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Re: Upper Altissimo

Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2011-01-20 17:54

Bassie -

Don't think of them as "high." When you play the Mozart Concerto and get to the ascending scale from low G to high F, play the high F as if it were two octaves lower, with no increase tightness or strain. Ride on the breath up and over the top.

It's exactly the same with higher notes. The high Bb in the first movement of the Weber 2nd concerto has to be a real note, not a squeezed-out squeak. Play the next-to-the last F with the long fingering (T/R/1-2-3/C# key/4-5-6), add the throat Ab key and the low F key and play it with the same embouchure and breath as the F, with a slight change in voicing.

It's exactly the same with the High C in the Spohr 1st Concerto.

In the first movement of the Bartok Contrasts, the extreme notes must be played mezzo forte at the loudest. Otherwise you'll drown out the violinist and pianist. Play them as the melody -- as notes within the musical line -- not as a bunch of individual high notes.

It's useful to approach the high notes as part of an arpeggio, rather than through scales. Learn to jump to the notes reliably. Then work on playing melodic lines that pass into and out of the high altissimo.

It's your responsibility to play high passages 10,000 times, to get them into your fingering and voicing memory. Go to Baermann III and be sure to play all the way to the top.

There's no short cut. Play melodic lines, in which the high notes feel just like the low ones. Work on removing tension in your hands and fingers, and especially your throat.

Oh yes. Slow practice is essential. Engraving proper tone production into the muscle memory of your fingers, tongue and soft palate occurs just as well at slow speed as at high. If you have a problem, slow down even more -- one note per click with the metronome at 40 if you have to. Otherwise you're only learning how to make mistakes.

Keep at it until you can do it flawlessly. And flawlessly 10 times in a row.

There's no way to do it except to do it.

And it wouldn't hurt to take lessons.

Ken Shaw

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