 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Sealy
Date: 2016-10-21 04:30
Hi,
I've been having issues lately with biting, and after playing for a few hours at a time I can feel marks on my bottom lip that are kind of deep. I've also been having issues slurring from a high G to middle C. Whenever I remove the register key, I keep playing a G and I can't play a C without rearticulating no matter what I try. Are these two issues connected?
Any solutions (especially to the biting problem) are appreciated. I've spent so much time researching a fix for this but none of them are helping me relax my bottom lip.
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Author: TomS
Date: 2016-10-21 05:01
Try using much softer reeds (be sure they are well balanced) than you are currently using. If you bite with soft reeds, the MP will close up and not play. The downside of really soft reeds are that you may play flatter and your high notes may not speak as well. Of course, you don't have to use a really soft reed forever, but eventually you should learn to relax the embouchure and not bite.
It also sounds like you may have a problem with your equipment ... like a leaky instrument, unbalanced or too hard reeds or a warped or bad MP. A normal, almost instinctive response to equipment problems, especially bad or too hard reeds, is to bite and try to force everything to work for you ...
Also, use a cushion or a couple of folded cigarette papers over your lower teeth to keep damaging your lower lip.
If you are not balancing and adjusting your reeds, invest in Tom Ridenour's ATG reed adjustment system.
One of my teachers told me that the best sound he ever got on his alto saxophone (a looser embouchure than clarinet) is after he had some dental work and his mouth was still numb) ... of course, he was drooling all over himself ... !
Tom
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-10-21 05:36
Sealy wrote:
> I've been having issues lately with biting, and after playing
> for a few hours at a time I can feel marks on my bottom lip
> that are kind of deep.
Do you feel as if you're biting from the start of your session or only after a while? Are you resting at reasonable intervals? Playing with a fatigued embouchure can easily cause biting as you try unconsciously to use jaw pressure to substitute for embouchure control of the reed.
> I've also been having issues slurring
> from a high G to middle C. Whenever I remove the register key,
> I keep playing a G and I can't play a C without rearticulating
> no matter what I try. Are these two issues connected?
Maybe, but many players - probably most can't get down the twelfth cleanly without some help from the tongue. The inertia of the vibrating reed will maintain the higher frequency for a short time. The best way to control the downward jump is by lightly brushing the reed with your tongue - not a full-stop articulation, just a little bit of interference with the reed's vibration to slow it down more quickly than it probably will on its own.
>
> Any solutions (especially to the biting problem) are
> appreciated. I've spent so much time researching a fix for this
> but none of them are helping me relax my bottom lip.
If I were playing "a few hours at a time," I might be hurting a little, too. Also, if your bottom front teeth don't form a smooth, even surface, any high edge can cause abrasions even if you aren't biting especially hard. You can use folded cigarette paper as Tom suggests. Another useful material is an EZO pad - a denture cushion made of gauze and beeswax. Using a small piece, enough to cover your bottom front teeth, the warmth in your mouth softens it enough to mold it over your teeth. It's more durable than paper and almost as inexpensive. Some players get their dentists to make a plastic appliance to cover their bottom teeth, but that can be costly.
Karl
Post Edited (2016-10-21 05:37)
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2016-10-21 06:09
Karl, where do you get EZO's at? Sounds interesting. A lot of players can't get past that 2 hour mark of practicing because of the lip actually bleeding.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-10-21 06:35
My bottom teeth are close-packed and somewhat irregular. In particular one point used to stick slightly up. I also used to bite, as proven by the pronounced marks my upper teeth made on the mouthpiece. That pointy spot gave me a lot of pain.
I asked my dentist one day if he could grind down that point, and he gladly complied - just grabbed a little grinding wheel tool and did it. That helped my lower lip pain.
It took a while (well, years) for me to stop biting, especially since I'm a self-teacher. There are several sets of muscles that control the lower jaw, and corresponding ways for them to pressure, or over-pressure, the reed. Biting is natural and often unconscious. Be patient & keep correcting as you catch things.
Btw, switching to double lip embouchure noticeably helped curb my tendency to bite, in part because biting leads to even more pain, and maybe in part because not biting more obviously leads to better sound.
The twelfth slurs are different. I think that's about tongue position & shape, though all the embouchure is involved in a general way. I think the term is voicing; the adjustment is subtle. Practice all the 12ths; B down to low E is the toughest.
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Author: Sealy
Date: 2016-10-21 06:48
I'm having the biting issue as soon as I start playing. I've talked to my teacher about putting some sort of covering on top of my bottom teeth, but he's somewhat hesitant about that because he claims biting shouldn't be an issue with a proper embouchure. I played double lip for a while, but the pressure is then put on my top lip and I bite there instead. In fact, in the process of attempting to fix my embouchure, I'm beginning to bite even more and the issue is becoming more frustrating.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-10-21 07:06
Bob Bernardo wrote:
> Karl, where do you get EZO's at? Sounds interesting.
Actually, the last two boxes I bought (which is about a lifetime supply) came from an online vendor. I had to Google EZO. I used to get the at Walgreen's, but they weren't stocking them the last time I looked. I don't have the link for the vendor I found - it was several years ago.
