expressed my feelings about the matter. It wasn't really directed at you.
I think actually I owe Ed an apology too, for being rather 'definite' about my opinion of his (opposite) position. Because if he takes that position primarily as a reaction to what he calls 'the 'EE' way', then it's more understandable.
You wrote earlier, "...does that mean that prescribing a syllable for a student to use is a good idea? I don't know the answer to that."
I think I do know the answer to that; in fact I gave it, at least by implication, in replying to Ed's post.
To begin with, having a student understand that movements of the tongue are important in clarinet playing can hardly be disadvantageous. (Any able player can easily remind themselves of the degree to which tongue movements are involved as follows:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2003/10/000046.txt)
So then, it may be clear, in the case of particular student A, that they would be better off making more use of higher tongue positions; and in the case of particular student B, that they would be better off making more use of lower tongue positions. The prescription would therefore be different in each case, and closely monitored in practice in a way that is obviously impossible here.
I seem to remember Howard Klug writing, in 'The Clarinet Doctor', that he encountered more students who needed to see the value of higher tongue positions than students who needed to see the value of lower tongue positions. That sort of attitude seems to me to be the appropriate one in general; though he and Ed might differ about what constituted a 'successful' intervention (Howard's ideal sound might be brighter than Ed's or Ed's student's ideal sound), it's clear that the advice is to be tailored to the student -- as of course a doctor's prescription should be:-)
I stick with my assertion that it is a bad idea to tell a student that a particular tongue position is to be preferred for clarinet playing in general. For them to choose a particular tongue position for a particular musical reason, or as an exercise, is another matter.
Technical instruction must always in the end defer to the player's judgement of what the music requires. If the student cannot see what the music requires, or how what they are doing fails to provide it, then it is they -- not their tongues -- that need to be educated.
Tony
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-09-19 18:03
Tony Pay wrote:
> mrn wrote:
>
> >> You asked what the "EE" vowel thing was about. I tried to
> supply a partial answer based on what I found (posts by former
> Marcellus students about what he taught).>>
>
> Yes, sorry Mike. The fact is that when I asked the question, I
> did 'sort of' know that there is some faraway, outlandish
> school of thought that PRESCRIBES the 'EE' tongue position; and
> when you took me literally, I thought that playing to the
> gallery with a rhetorical gesture best expressed my feelings
> about the matter. It wasn't really directed at you.
No problem. I just misread your post, and, like you, I dread the thought of being associated with legendary teacher dogmatism. Of course, unlike me, you have to deal with the reverse problem, where somebody creates a new dogma by taking something you said out of context. That's a lot harder to deal with, I think.
I have only one clarinet student, and while he may think I'm legendary now, I can take comfort in the fact that in a few years he'll think I'm anything but. (He's my 4-year-old son)
> I stick with my assertion that it is a bad idea to tell a
> student that a particular tongue position is to be preferred
> for clarinet playing in general. For them to choose a
> particular tongue position for a particular musical reason, or
> as an exercise, is another matter.
I think that makes a lot of sense. When I was in college, I had to take several hours of physical education credit. One of the classes I took was in golf. I had taken golf lessons before, and though I wasn't great at it, I was at least somewhat decent. My college instructor, though, thought it necessary to completely rebuild everyone's grip and swing in his image using all his own rules and prescriptions, which he expected everyone to follow. By the time the semester was over, he had completely detroyed what little golf skill I came into the class with. He (and I) should have left well enough alone and focused on making *my* swing *better* (by making a tweak here and a tweak there to achieve specific things), rather than making mine have all the superficial features of his.
As I see it, a golf swing/grip, aside from the specifics of what you do and the reasons why you do them, is not too different from a clarinet embouchure--both are exercises in fine muscle control, where the goal should be to get a consistent result. But if you focus too much on replicating the individual components of someone else's swing/embouchure over and above the ultimate goal of getting the ball to go where you want to go or what sounds you want to produce, you could end up with a result like my golf swing.
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