 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: gigaday
Date: 2009-12-26 11:26
Is there something about these notes?
They seem to have a special difficulty for me, with some reeds they play easily enough but with another seemingly identical reed they just baulk (don't sound) unless I make an embouchure adjustment.
This is especially apparent if I am making a jumping from, say, F to C - they will play fine in a scale but the C does not sound when playing the interval.
I have worked on some of the reeds that are not good to try to bring them into line with ones that don't give me the problem but cannot identify what to do.
Any ideas?
Tony
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2009-12-26 12:18
Those are definitely tough notes. There's some good exercises to help you control them better. One that I like is to play the overtone series without using the register key. Finger a C below the staff. Without hitting the register key, use your embouchure to play a G. Then an E. And go up chromatically. It'll teach your embouchure to adjust for each note. Then when you play those notes WITH the register key, they come out MUCH better and cleaner.
Also, long tones on those notes. Try to grow them out of nothing. Complete silence into the note at the faintest pianissimo. It's VERY tough to do without getting an undertone, but blow air, with that embouchure necessary that you found out from the previous exercise, and slowly apply a little pressure with your bottom lip (not biting, just pressure). You'll hear it start out very very faintly and you can control and grow it from there. And try that on EVERY note. you'll have very good control when you can play pretty much every note at least up to an altissimo G with that VERY faint entrance, with no undertone.
F to C is a very very tough one. Don't know about the symphonic pros, but I would rather have a very soft tongue going from one to the other if you NEED to do it and haven't yet mastered going from F to C smoothly. The first exercise I mentioned works with that too. After you can play short notes (C, G, E, G, C . . . D, A, F#, A, D) etc. etc., see if you can slur them without the register key.
It's discussed in greater detail and with better words than I can express multiple times on this board. Try searching for "altissimo exercise" or "undertone" or "undertone exercise" or something like that.
Alexi
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Author: kdk
Date: 2009-12-26 19:27
Which Bb, B and C are you asking about? Using the reference at the top of this page ("middle C" - one leger line below the treble staff = C4), do you mean C6 (thumb and register key) or C7 (above the 5th leger line)?
Karl
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2009-12-26 19:51
A leap of assumptions:
The C above the staff: the Thumb C fingered TROOO|OOO.
You need to "support" the tone to make those notes "speak". Use your diaphragm to pressurize your lung cavity. You can do this without making a loud noise.
Support is one of those fundamentals that I keep forgetting about in the heat of playing something. Remember, it is a wind instrument.
Bob Phillips
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Author: gigaday
Date: 2009-12-26 21:08
Thanks all. Yes, I was talking about C = TROOO|OOO.
I am back on track now thanks to these suggestions. SFAlexis' exercise was particularly helpful as playing the G = ROOO through C = ROOO|OOO without the register key quickly showed up that the problem was sloppy embouchure and poor "support".
I had been reading though some tunes I didn't know and so as to not annoy the wife so much with all my mistakes I was trying to play quietly and consequently was concentrating on reading the notes and let everything else go out the window!
Then, naturally, I blamed the reed and started swapping reeds only to find that the problem persisted; I even removed the register key to see if the hole was blocked. How silly!
But a good lesson learned.
Tony
Post Edited (2009-12-26 21:11)
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Author: JJAlbrecht
Date: 2009-12-27 00:18
Tony, you may want to invest in "Tom Ridenour's book, The Educator's Guide to the Clarinet" There is a great deal of useful information in that vbook...well worth the price.
Jeff
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