 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Jacob S
Date: 2008-12-13 01:30
After a very productive private lesson, I will now enlighten some of you with my unconventional clarinet technique. My embouchure is unlike most people's. You know how teachers say <i>not</i> to bunch up your chin? Or to <i>not</i> bite too much with your bottom teeth? Or to <i>not</i> use more than the pink part of your lower lip? Well, I do all of the above. My teacher described it much better than I could; my articulation is like playing pool. My tongue is the cue, my lip the cue ball and finally the reed being the solids and stripes. In 5th grade I started clarinet without knowing what articulating notes was. 6th grade I began lessons and was forced to learn to articulate.
Now I am in high school. I believed something was wrong with my playing before, but decided that if it wasn't broke, don't fix it; not until I can't do something, that is. I'm expected to play louder and quicker, so I am not faced with the challenge of "relearning" clarinet.
I am a pretty good high school clarinetist (not the music major-pursuing type but I can hold my own against most of them), so it'll be interesting balancing band rehearsals with this "different" practicing...
I'll update on how I'm doing.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2008-12-13 14:47
Hi Jacob, I don't agree with the part about using only the pink part of the lip but it's true that many teachers - players do. I get my best result by taking a bit more lip in my mouth. There are exceptions to every rule, depending on the individual. If you read my post of quotes and sayings above you will understand that better. "Don't fix it if it ain't broke" doesn't mean it can't be done better another way. Many times the result will improve greatly if a person tries another way. It means sometimes a person is doing something so well already that doing it differently may not improve it. That doesn't mean a person shouldn't try to improve. Good luck. ESP www.peabody.jhu.edu/457 Listen to a little Mozart, live performance.
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Author: Ed
Date: 2008-12-14 11:55
I have generally found that students who have a "good" embouchure have a better tone and better success, likely due to the fact that it allows the reed to vibrate more freely.
Post Edited (2008-12-14 13:38)
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2008-12-14 12:11
Have you really studied this phenomenon in detail to narrow the reason down to freer reed vibration? Or have you simply observed better tone and success and made a leap of faith to freer reed vibration? How did you rule out, e.g., better focus of the airstream, shape of internal mouth cavity, more controlled reed vibration or other factors that could be tied to the embouchure?
Best regards,
jnk
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Author: Jacob S
Date: 2008-12-14 15:12
I'm definitely not an expert on anything clarinet, but I sort of think that almost all aspects of my playing are hindered by my weird playing... I take in way too much lip (so my chin bunches up), so the reed lies on about a fingertip's length off of my lip, starting at the pink. The angle my clarinet is at forces me to look down and make my airstream sub par or play like Benny Goodman and that gets uncomfortable after awhile for me. I read someone's post about trying to play with a higher tongue position, as if you are touching your tongue to your top molars? I've been touching the bottom molars...
I hope that some do not believe I'm making this up for attention or anything, I'd like to make a video of my playing. I'm just interested if anyone else has experienced this problem themselves or seen it in progressive students.
I practiced "normal" clarinet for about half an hour yesterday, I sound like a 6th grader and my embouchure got very sore...
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-12-15 01:32
I agree with Ed. P. on the lip thing--I've always used quite a bit of bottom lip (at least *I* think so, based on what I've read here), and it's never been a problem for me. As far as I know, biting was never an issue with me, because I don't recall her saying much about it to me (everybody bites a little, anyway--it's just a question of degree).
I do remember she (my teacher) made it a point to prevent me from acquiring the habit of playing with a horizontally-angled instrument/mouthpiece, though, and she made sure I kept a flat chin. I think there are probably good technical reasons to tell someone to keep their chin flat and the angle of the instrument down on clarinet, but I don't really know what they are (I wish I did). I don't even really think about these things these days--I just play.