Peter, how does the biting affect your sound and your control of articulation? If the sound is constricted and/or articulation is unreliable then maybe you could try the double-lip approach, but instead of using it to the point of digging seriously into your upper lip, once you've formed the embouchure and established a clear tone (with a scale or even some long tones), let the upper lip out but keep everything else the same. If you can get the rounder feeling of the double lip with only the bottom lip in, you may get a start.
You still may well be trying to play on too hard a reed strength for your mouthpiece.
Karl
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-10-23 01:36
Don't worry about slurring between G clarinet and C chalumeau. A very sophisticated player may be able to do this in certain circumstances without using the tongue, but I'd say the effect is hardly ever worth the gamble.
As Karl says, the problem is to shut down the established first overtone regime. The best way of doing that is by using the tongue.
Tony
Post Edited (2016-10-23 02:17)
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Author: Roys_toys
Date: 2016-10-23 01:37
Trying to SLUR down from clarion into chal D or lower, clarinet staying high, is a quite well known problem. I spent loads of time trying to crack this.
Tom Ridenour has a pair of videos on the subject called something like ... " slurring down,the phrases Wilde". You will see that you have to make a bigger mouth cavity by dropping tongue, and I also have to make an instantaneous embouchure loosening. ( not mentioned by TR and probably against all the rules) You have to practice this so many times that you can "think it down".
Once the slur is down, raise tongue again to improve tone.
Other than that it's gently touching the reed, which is more certain to work and you may feel you want do this as well for security sake on anything important.
Basically you have to find a way to tell the reed the high frequency vibrations have dropped.
Fortunately I don't find this comes up at all often, and even less slurring down from altissimo into right hand clarion.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-10-23 01:57
I agree with your post, apart from the implication in:
>> I also have to make an instantaneous embouchure loosening (not mentioned by TR and probably against all the rules).>>
TR often says wise things – though, it has to be said, sometimes silly things.
Still, I've learnt a lot from him. But the day I think I have to 'obey his rules' is a long way off.
Tony
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Author: Roxann
Date: 2016-10-23 05:00
I'd been a biter for years and finally got the issue resolved this summer with the help of an instructor. She had me smile, hold the smile, then whistle...then she'd say that was the position I want my mouth to be in when I play. I was biting to hold the mpc in my mouth. Now, I'm using pressure from the corners of my mouth to hold my mpc in place and my teeth aren't coming into play at all. I love it! I've also gotten rid of the horrible rash I used to get below the middle of my lower lip. Old dogs CAN learn new tricks!
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-10-23 21:52
Well, I just went and tried the slur from G clarinet register to C chalumeau, as I should have done before I posted anything about it away from the clarinet.
What's required is to slightly shift your embouchure towards the tip of the reed whilst continuing to blow.
I found no difficulty in doing the slur, contra what I said about it being almost NECESSARY to use the tongue.
We tend to have a strange attitude toward 'leaps'; almost my first post to the Klarinet list was about this:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/lookup.php/Klarinet/1998/09/000993.txt
Tony
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-10-24 19:34
Further experimentation; being able to do the slur easily seems quite mouthpiece specific.
I find that it's easier on an open mouthpiece, I suppose because you can make quite a difference with your embouchure; but it's much harder on a German-type lay.
I therefore recant my generalisation – which I suppose went against my principles in any case:-)
Tony
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-10-24 20:45
I took a little time to slur twelfths yesterday. They work reliably, but I can't quite seem to read what it is I'm doing! It's more than just releasing the register key, but more time is needed to figure out what it is.
Some times it feels like the tongue or lower jaw are doing something subtle, and that's unclear because those two elements are intimately connected. In other areas (articulation) I'm still learning to disassociate the two, so this question may help in other ways.
I don't get a sense of shifting the embouchure toward the tip of the reed, though maybe that's what the jaw is doing, sort of, but you definitely want to keep blowing. In fact, you can smoothly crescendo right into the lower note if you wish.
One possibly too obvious tip is, practice the slur up as well as the slur down, i.e., up then down. That puts the lower note in memory as the target, so to speak.
Generalizations: for something so utterly necessary, they cause no end of problems. The same for assumptions, even worse.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-10-24 21:38
>> One possibly too obvious tip is, practice the slur up as well as the slur down, i.e., up then down. That puts the lower note in memory as the target, so to speak.>>
What I'd say is that you want to have BOTH notes 'in memory', as you put it.
What the 'Y-shaped tube' metaphor in:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/lookup.php/Klarinet/1998/09/000993.txt
...tries to do is to 'fix' both addresses in your experience.
Then there is no 'going between them'. You just play them one after another, and therefore achieve a perfect legato.
Legato is just the playing of one note after another, with no change of timbre or dynamic.
Trying to CREATE a legato IS the problem.
Tony
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-10-24 21:42
...and now, having given MYSELF a little talking to, I can do the slur on my German mouthpiece too!
Don't we fool ourselves?-)
Tony
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