Author: 42cheese
Date: 2014-02-13 10:47
That is a fantastic article brycon, thanks for sharing!
as9934: I'm sorry your jazz program got cut! It's awful how the most important parts of the school system are always the first ones to go.
I'm also a jazz clarinetist. I live in Massachusetts and don't know any teachers outside of New England, but if you have a band that you play with regularly, that's plenty to keep you going. But obviously a good jazz teacher is a tremendous help. Take jazz piano lessons too, if you can—it really helps to solidify music theory.
As many members have already said, jazz is about listening and playing together. Other than the Real Book and the Omnibooks which are great, books have never done anything for me. Improving your sight-reading can't hurt, but the art of jazz cannot be learned via dots on a page. Listen to as much jazz as you can and play together as often as possible!!! And listen to all jazzers, not just clarinetists (especially seeing as there are relatively few of them). And listening to other genres and fusion genres can give you great inspiration too. I listen to a lot of progressive metal, for instance.
When I finally started seriously listening to jazz, and again when I joined a serious group, it was a total DUH. Everything I was playing suddenly made perfect sense and I have kicked myself every day since then for not starting both sooner. Musical ideas start swirling through your head and as you get better at giving voice to them through your horn, you come to realize jazz.
Once you have jazz deeply in your soul (and of course have your basic clarinet technique down), it's time to work on technical improvisational mastery:
1. take a riff (could be just an interval, or a long run)
2. play it up, down, sideways, backwards, inside out, etc. through the entire range of the clarinet
3. in all pentatonic, heptatonic, octatonic, hexatonic scales, the chromatic scale, etc.
4. and symmetrically (set intervals, changing keys)
1. then take another riff and do the same. The possibilities are limitless!
Equipment-wise, if your clarinet and m'piece feel right and give you a nice, big, colorful sound, you've got all that you need. Save your money for that $15,000 custom clarinet you can get once you're famous.
---Sean
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The Clarinet BBoard
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