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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