 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: karacura
Date: 2016-07-13 18:15
Hi,
I am actually a clarinet beginner who is working 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM and can spare 10 - 12 hours weekly for clarinet exercises.
My target is having a good infrastructure for playing clarinet.
I mean that i don't want to play a song or melody as soon as possible, instead i want to have good tone, fast fingers, scales ...etc.
I am very confused and I want to follow a clear roadmap, have targets and measure my progress.
Could you please help me to clarify what should be the targets, where to start, how to exercise ...etc ?
For example;
In 1 week individual must be easily play chromatic scale (1. position) at 60 bpm.
In 1 month individual must be comfortable playing 2 scales at 80 bpm.
...
Regards,
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2016-07-13 20:10
The problem with an absolute road map is that it doesn't exist. If it did, then anyone (everyone) studying clarinet would be at the principal clarinet level in.....x amount of years (unless they cheated, or skimped somewhere).
Firstly, to do this correctly, you need to find a decent private instructor. If you do this on your own, it is too easy to go down a wrong path and then spend MORE time trying to unlearn bad habits.
I would say there are some basic method books out there. If you are just starting off, it would be helpful to have a "complete" method book handy such as the Klose or Lazarus. From there, there are stock "bibles" that you'll use until you die: Baermann Book III (scales), Rose 32 Etudes, Rose 40 Etudes, Stark Arpeggio Studies, Kell Staccato Exercise........and the list goes on a bit.
Teacher first.
.................Paul Aviles
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-07-13 20:47
Paul Aviles wrote:
> The problem with an absolute road map is that it doesn't exist.
> If it did, then anyone (everyone) studying clarinet would be
> at the principal clarinet level in.....x amount of years
> (unless they cheated, or skimped somewhere).
>
> Firstly, to do this correctly, you need to find a decent
> private instructor. If you do this on your own, it is too
> easy to go down a wrong path and then spend MORE time trying to
> unlearn bad habits.
> Teacher first.
I completely second Paul's advice.
Find a good local teacher. Preferably a clarinetist.
Karl
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2016-07-14 05:22
It's important to lay a strong foundation for your playing. You're thinking of some but not all of the necessities.
The first thing is wind. You must blow smoothly, strongly and continuously. You learn this by playing long tones for a couple of minutes at the beginning of each practice session. Inhale all the way down to the bottom -- as Callas said, "from hair to hair."
The second thing is song. You must always make music, even when you're practicing scales. And even when you're playing long tones. Notes must always be going somewhere.
Play scales and arpeggios for the next few minutes of each practice session. Play very slowly, to "engrave" patterns of finger movements into your muscle memory. Again, make music out of scales, arching phrase over groups of notes.
Play as much real music as much as possible. You learn scales by playing a familiar tune -- say, Three Blind Mice -- in many different keys.
Third, find other people to play with. The famous method books (Klose, Lazarus, Langenus, Baermann) introduce easy duets almost from the beginning. Listening to and adjusting to another player is the best possible practice.
Private lessons will also help. An experienced player sitting with you can hear if you're doing something wrong and show you how to do it right.
There's of course much MUCH more. Keep playing, put plenty of air through the instrument and always sing.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-07-14 06:56
The kind of metrics asked about might be used by some teachers or courses of instruction, but as you see not everyone focuses on those. You might consider reading some of the online college course requirements and syllabi, and draw on those for some specific goals. Some list scales, studies, solos, etc. However, what the other posters have said is good general advice, even if you pursue specific goals like you suggest.
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2016-07-14 18:00
On the same vein as your original post, a colleague of mine (who was a fine doubler: all clarinets, sax, flute) used to say, "You need to be able to play sixteenth notes at 120 in every scale to be functional." In a way that is some sort of really general guide to what you need to achieve but just a broad general idea.
On that score, Robert Marcellus used to say, "It is NEVER too late to practice slowly." And he meant that you can plod slowly through a tricky fingering passage back stage just before going on (as an example). So speed is not in and of itself a goal, it is more of a tool that you use throughout your career.
And one thing that I've found over the years is that TEACHING (that means you) can be one of the best ways to learn your horn. Find a student at a lower level and help them out. This helps YOU more than it helps them (believe me).
..............Paul Aviles
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Author: kj2008
Date: 2016-07-14 18:48
I started my learning 2 years ago and I wasn't able to find a good private lesson in my area. However, I found online lesson site clarinetmentors.com (by Michelle Anderson) and took two courses - Clarinet Easy and Clarinet Mastery (still working on the course). They are very inexpensive and contains a lot of materials (with good infrastructure you are looking for). I am very happy with them and am progressing very well (and money well spent).
You may check with the site if you haven't done so yet.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-07-14 19:09
kj2008 wrote:
> I am
> very happy with them and am progressing very well (and money
> well spent).
I don't know this particular program, so can't comment on it specifically. But unless it has some mechanism for providing knowledgeable feedback from the teacher (or creator of the lessons), this way of studying can be better than absolutely nothing, but is still far from optimal. The only pair of ears involved in the process is your own, and for a beginner those ears may not be as perceptive as a set of experienced ones. So the result can be good or you can only be deluding yourself into thinking it's good. There is no guarantee against building bad (i.e. counterproductive) habits and no way for a musically inexperienced student to know, aside from technique, what else from an aesthetic point of view needs to be worked on and listened for.
Karacura describes herself (I really hate the anonymity of screen names - I assume Kara is female) as a clarinet beginner. Much of the advice given so far, including mine, might be very different if she is musically experienced and is only adding clarinet to her repertoire of instruments (which she doesn't tell us). She asks about targets for measuring progress. Describing benchmarks for a musician learning a new instrument would be much easier to set up, because a certain level of awareness could be assumed.
Karl
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