 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Probe
Date: 2013-09-01 03:07
I've been playing the clarinet for 6 years, and I am becoming more and more aware that although my clarinet playing is in good shape, I feel like that I'm not playing musically. While my tone is great, I can't seem to make music of what I'm trying to play- I, as well as others, am noticing that my playing is either flat and boring or very tiring to listen to. I'm able to make an impression that I'm a good player, but my playing is not very enjoyable to listen to because it's not music. How can I fix this?
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Author: AAAClarinet
Date: 2013-09-01 03:46
There is a long list of , do this, play these notes this way , phrase, phrase, phrase... the best thing you can do on your own ( IMHO ) is to listen to many great players of all instruments, imitate, then make it your own. ( by make it your own I mean don't become a copy of someone else. listen to how others make music then make YOUR music.)
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Author: Wes
Date: 2013-09-01 06:15
Try to get some lessons from a good clarinet teacher.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-09-01 07:53
How old are you?
What do you mean by "tiring to listen to?" The first step in solving any problem is knowing what it is.
Karl
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Author: Probe
Date: 2013-09-01 23:34
Thanks for the help
"Tiring to listen to" is a feedback I get often from my teacher... It's hard to explain in words, but it means I'm overdoing some parts so that the parts I should actually emphasize sound weak. It's like "giving away" too much on the first few bars.
I'm 16
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-09-02 00:18
Trust your teacher.
Ask her/him to play the first few bars, and then match what you heard as exactly as possible. I think that you're probably trying to be expressive by adding stuff at random and changing the tempo constantly. As I wrote in my first message, your playing has to match the harmony. Ask your teacher to walk you through the harmony and show you how to play to match.
You must play musically all the time. I've sometimes played a section that repeats "straight" the first time, saving the nuances for the second time, but then the first time is boring. Playing musically doesn't mean swooning and swooping around. It means playing exactly but elegantly, always as if you were singing.
When you listen to the Stephen Foster songs I linked to, concentrate on how the singers match their voices and delivery to the meaning and emotion of the words.
Play within yourself, thinking about expressing the emotion of the words and the music. I assume you're a guy. Imagine that you're playing to the most beautiful girl in the room -- the one you want so much to get together with but are too shy to approach. Send your clarinet sound out to her. Make it sit in her lap and whisper in her ear, charming her to fall in love with you. Always sweet, always graceful and always in perfect control.
Ken Shaw
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Author: beejay
Date: 2013-09-02 17:43
Ken,
Thank you for the Foster link. Those songs are beautifully performed.
For my own contribution of marvellous musicality, I submit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MR2RtCP5NA
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-09-02 18:02
Probe wrote:
> "Tiring to listen to" is a feedback I get often from my
> teacher... It's hard to explain in words, but it means I'm
> overdoing some parts so that the parts I should actually
> emphasize sound weak. It's like "giving away" too much on the
> first few bars.
>
> I'm 16
I've had a great many students, usually of high school age like you, whose playing tended to be so overwrought with little, local crescendos and diminuendos, even to the point of making swells on nearly every individual note, that it indeed might have been described as "tiring to listen to," although I'm more inclined to describe it as making me feel a little seasick. The waves of sound come so quickly and are so large, that it becomes impossible for these students to shape a line longer that about 4 beats. If this is in any way similar to what your teacher is pointing out in your playing, it comes from trying too hard to *make the playing musical* and not knowing how to think about the broader lines of the piece. Maintaining an unbroken legato or a steadily linear staccato that only rises or falls with the longer melodic phrase or period takes more careful reading and thought.
If overdoing things is your basic issue, there are two problems that may be involved - one is the habit that has to be broken and the other is the skill that you need to build of analyzing the musical structure in terms of longer gestures - to draw a linguistic parallel, sentences and paragraphs and even chapters instead of words and individual syllables.
You've no doubt experienced speakers who over-modulated their tone of voice so that each syllable had dramatically different weight. If they really want to emphasize some thought, the only remaining tool they have at their disposal is to add some dramatic physical movement - banging a table with a fist or slashing the air with a finger or whole hand, because any vocal emphasis will be lost among all the other exaggerated vocal ups and downs.
Work with your teacher, first to overcome any pointless exaggerations he hears in your technical approach - your way of blowing and your air use, any possible extraneous motion in your embouchure you may have gotten used to using to shape individual sounds, etc..., then ask for help in finding the important points of melodic and harmonic tension so you can begin to decide how to handle those while clearing out the "'giving away' too much on the first few bars."