I think the key thing to realize, though, has absolutely nothing to do with the specifics of how you form an embouchure. And that is that nobody can completely teach you how to form an embouchure--a large part of it you must always develop through practice and experience. In this way, it's like riding a bike. Somebody can describe the basics to you, but ultimately you learn to control the bike outside of the realm of conscious thought, through experience and practice. I'd venture to say that most of the muscle control that goes into an embouchure is actually self-taught in this way. Instructions such as "flat chin," "corners back," "taught bottom lip," "downward pressure from upper lip," etc. are all guides to help you get the right feel of things (sort of like training wheels, I suppose), but ultimately, the final product you develop yourself as you progress.
So what that means is that if you are changing the basics of your embouchure (that is, the things people can readily describe in words)--and your teacher probably has good reasons for having you do this--you will necessarily have to do some relearning on your own to get the hang of the process of controlling and using the new embouchure style. If you're into computers, you can think of it as "rebooting" your embouchure.
This may seem frustrating to you because you no longer have the complete benefit of the previous experience you had with your old embouchure, but you have to keep in mind that you went through this same process with the old embouchure and that got you to where you are now, so you will just have to give it some time and you'll get used to doing things the new way, too. You probably also need to build up different muscles to use your new embouchure.
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Author: marshall
Date: 2008-12-15 01:56
Don't think of it as "re-learning" the clarinet. Think of it as adjusting what you're already doing. I had more or less the exact same problems in high school, and I spent two or so years trying to "re-learn" how to play the clarinet. Nothing was changing and I felt like I wasn't getting any better. After my junior year of high school, I took a lesson with the professor at the university I'm now attending, and he told me that all I have to do is "re-work" my embouchure. After that, I didn't think of it as re-learning, I thought of it as fixing. After I did that, things started falling in to place, one by one.
If you look at it as re-learning, then you'll feel obligated to fix everything at once, and as a result it will be very hard to fix things.. If you look at it as fixing or adjusting, then you look at everything (lips, jaw pressure, lip pressure, tongue position) as individual things, and it makes it much easier to work on things one at a time. The way I ended up doing it, I worked on how much lower lip I took for about a month, worked on the amount of mouthpiece for a month, worked on the jaw pressure for a month, etc. until I had worked on anything, then repeated the cycle. I'm still really doing this to this day.
About the bottom lip thing...I personally take very little bottom lip. I have very big lips, (something I get from my grandfather on my mothers side), so as a result, if I take too much lip I can't take as much mouthpiece as I'd like. The way I was taught to play, there is a very specific point where your lower lip should contact the reed. In this spot where I contact the reed, I find that if I take any more mouthpiece I'll squeak all over the place, but if I take any less the sound feels fuzzy and thin. Because of my overall tonal concept, I do all that I can to avoid the latter, so I like to take as much mouthpiece as I can without losing control. Because of my big ole grandpa lips, I have to take very little lower lip to take this much mouthpiece.
Keep in mind, everybody's body is different, and everybody's mouth structure is different, and everybody has a different tonal concept, so the embouchure that is right for you will be unlike anybody elses.
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Author: Ed
Date: 2008-12-15 02:02
Peter Hadcock outlines this very nicely in his book in his discussion of embouchure.
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Author: malanr
Date: 2008-12-15 20:30
mrn:
can you take a picture of the flat chin for me? I can't seem to understand what you are talking about when you say flat chin.
Just another muscian
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-12-15 22:21
malanr wrote:
> mrn:
>
> can you take a picture of the flat chin for me? I can't seem
> to understand what you are talking about when you say flat
> chin.
>
This website seems to do a good job of explaining what I'm talking about when I say "flat chin" (no, it's not my website, and that's not me in the pictures):
http://www.clarinet-now.com/poor-clarinet-embouchure.html
Scroll down to "Poor clarinet embouchure #9" to see a comparison between a "bunched chin" and a "flat chin" to see what I mean.
This guy's embouchure looks similar to mine (similar in concept, at least), but it is not quite the same as what I do. I don't think I pull the corners of my mouth back quite as much as this guy appears to do, for instance. I also have bigger lips than the guy in the pictures, which affects the way my embouchure looks compared to his (so don't base what you do solely on how it looks compared to these pictures is what I am trying to say--everybody's a little different).
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