Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-04-10 18:51
In response to the request for a video demonstrating productive ways to practice long tones, I suggest watching Scott Andrews' YouTube video on sound production for the clarinet. Search YouTube for
Sheldon Online Music Academy: Scott Andrews Clarinet Sound Production.
He demonstrates particularily the kind of practice that Bob Bernado suggested in his post in this thread, including varying the dynamics by crescendos and diminuendos.
Personally I think there is little or no value in just "exercising" lip muscles in a distracted sort of way while you are multitasking on some other activity. The entire purpose of lip training is to produce a certain sound and quality of music performance. For this, absolute concentration rather than a divided mind is the ideal. The legendry trumpet player, Aldolph Herseth, who played principle trumpet for over 50 years in the Chicago Symphony, counseled his students never to practice but always to perform. Don't absent mindedly practice or "work out" on a C major scale; shape the scale into a beautiful sound object. No one is listening to weightlifters, cross-fit trainers, or marathon runners when they do their work-out, but someone is ALWAYS listening to musicians when they make sounds.
Its up to you to always sound good, even if you're just testing the instrument for leaks, breaking in a new reed or warming up. If you just honk, you will sound like a duck call, not a musician, even if your lips are strong enough to crush walnut shells. You can never really separate your "exercises" from the sounds you make. As a musician you are, par excellence, a sound maker. You are like a rain maker; you can shake your rattles and say your magical spells all you like, but if the drought-ending rain doesn't fall, you are a humbug. The magic for you is in the SOUND, and (if I may change the metaphor) like a good genie it won't come our the lamp without stroking. That requires rapt attention, not mindless distraction and monumental muscle work.
I always think of what Wenzel Fuchs, Berlin Philharmonic, said on the subject of tone production. "The sound begins in the mind." He didn't say to first get abs of steel and lips of titanium, and then the sound will follow--because it doesn't.
In reality, your lips need only strength enough to produce the sound you want and need in your musical environment and the endurance to sustain it. I believe this is the point Tony Pay was making on the recent double lip and Ettlinger threads. Pushing down on your top lip flexes the bottom lip, but to produce the sound you need in any given passage, too much flexing might be the wrong choice. In fact, you may need to relax the muscles and apply less pressure at any given moment. How would you know what sound you want, if you practice in a fog of other activities that compete for your attention? That would be like DaVinci practicing on iron man hand squeezers or rock climbing up walls to build up his forearm muscles and finger strength when he really wants to paint the Mona Lisa. How much "force" does it take to apply the brush to the canvas and get the tone and texture you want? How much force does it take to sound like Harold Wright, or Cahuzac, or Sabine Meyer, or Fuchs, or you, at your very best? Probably not all that much. Finesse, control, focus, color, expressiveness require something other than just muscle tone and strength, and you have to LISTEN to yourself with at least 4 ears (yours and a member of your omnipresent audience) to find that elusive element.
So, to get back to the original question of what you can do to make long tones less boring, the answer is you can paint with them and make music out of them, and that should never be boring.
Post Edited (2016-04-10 22:52)
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