 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Richie
Date: 2017-05-25 07:44
Anyone know of any exercises I can use to improve my air support and get accustomed to it? (Besides the simple longtones, which do help) I think this is the biggest weakness in my playing.
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Author: Claudia Zornow
Date: 2017-05-27 02:27
I like playing scales at a reasonable tempo (not so fast that I have to think about the notes) and concentrating as much as possible on whatever I'm trying to improve. This can be:
- air support
- embouchure/tone
- relaxed fingers
and so on. You could make up your own exercises like this to focus on air support. Also play short passages from whatever you're working on and focus on the air support. The more you do this, the more it will become a muscle memory habit.
Claudia
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2017-05-27 06:39
Brass players (especially low brass) have a million exercises to build up their air support, breath support, lung capacity, etc.
If you feel you need need more/better air support, I bet there's a million articles out on google on breath support and tuba. Their lungs are biologically the same as ours. I'd follow some of that low brass advice.
Alexi
US Army Japan Band
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Author: Roxann
Date: 2017-05-28 06:25
My teacher hit on this just yesterday. She laid down on the floor, took a really heavy book (big dictionary) and laid it on her stomach. Then she demonstrated how we would normally exhale (the book descends towards the floor as you breathe out), then she demonstrated how the book SHOULD behave. It SHOULD rise as we tighten our core muscles and exhale. Then she took the book, put it horizontally at her naval and stood against a wall with the book between her and the wall. As she exhaled, her body actually went away from the wall because her abdomen (and ribs and back) all went outwards instead of inwards. Then she had me do both exercises. Then we transitioned it to the clarinet. What a difference in sound it made!
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Author: jthole
Date: 2017-05-28 21:00
I was taught the books exercise indeed, and also an exercise where you fixate a piece of cigarette paper to the wall with the air stream from your mouth. There are many more, for training the air support, and for getting the mental image in your mind (e.g. imagining blowing out a candle while playing).
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Author: Claudia Zornow
Date: 2017-05-31 03:45
Try thinking about both air support on sustained notes and also air support going between notes. It's easy to let up on the air in between notes without realizing it.
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2017-06-03 06:33
Taking a step back, what bad thing happens to your play that you think stronger air support might address, or even makes you think that you get winded too easily?
There are plenty of techniques for strong blow, like balloons or the Gilad's Wind-O product that uses them (which I think is like drinking bottled water when the tap in your area is good.)
I say this because sheer aerobic activity, which costs you only your time, strengthens lungs and their capacity.
Check with a physician before starting an exercise program.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2017-06-04 00:46
The book on your stomach is a way to learn what controlling the lower abdominal muscles feels like. It builds awareness, which is good as far as it goes. Aside from bouncing books onto the floor, my teachers used to push their fists into my abdominals and have me push against them as I played. Gigliotti even had me read (English) from a book - to demonstrate the effect on my voice and guard against throat tension which can be a reaction - while pushing out against his intruding fist. Americans, if not Europeans, are today too conscious of touching students (and its possible legal consequences) to do this anymore. But, again, it was nothing more than an awareness builder. Once you've learned to feel the muscular action involved in maintaining and controlling the air flow *without adding tension elsewhere,* it becomes a question of thinking about it as you play - anything, whether scales, long tones, etudes, concertos, it's the same process.
The instructors of every yoga class I've ever taken talked about the same kind of deep abdominal breathing. The point is mostly to take in a maximal amount of air to provide a rich source of oxygen and, in the case of wind instrument playing, to provide more internal resonance. But it isn't specifically a clarinet technique and it can be learned initially very quickly without a lot of protracted exercise.
So, what it comes down to is that once you know where your abdominals are and what it feels like to engage them in the breathing process, it becomes a matter of consciously using them. No special exercises. Long tones will not by themselves *make* you use abdominal support, nor will scales. You don't even need it all the time. It becomes a tool in improving tone, articulation response, legato connection and breath span anytime you need those to be optimal.
