 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: AAAClarinet
Date: 2013-12-26 22:01
When I play single lip I can easily bend the pitch of (clarion) high C down to G. When I play double lip I can bend to about Bb (whole step) then I lose the register. It drops to the fundamental F. I do everything the same, do others have this issue when double lipping. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
AAAClarinet
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Author: kdk
Date: 2013-12-26 17:11
No, FWIW, my experience is exactly opposite. I have much more flexibility with both pitch and tone character when I play double lip, which is one of the reasons I switched to it permanently years ago.
Karl
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2013-12-26 22:43
I'm with Karl on this -- double lip I have a lot more flexibility, especially in the downward direction.
Any chance that some aspect of the embouchure is disengaging in subtle way?
James
PS -- this is completely aside, but for me -- double or single lip -- bending a pitch that much is done inside the oral cavity.
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2013-12-26 17:57
Double lip is preferred. See utubes of Morales and Ridenour, for example.
richard smith
Post Edited (2013-12-31 01:28)
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Author: rmk54
Date: 2013-12-26 23:10
rtmyth wrote:
> Double lip is preferred.
------------------------------------------------------------------
For what? Plenty of great players seem to have done just fine with single lip.
FWIW I played double lip for 15 years.
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Author: AAAClarinet
Date: 2013-12-26 23:57
I use my tongue to drop the pitch in both instances, I just can't seem to do it with double lip. I guess I just need to experiment more.
AAAClarinet
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2013-12-27 02:03
AAA -- how far along are you with double lip? Do you still feel a great deal of pressure on your upper lip playing C6, or any insecurity playing notes with few fingers (which rely on the embouchure more to stabilize and hold the instrument)?
James
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: AAAClarinet
Date: 2013-12-27 02:10
Tobin: I play oboe and I double lip on bass , but I am new to it on Bb sop. I like hard reeds so I am using more pressure than I should and yes I have insecurities on high C, I need to stabilize using the side of my right hand.
AAAClarinet
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Author: Ed
Date: 2013-12-27 03:19
Quote:
For what? Plenty of great players seem to have done just fine with single lip.
Yes, but think about the greatness they would have achieved with double!
;-)
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Author: BobD
Date: 2013-12-27 03:47
All of us really great players use double lip and I continue to wonder why Sax players seem to favor single lip. I guess it's mainly what you were taught in the beginning.
Bob Draznik
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-12-27 04:10
If I played single lip on bari sax, my brains would be even more scrambled, and I might not survive more than a few seconds on bass sax. And ditto for contra clarinets.
Ken Shaw
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Author: rmk54
Date: 2013-12-27 17:48
Ed wrote:
Yes, but think about the greatness they would have achieved with double!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah, poor Robert Marcellus and Larry Combs!
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Author: BobD
Date: 2013-12-27 20:34
The lingering controversy over single vs double lip is interesting as it reminds me of similar controversies in society. Starting out with DL is painful but if you are told that "that's the way it is" you endure and eventually your lip survives. If you switch later, having learned SL, it takes time and pain. However, switching typically does not involve a teacher (except BG) and so one gives up ....and forever after bad mouths DL. At least, that's my opinion.
Bob Draznik
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Author: kdk
Date: 2013-12-27 21:28
BobD wrote:
> However, switching typically does not involve a
> teacher (except BG) and so one gives up ....and forever after
> bad mouths DL. At least, that's my opinion.
>
I'm not sure this is true. I think I'm typical of many players who, like most beginning clarinet students in the U.S., start with a SL embouchure and initially make the switch at the suggestion of a teacher when they've reached a more advanced level. My teacher suggested DL as a way to improve my approach to single lip, but I found over the years that my double lip embouchure remained stable while my single lip kept reverting back to the original bad habits. So, while my decision to adopt DL permanently was made on my own with no teacher's input, the idea to try it and the initial instruction on using it came from a teacher (who himself played SL).
I suspect that this is the avenue over which a lot of contemporary American double lip players have come to it.
Karl
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Author: afmdoclaw
Date: 2013-12-27 21:40
BobD
Sax players do play with a double lip embouchure (DLE)-- but they are overwhelmingly in the minority and it is somewhat controversial (see http://forum.saxontheweb.net/archive/index.php/t-60199.html)
For example, accomplished modern musicians today such as Wes Anderson (lead alto Lincoln Center Marsalis orchestra), Branford Marsalis, Antonio Hart (fine sound on a stock Vandoren v16), Donald Harrison, Jessie Davis (IMHO-greatest alto tone today- wow), Shelley Carroll (NTSU, Ellington) and many more to be “outed” in the future use DLE. Of course, swing error players (such as Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges) and be/hardbop players (Coltrane and Stan Getz) used DLE probably because back then you traditionally started playing clarinet before sax. Before the days of electronic amplification and instruments they mainly played small tip, long lay, big chamber mouthpieces with DLE.
I once wrote in another forum about a double lip embouchure as follows:
“Yes --Trane used it (probably because he started on clarinet and/or more likely because of his notoriously bad teeth) and you can best see him doing so on the close-up, side-profile shots on the DVD from Jazz Causal)
I AM NOT SAYING YOU HAVE TO PLAY THAT WAY BUT YOU SHOULD PRACTICE YOUR OVERTONE EXERCISES THAT WAY !!!!!!!
It opens your throat, it prevents you from using too much pressure on your reed when you play altissimo notes and it makes you play in tune with your throat and not your lips. When I started playing again (after a “short” break of 20 plus years) I started using this practice trick-- what a difference. If you do all of Dave Leibman's (Joe Allard pedagogy) recommendations on sound production with DLE for one month you WILL hear a change. I guarantee it.”