There are a number of posts that have been written here by knowledgeable players about ways of phrasing specific pieces that you can probably find by searching the woodwind.org archives. The International Clarinet Association's quarterly magazine features articles about musical approaches to individual works, at least one such feature in each issue. Even if you don't play the specific pieces the articles and posts discuss, you can distill general principles that can be useful in other music.
Improving in this, as with most things, means hearing and identifying the things that need improvement. Listen to your own playing as objectively as you can to pick out less meaningful specific musical gestures, things you're doing just to "be musical" without a specific reason and then look for ways, given what's written on the page and the feelings the music seems (to you) meant to invoke, to realize those two elements. Be self-critical in a productive way.
Karl
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Author: Fishamble
Date: 2013-09-03 09:25
The fact that you asked the question you did is the first solid step to improving the musicality of your playing. Keep the desire foremost in your mind as you read about playing/performing, and as you talk to people and as you watch and listen to performances. With the desire to learn about it, I think you'll hear discussions on this board and elsewhere with new ears; you'll pick up on suggestions and approaches that would simply have gone over your head previously. That's my experience over the last few years as I've tried to improve my musicianship, and asked basically the same question of my teacher.
When looking for resources to learn from, don't limit yourself to clarinet resources. Musicianship transcends the instruments, so researching it opens up the whole world of musical publications. One of my favourite things to do currently is search youtube for masterclasses from anyone you admire - every single one of them opens your mind a little more.
I'm really looking forward to consuming the suggestions above.
Good luck!
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2013-09-03 10:41
Here's something I once wrote on the Klarinet list:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/lookup.php/Klarinet/1999/03/001502.txt
Just to add to that: I used to take part regularly in fortnights of chamber music in Naples, with players like Salvatore Accardo, Bruno Giuranna, Bruno Canino....you might not know the names, but I assure you, they are, or were, on the very highest level in Europe. Or the world, for that matter.
One year there was a young girl who had been a part of the event -- I think she was the daughter of one of the organisers. Anyway, at the end of the dinner after the last concert (we always ate very late, winding up around 2 am -- but the concerts started at 9 pm!) she said that she would like to play something to thank all of us. So, she sang a song that she accompanied on her guitar. And I tell you, although the concert had included some wonderful performances -- I remember in particular the Brahms piano quintet with the Brazilian pianist Jacques Klein and a quartet led by Accardo, with Giuranna on viola -- what she did brought tears to all our eyes. I thought it was the best thing in the entire evening.
When I congratulated her, she said: "Next week, I go to Milano, to learn how to be a musician."
So I told her, sure, go to Milano. But don't think you'll learn to be a musician there, because you already are one.
How that little story relates to your question might not be obvious to you. My main point is that you may be looking in the wrong place to find your musicianship. People have suggested things to DO; quite good things, most of them. But you may do better by changing the direction in which you're looking.
I remember something that happened to me when I was quite young; perhaps a bit younger than you, when I was in the National Youth Orchestra. My friends often talked about how they FELT about the music; about what it MADE them feel. And I sometimes found myself a bit left out in these discussions, because I didn't particularly find that the bit of music they were talking about made me FEEL anything in particular.
So then it occurred to me to ask the question: IF it made me feel something, WHAT would that something be?
And I found that that question unlocked for me a whole range of expressive possibilities, and let me play music in a variety of ways, experimenting before CHOOSING one that seemed to fit what I was playing the best.
That choice was centred on the music -- I was asking a question about IT -- but equally, the response was my own. (You can't avoid yourself:-)
Try it.
Tony
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Author: sonicbang
Date: 2013-09-04 12:10
Listening to good singers (especially in operas) and good violionists and cellists is fine, but they can't substitute the experience of a live performances. You can feel, hear and see when the music borns and creates itself. And you should sing fragments from your pieces, because this way the instrument isn't in your way and you learn to expess yourself.
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Author: Vubble3
Date: 2013-09-04 14:06
Hello Sonicbang, how are you liking the fatboy barrel I sold you on ebay? Haha what a small world
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-09-04 19:49
sonicbang -
I disagree. I've learned a tremendous amount by listening to great musicians, and even more by matching how they phrase and integrating it into my own musicmaking -- Kreisler, Leonard Rose, Heifetz, McCormack, Callas, Dinu Lipatti -- the list goes on and on. Of course I'm not playing the violin, the cello or the piano, let alone singing, but it's absolutely possible (and, to me, necessary) to find how to play that way on the clarinet.
When I listen to the recording of Schumann's Dichterliebe by Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten, I hear their musical and poetic artistry and strive to achieve the same level of musicianship and communication on the clarinet. Of course I can't play the words, but I understand the words and do everything I can (which is fair amount) to put them across.
