 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Exiawolf
Date: 2014-10-23 09:43
Greetings
I am an aspiring clarinet player as a freshman in high school playing on an M30 Lyre and Reaserve classic 3.5's on a Buffet E12F. After the past two years of being told to support and put air through the horn, I have realized that I have it down but lose that support when going down to a piano. How do you manage playing a beautful resonant piano? LASTLY, I have a bad habit of having too much lower pressure (biting) especially as I run our of air or play piano, how would you recommend fixing this?
Post Edited (2014-10-23 09:57)
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Author: maxopf
Date: 2014-10-23 10:18
Junior in high school here. I used to have the same problem with biting during piano passages and when I ran out of air. For me, it was because my reeds were way too hard for my mouthpiece - I got used to it and my tone was nice, but I would get red in the face when I played. When I tried to play piano, the sound would essentially become a sub-tone unless I bit, because I couldn't put enough air through the instrument (by biting, I lessened the tip opening, making it require less air - but also making my lip really sore and messing with my tone). Under a new teacher, I ended up switching mouthpieces and reeds around so I had a more free-blowing setup that gave me the same nice tone while not requiring undue force to play. Not sure if this is your problem though; 3.5s sound reasonable, though I have no idea how resistant M30 Lyres are.
I'm trying to think of how to describe not letting go of air support when playing quietly. I will get back to you if I think of a good metaphor or something. (I'm sure someone here will have a good way to describe it.)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-10-23 13:43
This is almost my very favorite topic.
I am always talking about embouchure support with students versus biting. It is too easy to engage the jaw to stabilize the horn and attempt to control sound. There is a slight component of jaw energy in what we do, HOWEVER, if you are doing this CONSCIOUSLY then you are most likely using too much jaw pressure which is what we all refer to as 'biting.' DON'T DO IT !!!
The embouchure is most properly thought of as engaging the muscles ALL AROUND the mouthpiece (like a rubber band).
FIRSTLY the whole flat/firm chin thing is done to make the lower lip as flat and smooth as possible (most of us have that down pretty good).
NEXT come the cheek muscles (buccinators). If you've ever really struggle to get a thick chocolate shake through a straw (like a Wendy's Frosty) those are the muscles you use to ensure a good seal around the straw. Only on the clarinet you blow out of course. The cheek muscles bring the sides of you mouth in and down around the sides of the mouthpiece (a lot of us are not that good at this) and make the sides of you embouchure firm for about a half an inch past the corners of you mouth.
FINALLY you need to engage your upper lip muscles (most of us underutilize these muscles). Your upper lip does not just sit on the mouthpiece, it needs to actively provide a slight downward pressure. This pressure can and WILL be modulated as you play. In fact it is the upper lip and the cheek muscles that aid you more in the altissimo and when you play softer and softer so that you don't choke off the air that needs to move past the reed.
All that said you really also need to practice diminuendos (and crescendos). My favorite exercise is a Clark Brody long tone exercise that all my students are a bit too familiar with:
Start with a low "E." You want the sound to come out of nowhere (NO TONGUE, just air), softer than soft. You do this by having the embouchure 'loose' (looser than what you need); start the air and grab this ethereal note by gradually introducing more tautness. Once you have this 'almost note,' start counting VERY slowly (roughly quarter note equals 50 beats per minute) you count up to eight making the note with each successive beat louder until you get as loud as you can possibly play at eight. Then you diminuendo back down counting back (7, 6, 5...) until you get back down to 1 which is your softest volume and completely fade out to nothing (you can see this is one long note, soft to loud and back in 15 counts). Do this twice on low "E"; twice on "F;" twice on "F#"; and twice on "G." You'll feel like you've run around the block after that but it's a good way to develop tone, dynamics (explore your full palette), rhythm, and embouchure. In short it's a good little exercise.
..............Paul Aviles
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Author: tims
Date: 2014-10-23 22:09
I second everything that Paul Aviles said. Being able to play extreme pianissimos is a hallmark that sets clarinetists apart from the other winds and you should master it soon. It will do more to improve your general embouchure and tone production than most other exercises. This is why I always include exercises in playing softly and playing in the high registers as soon as possible with my students because these are the most demanding in terms of correct embouchure and breath support.
Additional points:
A 3.5 reed on an M30 should not generally be too hard, but it doesn't take much difference in strength to make a significant difference in response. Good clarinetist are always making fine adjustments to their reeds because even small adjustments can make or break whether a reed is playable. Also most reeds are unbalanced (harder on one side than the other) and these will always tend to feel harder than what their marked strength indicates. Learn to balance your reeds and to make fine adjustments (maybe a 3.3 reed is what works best for you).
Students are always told not to "bite", but then are often asked to "apply more pressure to the reed". This often leads to the student being confused because rarely does the teacher explain the difference leaving the student to believe that "biting" is simply too much pressure. When we think of biting, we think of simply closing ones mouth by bringing the teeth together. This motion is vertical. The clarinet reed enters the mouth at an angle to this motion. If we simply apply pressure to the reed by biting in this way, as much as half of the pressure we are exerting does not go into the reed. The lip takes all of the pressure and half of that is in the direction pushing the lip toward the tip of the reed. Fortunately our jaw moves with more degrees of freedom than simply up and down. We can move our jaw forward and backward. Because of this it is possible to press perpendicularly against the reed with a combination of the up and down motion and forward and backward motion. If you think of pushing against the reed by moving your jaw forward, you will find you have much more control with less effort.
