Author: sfalexi
Date: 2017-06-02 07:09
Quote:
If that is the case, the answer is to work religiously with a metronome, ridiculously slowed down to a trivially handled pace that causes you minimal stress.
Work at the pace, relaxed until flawless.
Once you've mastered that tempo....
Stay there for a while. (Don't rush)
Over time move the metronome up one click at a time never playing faster than you can handle error and stress free.
Prepare to move "2 steps forward and one step back" on the metronomes: you will have good and bad practice days. That's what worked for me. Working on just scales and patterns (can NEVER get enough of those, right?), at a slow enough tempo that I didn't have to worry about the notes and I could just concentrate on moving in a relaxed manner, lifting the fingers enough to let the note sound, not letting them "snap" on or off keys.
I've still got more to go, but this has helped a lot, and it helps me play better. I recently had a coworker mention that she when she first started playing with me, should would laugh because I looked so relaxed playing at times that it looked like I was falling asleep while playing.
To be fair, after the millionth time of playing WWQ liberty bell, or marching band His Honor, or any other "standard" for a military band, yeah, I probably COULD play it in my sleep.
But being relaxed means training at a relaxed pace, and increasing that pace over time.
Quote:
The last two fingers are not very strong and are difficult to control independent of each other. Pianists do a lot of exercises for those two fingers to try to gain independence and there are clarinet exercises in most of the popular method books. Do keep in mind however, the role of the fingers in clarinet vs piano. Pianists have to be able to spread the last two fingers AND move them up and down independently. On a clarinet, the fingers won't spread much at all, and the up and down movement doesn't need to be too high so I would think piano exercises for those fingers are overkill. I think focusing on minimizing how high the fingers move off the rings and keys will help keep those two fingers controlled. Yes, they're connected and want to move together, but you don't need a lot of independent vertical movement to play the clarinet, and even LESS lateral movement of those two fingers.
Alexi
US Army Japan Band
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The Clarinet BBoard
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