Author: DougR
Date: 2016-06-14 20:52
I personally have had to deal with a version of this, on both flute and clarinet. In my case, it results from thinking the throat has to be involved in 'voicing' or 'shaping' or somehow tuning a note, and if one isn't careful, the throat ends up getting involved all the time, it becomes an unconscious habit, and is needed maybe only 1% of the time, if that.
there are a lot of good suggestions here and you're going to have to decide which is most responsive to your particular situation.
For starters, you could try doing the Baermann scales, and just OBSERVE what's going on in your throat, larynx etc. as you do the scales. Does your throat constrict with register changes, do you feel the chokey thing in the back of your throat on certain notes or certain interval leaps? So try it again, without any 'help' from the throat. If your embouchure, air, and tongue position are right, the notes still should come out, possibly even better than they do with all the 'help'.
I may be misinterpreting what you're going through & if so, I apologize.
There's another part to this, and that is AIR. Your air has to be strong, and focused; I found I had to use a lot more air than I had been accustomed to. Yehuda Gilad says "Breathe from just below the small of your back." Tom Ridenour, I understand, compares clarinet air to an aerosol container, with a strong "F-F-F-F" component. The air column has to be strong, not weak, and from the base of the spine, not from your shoulders/chest.
So I'd start there. This may not be exactly responsive to your version of what's going on, but if you experiment an pay attention to what's happening, maybe you'll be able to tell what to do (or more importantly, what NOT to).
Harvey Pittel has a bunch of wonderful YouTube videos on the teachings of Joe Allard, and no. 5 discusses breathing mechanisms (especially in the 2nd half). You might also look through the "The Master Speaks" videos of Joe Allard himself.
But for your immediate purposes, maybe try some scales, watch for throat action, see if you can let it go, keeping the air pressure up the whole time. This is definitely a solvable thing, because I've noticed my playing has improved a lot since I became aware of it.
Good luck!
ETA: I'm lucky to have a really good teacher who doesn't let me get away with 'throat' playing, and constantly calls me on it. He showed me a version of the exercises Ken Shaw mentions in this thread, and I found them very helpful too.
Post Edited (2016-06-14 21:22)
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