Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-04-10 19:34
Philip,
I Agree that you can train your fingers that way to remember the paths between the notes, because fingers have excellent muscle memory, and you are just trying to show them which way to go. Once they have become accustomed to the path, you can then use direct brain control to make them more legato or snappy or whatever you want. Jose Franch-Ballester says that when he is travelling in airplanes, he often reads through difficult passages or finger taps them from memory, without having a clarinet in hand. This works great for the fingers, and is a technique I like to practice. But in sound production, you want your lips to "memorize" not just any old foghorn sound that seeps out but rather beautiful shading, coloration, and phrasing. How are you going to do that if you don't even pay attention to the quality of the sound? Then you would be asking the lips to memorize or recall quite pedestrian and uninteresting production of sound. That would become an ingrained habit. Instead, you want your lips to remember the most interesting and musical sounds that they can produce. I would say the boredom element creeps in precisely because one is not paying attention to the sound of the long tones. If they were paying attention, they wouldn't be bored. How can a player be bored with their own playing when they are really sounding good???
One trick that experienced players can use to make long tones more interesting is to practice them sequentually on several very good but different-sounding mouthpieces. Wow, this would be great for Debussy, or this would be perfect for Brahms, or this is just fine for the Martino Set for Clarinet, this one is better indoors, and the other one close up in a small hall. But that advice would not apply to most beginner or intermediate players, who are understandably trying to get a nice sound out of just one mouthpiece. Still they could learn to use it when trying different reeds. Which reed gives the most focus? Which the most cover? The most depth? And so on.
Ridenour has a good youtube video on players who never listen to great clarinetists and therefore never establish a reasonable model to imitate. As a result they have no idea of how they might want to sound on the instrument, and their sound never really gets any better in musical qualities no matter how much they practice (though it might get louder and more overbearing as they gain in "strength.") Again "the sound begins in the mind." not the distracted mind, but the focused goal-oriented mind. And long tones are all about making interesting sounds, not "stengthening" the lips. When you find the captivating sound, then the lips are doing what they should to make it. Neither more pressure and strength nor less. That's the "sweet spot" a player wants to ingrain in their playing. Each time you play you want to recover the sweetest spots in your sound that you have discovered, just as painters want to acheive the exact shading and tint to realize their artistic vision. Think of how the Impressionists studied the way a cathedral looks when different angles and degrees of sunlight engulf it. Approached in that way, long tones are no less interesting than light rays. Listen to Daniel Bonade play on the old recording of Afternoon of a Faun. The way he "materializes" the long tone entrance, both matching and contrasting with the flute timbre. Listen to Harold Wright on the first few long tones in the clarinet entrance to Schubet's Shepherd on the Rock recording with Benita Valente. What could be more interesting or deserve more attention than these? Nothing boring about them--not if you really like music. The long tones in the Pines of Rome clarinet solo are another possible model for the player to internalize. How to sound smooth and even the way McLane or Wright (or other great players) do in this solo. Any book of clarinet orchestral excerpts can supply many more examples, especially when studied with a good teacher. Or the opening Bb to the Weber Concertino. That is a long tone that should sound really good to catch the listener's attention.
Post Edited (2016-04-10 23:17)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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