Go to the Stephen Foster recording by Jan DeGaetani. Particularly because the words are so familiar, it's absolutely possible to put them across on the clarinet.
Listen to Schumann's song cycle Frauenliebe und -leben and to then how Guy Deplus sings them on the clarinet on http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/6659180/a/grand+orgue+et+clarinette+%2F+moran%E7on,+deplus.htm.
As Tony so often reminds us, we must find the essence of music for ourselves and play as ourselves, but it's equally true that great musicians can give us invaluable guidance and teach us by example.
Ken Shaw
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Author: sonicbang
Date: 2013-09-04 21:29
Let me explain this a bit more exactly.
Maybe singing (or imitating) a passage is more helpful sometimes to find the correct tempo, or phrasing than trying it with any instrument. This is especially useful, when younger or/and inexperienced players are trying to find a musical solution for tricky passages. This is just one way, not the only one, not for everyone.
I do like and appreciate the composers and performers you mentioned along with many others. I won't list the names here, this would be pointless. I do collect and listen LPs from the best musicians of the world. Great recordings are invaluable of course.
What I want to underline is that a player who might want to feel both the music, the performer, all circumstances of the performance in order to have more and more experience should go out of the practise room and listen to live performances.
I think you might agree that recordings and live performances can't be subsituted by each other? Because if you do, you agree that no live performance is needed.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2013-09-04 21:55
Ken Shaw wrote:
>> ...we must find the essence of music for ourselves and play as ourselves, but it's equally true that great musicians can give us invaluable guidance and teach us by example.>>
I suppose a point worth making here is that it's possible to be 'guided' by inferior musicians, too.
You need to be able to distinguish for yourself between the great and the inferior before you can take advantage of the guidance of the great, rather than being led astray by the inferior.
I used to say that masterclasses were a good idea, because then the musically inferior students could learn by exposure to the better ones. But what I failed to realise was that the inferior students very often COULDN'T HEAR that the better ones WERE better. Had they been able to hear that, then they would have been better, or at least becoming better, themselves.
A nice thing about the experience of recognising a true musical insight in someone's playing is that you learn something that you realise you already knew, implicitly. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to recognise it.
Having recognised it, you have a better handle on using it for yourself.
That's very different from COPYING what someone else does because they're FAMOUS, or SPOZED to be good, or something.
I'm sure Ken knows this.
Tony
Post Edited (2013-09-04 22:56)
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-09-05 20:17
Tony -
Indeed I do. That's why I listed a number of great musicians from whom I have learned.
Like you, I have frequently suffered through bad performances by students in master classes, who did not understand what the "master" was asking for. My caveat is that the students with musical talent will come to understand what the master has suggested over the course of weeks or months. Certainly that's happened to me.
One good thing about recordings is that I can listen to phrases several times, slowly unpacking what's going on. Of course this can lead to rote imitation and to thinking that one good way is the only good way, but it's been invaluable to me as at least a starting point.
Many years ago, I wrote that I had played along with clarinet records, which helped me learn how the music went. You wrote that you had done the same thing.
Imitation is the beginning, not the ending, but I've found it very useful.
Stanley Drucker never plays in his master classes, but he sings all the time, asking the student to play as he sings. Robert Marcellus played a lot at the two master classes I went to, showing a student how a phrase worked and asking the student to "play it like that."
Ken Shaw
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2013-09-05 20:43
>> Many years ago, I wrote that I had played along with clarinet records, which helped me learn how the music went. You wrote that you had done the same thing.>>
Mostly, actually, to have the piano part in my ear. There was this annoying clarinettist called Antoine de Bavier, who seemed to play out-of-tune with me...
I listen to records at least as much, it turns out, to find out how I DON'T want to do things.
>> Robert Marcellus played a lot at the two master classes I went to, showing a student how a phrase worked and asking the student to "play it like that.">>
I do that too; a student has to have the ability to do any particular something, and one might as well choose something to have them imitate that at least works.
There's a story of Bernard Greenhouse having to copy Casals's bowings and phrasings in a Bach suite exactly, lesson after lesson. Finally, exasperated, he asked, "But Maestro, if I always play exactly like you, how will I find my own voice?"
At which, according to Greenhouse, Casals beamed, sat down, and played the Bach in a completely different way.
Tony
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Author: William
Date: 2013-09-07 15:05
Take heed to what Tony has written, listen to as many *good* performances as you can and then try to emulate what you heard in them. But remember, there are countless ways to play the same musical phrase, "musically". The best way to learn is to experiment--listen, practice and perform. Your day will come........
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