I still stand by the last two sentences.1
As a disclaimer, I only practice with the DLE. However because of that I had to add a tooth patch to all my mouthpieces because my bite is so loose now that it makes my teeth rattle. On clarinet I warmup with a DLE only when I work on Richard Nunemaker’s overtone exercises-- challenging at least for me, to say the least-- but IMHO worth it.
In conclusion, more sax players need to try the DLE.
_____________________
1. As an aside when I was struggling (really) to regain my chops I switched to a small tip long lay 1945 New York Otto Link Tonemaster (ala Trane) and a DLE as recommended above. It worked so well that I was hired to do a quartet demo cd for a pianist/composer that wanted a “Trane sound.” on the tenor. He sold one of the tunes for a Hollywood movie production. He was happy.
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2013-12-27 16:52
Quote:
Starting out with DL is painful but...
I teach many beginners. The double lip embouchure is incredibly easy to teach at this point, and it doesn't involve pain or discomfort. I don't teach everyone double lip, it's really based upon their face and what's coming out of the instrument.
Switching from single to double is difficult for many reasons. But the most significant that comes to mind is that, as a more developed clarinetist, you need/want to use the double lip in conjunction with everything else you know -- including the second and third registers, fast articulation, large dynamic variation, etc...
...a beginner is not concerned with this.
Also -- a single lip player switches to or employs double lip because their upper lip is too passive a participant in the embouchure. So it's not just about making the adjustment of the upper lip being over the teeth and accepting the pressure of the mouthpiece, it's reorienting the upper lip from being too passive to being the majority partner in the balance of forces the mouthpiece sits in.
James
PS -- for my few students who switch from double to single lip, the transition is incredibly easy.
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2013-12-27 23:49
Ken Shaw wrote,
>If I played single lip on bari sax, my brains would be even more scrambled, and I might not survive more than a few seconds on bass sax. And ditto for contra clarinets.
>
Yup, same here. For those who haven't had the pleasure, the big old honkers vibrate like crazy on the lowest notes. When I first start practicing, my eyeballs vibrate and I have trouble reading the music. After awhile, my eyes behave. I'd owned the bass for several years before my brain learned to make my eyes compensate that way.
The resonance from the bell tones gets out into the air, too. With my bass sax, I can set a small, lightweight object on a table and then make it "walk the plank" by playing low notes at it from a few inches away. It's the pitch, not the volume, doing the work, because I get weirder results with the longest breath I can sustain -- and I can sustain a breath a lot longer on pianissimo.
It's a lovely illustration of the "Galloping Gertie" bridge phenomenon that amplitude increases over time, because with a sustained bass note, the small object will start to tremble, then rattle in place, then start jittering along -- and contrary to common sense (if I have any ...), the object will usually walk *toward* the bass, instead of away from the sound, so it's not being *pushed*.
I think playing that old monster with my teeth on the mouthpiece for a couple of hours a day could make me see space aliens on the ceiling inside of a week.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: claire Inet
Date: 2013-12-28 16:08
Interesting. Just starting back on bass after playing soprano in my teens. My books say to have my upper teeth on the mouthpiece. This feels odd to me and yes - it'll scramble your brains on the low notes. I'm guessing I doubled lipped all the way through school and didn't know any better or different. Single is easier for me to reshape the embouchure after a big breath, but it's early yet in the learning process.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-12-29 19:34
Lelia -
Were you ever able to vibrate Shadowcat off a nice warm window sill? Or was the bass sax like the vacuum cleaner monster, producing a mad skedaddle?
Ken Shaw
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2013-12-30 17:37
Ken Shaw wrote,
>Were you ever able to vibrate Shadowcat off a nice warm window sill? Or was the bass sax like the vacuum cleaner monster, producing a mad skedaddle?
>
Shadow Cat loved the bass sax. I think it might have been the high-pitched whine involved in the vacuum cleaner's tone that bothered her so much. She hated high-pitched instruments of all kinds.
Shadow was a solid little cat. None of my instruments vibrated strongly enough to *make* her move, but she did enjoy lying on the vibrating bass end of my electronic piano when I set it up as a fake organ (the granddaddy of all instruments that can make things physically move is the genuine pipe organ), and she enjoyed snuggling up to the bass winds -- something I tried to deter her from doing because having a cat craning uo to rub her chin on the bell doesn't make for the most effective practice session. When I first bought the bass sax, I had no stand for it, so when I took a break from practicing, I'd lay it on the floor. The first time I did that, I came back, started to pick up the bass -- heavier than I remembered! Looked down the bell. Two bright golden eyes blinked back at me.
And now there's Jane Feline, who doesn't seem to care much about the basses, but comes running for the soprano clarinets and my husband's violin. She loves the vacuum cleaner so much that until my old one died, she liked to ride on the hood! The new one has a hood too slanted to make a good perch, alas, but she still follows me around while I vacuum. First cat I've ever met who liked high-pitched whines. Maybe she's part rat ... just kidding, Jane.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2013-12-31 22:20
>This pipe organ would made her move
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdiQU6MbNnA.
>
What fun! Yeah, we're skidding way off-topic now, but thanks for the link! The Toccata and Fugue in Devil-minor was the perfect choice. (I wonder how "the organ repairman" got away with performing on that thing with people standing so close?) I was tempted to bail on that video early because of the bad playing and atrocious sound quality but couldn't resist sticking it out to the end of this wacky performance. He should dress up like the Phantom of the Opera sometime, if he can fit a mask over that beard.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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