The Clarinet BBoard

it's OVER!!!!

Author: Ashley  Date:   2001-02-18 03:38 This has been the absolute LONGEST weekend of my life.. and its only saturday. As i said before I was to audition for the clarinet studio at the University of Iowa on friday (yesterday), and had a huge jazz band contest today. Well, its alllllll over. I'll start w/ yesterday.... Left home at 6am, drove for 4 hours to get there, by then it already felt like the day was half over at it was only 10am. I hung around for awhile, talked to some people, eventually went into a warm up room. Got my clarinet out (the clarinet that i got 2 1/2 months ago), was putting the mouthpiece on, and saw that I now have a 4 inch long crack in my upper joint going from the bottom of the tenon, through the register key tonehole, almost to the thumbhole. probably 4 inches long. I completely panicked. My friend was in another warm up room getting ready for her audition for the oboe studio (her oboe cracked during the dress rehearsal for all state orchestra), so i went to her room and i was like, Sara, HELP!!!!! She was like, oh this is NOT good. I played it, and it still played great, so i called my director at school long distance from a pay phone, she said as long as it still played I would be ok and not to over do it, and to explain to the clarinet professor who i was auditioning for that my clarinet cracked this morning, and she said she would call the music shop where i got it and explain the situation since I got it less than 3 months ago. she wished me luck and I hung out for a couple more hours, eventually went in and auditioned. So i marched into the audition room COMPLETELY not nervous (well, not completely.. but more worried about my clarinet than anything else. She had me play my bass clarinet first, I did so, and sounded pretty good i thought. As soon as i got done playing the bass piece, she said "You like playing bass, dont you?" I said yes, she said "I can tell." and kind of smiled. that relaxed me a lot.. then she wanted to hear me play Bb. I explained to her that my clarinet cracked this morning, and she started telling me why it does that, esp. w/ new clarinets, etc etc, and told me who to send it to to get it fixed. Then i had to play. Played the Adagio of the Mozart concerto. I started playing, and promptly messed up. That wasnt good, but i was getting a pretty good sound (granted I was scared as hell and had a cracked horn). She stopped me right after the cadenza. Actually my tone was kinda wavering cuz i was nervous, i apologized and she said thats ok, i dont need to hear anymore (which meant she didnt hear the run towards the end that i cant play too well!!!). I still cant decide whether or not thats a good thing.. I then had to play scales... right off I asked if she wanted me to play them on Bb or if i could play them on bass.. she said she'd like me to play them on Bb (at this point i was like, oh CRAP!) She asked if i could play the G scale 3 octaves, i said i could but my high notes werent in tune at all. She said that was ok, play it anyway. i did, my high notes werent in tune, but i survived. then she had me play F#, i survived that one too, then chromatic. that part was easy at least. the Prof's comments: ***she harped about my embouchure for awhile (I knew she would), that my chin wasnt flat and i had too much mouthpiece in my mouth. She said that my high register would get a *lot* better if i get my chin down and take some of the mouthpiece out, and it would get rid of some of the fuzziness in my sound and the subtones (not sure what that means) that i'm getting. she said i have remnants of my chin being right, and that i need to work on keeping it right. ***after I played the G scale 3 octaves (this is semi-verbatim) "youre right, its not in tune. I'm glad that bothers you though. I'm glad that bothers you because I know if it bothers you you'll fix it." I'm wondering if this is a good thing.. i think it might be. i dont know. ***after i played the F# scale - She didnt like my fingering and said to finger high F# with the right hand fork key also, and the Eb key, neither of which i used. she said that would help me get it more in tune. ***she said "well, you have a lot of work to do." I agreed. she then said that a lot of my problems had to do w/ my embouchure, and that she knew I could fix them, and she knew i WOULD fix them (I think she could tell i'm kind of a perfectionist..). She said that all the problems that i had she knew i could fix, it just takes time. I explained that i hadnt been playing soprano that much, and that i pretty much just started playing Bb a couple months ago. ***about my poor cracked clarinet: send it to Denny in Davenport, Iowa, she sends all her stuff to him for repairs and thinks he's the best in the country at repairing cracks and the like. this is what i'm wondering about: she told me to have my clarinet sent to him to repair, and she gave me her email address and said that if he couldnt fit me into his schedule, to email her and she would talk to him and get me in. She appeared to like me.. (I tend to be REALLY good at first impressions, and i'm the best brownnoser in Iowa). There was a point where she was talking to me about something, and she got done talking, and said OK?? i said ok, i was kind of smiling, she looked straight at me and burst out lauging. i did too, it was funny. She was really really nice to me though.. A friend of mine from the camp that we both went to there this summer auditioned right before me, and I talked to him right before he went in. I found out that he was playing the first movement of the Mozart, i was playing the second. we decided that he should play his solo last, and i should wait outside the door and as soon as he got done, i would run in and pick up where he left off. I told her that as i was leaving, she laughed. (always a bonus when i can get an important person to like me Before I left she said that she was going to make her decisions about freshmen in mid march, and i'd find out then. She said she really didnt know anything then, because she hadnt auditioned everybody. I'm hoping she liked me enough and thinks i have enough potential.. i hope so! Audition over with. Whew. I immediately got on the phone to my director again. She asked how it went and i told her, then i asked what the music store said. She told me they said that this was the second clarinet to crack in town recently, both the same model. She told them what exactly happened and they said that the register key hole was drilled weird in that model so its prone to cracking. They're going to ship another upper joint and send my upper joing back to the company. I dont know though.. i'm thinking i would rather get mine fixed, since it cracked the stress on that hole is relieved and i dont have to worry about it cracking there again..Good idea? Bad idea?? sorry this is so long, I dont post too often so i tend to write a book when i do : ) Comments? Any advice? thanx : ) ~Ashley~

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