 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: chorusgirl
Date: 2009-03-21 13:24
Hi -
I apologize for being seriously off topic here, but you have all been so wonderfully responsive with my other questions, and I hope someone has some advice/insight for me (I was going to post this on the SOTW site, but there is no activity there!):
I am a choral/vocal/piano person, thrust into beginning band lessons in my school. This week at the sax lesson, two students were producing a weird vocalization with each note that they were tonguing. I asked the band director, who was in the room at the time, and he said they were "throat playing" and I could try to address better breathing techniques with them.
Have any of you encountered this sort of thing? As a vocal person, I have a gazillion breathing exercises and techniques to pull out of my hat to work on with them, but I was hoping for some advice from anyone who has encountered this problem with students and has successfully dealt with it.
Again, my apologies for being off topic here, and I fully understand if this thread is pulled. I would really like to help these kids, though...
Chorusgirl
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Author: Dan1937
Date: 2009-03-21 14:16
As a retired saxophone-playing band director, I spent my last 11 years teaching beginners, and this problem, as I understand it, was not something I heard often from my sax students. I found that the trumpets were more likely to do it. They seemed to be humming (vocalizing) into the mouthpiece, rather than buzzing.
Have you tried having them first blow a fast stream of air without the mouthpiece, then with the mouthpiece, and (when they can do that without the "hum"), have them do exactly the same thing with the instrument?
Unless I'm misunderstanding your dilemma, that should help.
Good luck!
Dan
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Author: leonardA
Date: 2009-03-22 17:44
This sounds like a tehnique my sax teacher taught me which he called the growl. It's what makes a great raspy tone on the horn. You actually hum into the instrument as Dan described. I have never tried it without humming, but I will.
Leonard
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