 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: beejay
Date: 2001-03-21 19:16
I wonder if some of you teachers out there could give me a word of advice. As I progress in my sight-reading abilities and embark on more difficult music, I am increasingly frustrated by the inability of my fingers to do what my brain tells them to do. I read a note, my brain registers it, and sure enough my finger goes down on something else. I remember reading somewhere that part of the problem of practicing is getting one's fingers to memorize the notes, and I wondered if this is true. I practice slowly and steadily with a metronome and increase the speed bit by bit -- but it takes me ages before I can manage an allegro at the correct speed. Are there any better methods? Is this a normal part of the learning curve? Many thanks.
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2001-03-21 21:29
Beejay -
As you have found out, simply starting slow and increasing the metronome speed is not enough to bring your fingers under control. That's because clarinet technique contains easy finger movements -- 1 finger up or down -- and difficult ones, where several fingers move at once, often with some moving up and others moving down.
Please click on the following link, where I describe a method for isolating the difficult movements and working them out, so you can play evenly:
http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=24907&t=24731
It may help to go back even further, to the theory of getting from written notes to played notes. Click on:
http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=34003&t=33834.
This is something you can't hurry, but it does come with practice. The most important thing is not to be impatient, or think that because you've done it once, you can go on to something else. You must be able to do it perfectly 10 times in a row before even beginning to think about the next step.
If you haven't read it, you absolutely must get the Herbert L. Clark autobiography, which Hiroshi found at http://abel.hive.no/oj/musikk/trompet/clarke/clarke-series.html. It's full of wisdom and good advice, based on the personal experience of the famous cornet virtuoso. In particular, he found out that you can't skimp on the basics. Every time he tolerated even a little sloppiness -- the slightest fluff -- he found that he had to back-track and learn it over correctly.
When you play an instrument, you have to make your own tools, and they have to be perfect. If you don't learn to go cleanly from, say, second line G to first space F, but instead let a little blurp come in when you put your thumb down, even 1 time in 20, then your playing will be full of little flaws. The difference between people who get the jobs and those who don't is that the successful people have taken the time and effort to eliminate these flaws. Imagine a carpenter who made, and had to use, a hammer with even a slightly uneven striking surface. One nail in 10 would be bent, and the work would not meet professional standards, which demand flawless work.
Nobody said it's easy. It's just necessary. As Clark says, it can be done, and you have to do it if you want to succeed.
Sorry for the sermon. But your fingers are telling you something. There are unfinished parts of your technique.
I've heard a story several times about the famous teacher Leon Russianoff. A hot-shot student would come to him and blast out, say, the Nielsen Concerto. Russianoff would start a metronome at 60 and say, "Now give me a C major scale, 1 note per beat." Invariably, that scale would have a bunch of tiny uneven transitions and blips. That's where the lessons would start, taking the student back to the basics to learn them right.
Nobody says you can't have fun, but you also need to go to the woodshed to get the simple stuff perfect. Anybody can be a virtuoso on the fast notes. Very few people learn to be virtuosically perfect on the slow ones.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: beejay
Date: 2001-03-21 21:58
Ken,
I'm really grateful for the advice. I'm digesting it now. Please allow me to come back with more questions if necessary. Best regards.
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Author: Dee
Date: 2001-03-21 22:26
Just a note of encouragement from here. It does come with time. Adults often expect to progress faster than is possible and then they get frustrated when they don't meet what is in reality an too high a standard for that point in time. So relax (which incidentally helps your technique) and do those slow drills correctly. If you can't get to allegro right now, don't worry about it. Correct is more important than fast. Someday, when you least expect it, you'll find yourself sight reading correctly through a piece that will surprise you.
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Author: jerry
Date: 2001-03-22 00:21
Ken Shaw wrote:
"Sorry for the sermon. But your fingers are telling you something."
THANKS for the sermon - I needed another one. I just got my CL back from the shop (it was loose at the middle tennon an require a cork to tighten it, and an adjustment of the "D" key) and when I got home nada. I cannot seem to get any consistence in my sound and I get a lot of squeaks that I didn't have before. Changing reeds *seemed* to help a little but I cannot tell if it's me or it - that seems to be a problem: not knowing when you don't know.
I too have had the same problem as Beejay. I'll play along and hesitate (mentally) and my fingers continue on playing the wrong notes - the fingers seem to have a mind of their own. Every once in a while I have to give one of them a rap just to teach it a lesson and wake it up to what's going on here. And, it does get very frustrating - I guess if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.
DEE wote:
"Adults often expect to progress faster than is possible and then they get frustrated when they don't meet what is in reality an too high a standard for that point in time."
After six months I'm just now learning how to play eighth notes, and I still can't "count".
Thanks Beejay for asking the question - just the responses alone seem to make me want to continue. Thanks for all the encouragement everyone.
~ jerry
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Author: Stefano
Date: 2001-03-22 11:34
Thanks to Ken's advice which is right point.
Indeed, if you can get a piece correctly by playing it really slow, THEN you can start to slowly increase speed, to move to the right tempo.
In order to play a piece slowly, but correctly, you will have to hold the note longer with your breath AND with your fingers: this is per se already a good exercise.
In addition, by playing slowly you are able to clearly listen to all those flaws in your playing that you generally skip or do not notice if you play faster.
Notwithstanding the above, I would like to add another well-known suggestion to help fingers to "learn" a given piece (sometimes in fact you have to play that piece in ensemble with others, at the right tempo, and you are forced to keep up and consequently, to play in a non-satisfying manner): Practice a lot the scale in which the piece that you should learn is written.
That is to say, if you have a piece written in D major, you should practice more the D major scales; and also, if e.g. the D major piece has a lot of C flat notes, it may help to practice a lot of D AND G major scales.
Regards,
Stefano
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2001-03-22 13:25
Jerry. "I get a lot of squeaks that I didn't have before." I'm a repairer. If this is happening then you "repairer" has botched for sure. Take it back, but I'm sorry to say, he/she may not be CAPABLE of getting it right.
Great posts above for Beejay. Yes, each small step can take many hours if tackled slowly and attentively, to programme the mind. But if rushed, it takes ten times longer to unlearn the damage done, i.e. debug the programming!
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Author: Stefano
Date: 2001-03-22 14:46
In my previous post I wrote "C flat notes", but I meant "C natural notes".
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