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-10-23 22:37
"tims,"
Actually I would never say "put more pressure on the reed." If you take your thumb and press against the part of the reed where the mouthpiece starts to curve away from it, you see what happens when you do that......it makes the opening smaller. If you make the opening too small for the amount of air you are using, what you get is just a buzzy sound (or at very least as Brad Behn may say you are putting energy into making the tip opening smaller when you could just start off with a smaller tip opening to begin with).
I would suggest that perhaps another way around "the clamp" effect, is to draw the clarinet closer in to your body (keeping the head straight of course). What happens here is that your upper teeth are farther up the mouthpiece than where your lower lips come in contact with the reed. And maybe this is kinda what your suggesting with the "jaw forward" stance.
.................Paul Aviles
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Author: tims
Date: 2014-10-24 02:53
"Paul Aviles"
When you draw the clarinet closer to your body, you are in fact pushing the lower jaw back and not just moving your teeth higher on the mouthpiece. The natural response to this is to push back with the lower jaw. This was not my point nor do I advocate pulling the horn in as a general practice. My point was simply to indicate that your jaw has more than one degree of freedom in its motion and that we can choose the direction in which we apply pressure to the reed. I believe we all eventually learn to apply pressure directly into the reed, but that we do so unconsciously because we do not naturally think of our jaws moving any way but up and down. I have found it helpful to ask students to think of pressing slightly forward rather than simply biting up with their lower jaw. Actually we naturally do this we we are asked to flatten our chin. Although you are pulling back the exterior lip and cheek muscles around the chin, unless you consciously try to not do so, you will also move you lower jaw forward in relation to your upper jaw.
It really comes down to physics. If we press against the reed at a 45 degree angle, half the pressure we apply is useful in making the reed flex, but the other half is wasted trying to pull the reed out of the ligature. This means we are working twice as hard as we need to and applying twice as much pressure to our lower lips. This effort is tiring, and distorts the lower lip and makes controlling all the other muscles more difficult. Simply because the mouthpiece is inserted into the mouth at a 45 degree angle doesn't mean we have no control over the direction which we apply pressure. If you aren't working very hard to control your sound, then you have probably already figured out how to direct the pressure in the right direction even if you are not fully aware of exactly what it is you are doing. This is eventually discovered unconsciously by everyone, I've just found that students tend to discover it more quickly with this kind of visualization and begin to produce better sounds with less effort and little tendency to "bite" when playing high or soft.
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-10-24 04:35
Well I'll have to give this some thought since I am new to this concept of the jaw jutting forward. I don't see it as a natural consequence of flattening the chin. Could this be a more common methodology for someone with an overbite?
Let's take a step back though.
My answer to "What is is the purpose of the embouchure?" is that it is a platform which is relatively stable, meant to allow the reed to vibrate and the air to flow unimpeded. I also like to use the double lip embouchure as an acid test for what I do as a single lip player. Though I realize that I personally use too much energy, it is more relative to how much air I press forward and the particularly loud top end dynamic that I embrace (occasionally....ahem).
Brad Behn is one who is in the 'low stress' camp. The reed/mouthpiece opening is already at the point where you play, therefore there need be NO undue stress, pressing, biting or pushing involved at all. The same is should be true of any full time double lip player (Harold Wright, John Yeh to name a few).
So as I try to take a step back to contemplate what you say, I only wish to be clear that I have never advocated a willful (or conscious) application of force upon a reed. In addition it seems on the surface that forward movement of the jaw might be begging for Temporal Mandibular Joint problems over the long haul.
maybe
..............Paul Aviles
Post Edited (2014-10-24 05:16)
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2014-10-25 02:32
Read about Tony Pay's Magic Diminuendo, that should explain it.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2014-10-26 03:20
Peter Cigleris wrote:
>> Read about Tony Pay's Magic Diminuendo, that should explain it.>>
Quite right, Peter.
Quinton wrote:
>> I am an aspiring clarinet player as a freshman in high school playing on an M30 Lyre and Reaserve classic 3.5's on a Buffet E12F. After the past two years of being told to support and put air through the horn, I have realized that I have it down but lose that support when going down to a piano. How do you manage playing a beautful resonant piano? >>
In fact, 'support' is what you are using when you play piano whilst still blowing forte. (More accurately, you play piano with your abdominal and back muscles acting just as they do when you play forte.)
You can do this because your diaphragm is also involved, and 'supports' (= 'acts against', as in 'the table supports the weight of the book lying on it') the action of your blowing muscles.
Here's a thread about that:
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=20&i=714&t=714
>> LASTLY, I have a bad habit of having too much lower pressure (biting) especially as I run our of air or play piano, how would you recommend fixing this? >>
Yes, you shouldn't need to do this. Stop doing it:-)
Two posts about the embouchure to set straight some of what has been said above:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/lookup.php/Klarinet/2002/04/000770.txt
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=326083&t=326083
Tony
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