Karl
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2017-06-04 16:54
It's worth reiterating – though I have to say, I'd rather it didn't seem ONLY to be me saying it over and over for the last 20 years or so – that keeping your abdominal muscles more flexed whilst continuing to play at the same dynamic as you do when they are less flexed is EVIDENCE of the use of support rather than a complete description of support.
We support our hand by resting it on the paper when we write, using the reactive support of the resistance of the paper, table and so on to the weight of our hand and arm. Similarly, we support the blowing action of the combination of abdominal and back muscles by the action of the DIAPHRAGM, which is a muscle that pushes DOWNWARDS; ie, AGAINST the blowing action.
The trouble with understanding that is that we can't FEEL our diaphragm being used, because there are no sensory nerves running from it to the brain. We can nevertheless learn to modulate its use effectively with attentive practice.
Hence, the 'magic diminuendo', which counts, I would say, as an excellent 'air support exercise'.
Tony
Post Edited (2017-06-04 16:56)
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Author: kdk
Date: 2017-06-04 18:22
Tony Pay wrote:
> It's worth reiterating – though I have to say, I'd rather it
> didn't seem ONLY to be me saying it over and over for the last
> 20 years or so – that keeping your abdominal muscles more
> flexed whilst continuing to play at the same dynamic as you do
> when they are less flexed is EVIDENCE of the use of support
> rather than a complete description of support.
>
Your past contributions about this have been enormously useful and instructive, and I wouldn't argue against your analysis in any way. The OP would do well to use the search function here to look up "magic diminuendo" and then follow any links in those posts to the other comments you've made about breathing and "support."
I'm not sure, though, I understand why you say that the deliberate action of flexing the abdominal muscles is only EVIDENCE rather than an active part of the process. Agreed, it isn't the complete process, and further description is possible (you've supplied much of it elsewhere on the BB), but it's hard to know from the OP's original question how much of that explanation he's ready to process because it's hard to tell what problem he's trying to solve.
> The trouble with understanding that is that we can't FEEL our
> diaphragm being used, because there are no sensory nerves
> running from it to the brain. We can nevertheless learn to
> modulate its use effectively with attentive practice.
> Hence, the 'magic diminuendo', which counts, I would say, as an
> excellent 'air support exercise'.
>
At some point, though, the inability to feel the diaphragm's action means that we have to rely on controlling the action we *can* feel in our abdominal area. The "magic diminuendo" is an indicator in that we can hear that *something* somewhat counterintuitive is happening - we can push steadily with our abdominals and yet the sound can diminish [I]al niente[/I]. And we somehow learn to control it without really knowing how because we can't feel the diaphragm's contribution to the process.
We can't feel the diaphragm's contribution, but we hear it. The diminuendo itself is the evidence. But I'm not sure whether "magic diminuendo" is an indicator of support or of control, which at a practical level may not be the same thing, at least not in the sense that I think the OP may have meant it.
An aside - maybe interestingly (or not), when I took voice lessons for two years as a college student, my teacher - the chairman of the voice department - insisted on an image of emptying a tube of toothpaste. The abdominal area would in effect contract from the bottom, squeezing the air out as it did so. I've already described how in the clarinet studio I was being instructed to keep the abdomen expanded as fully as possible - to actively resist the natural tendency to let the abdominal wall collapse inward as I exhaled. I've read the tooth paste tube image in other articles by low brass players. I think some of this difference can be explained by the volume of air needed to support vocal production or to move the air in a tuba compared to what can be pushed through the narrow aperture between the reed and the tip rail. And I suspect that in reality different members of the muscle group we lump together as "the abdominals" are involved in each approach. But the point for me was that ideas for the use of the abdominal muscles in supporting a musical tone is apparently dependent on the nature of the instrument. Neither image in any case really addresses what the diaphragm itself is doing, since the player can't deal directly with it.
Karl
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2017-06-04 19:40
Karl, people use the word 'support' here in a very casual way, as though everyone is agreed as to what it means. (You yourself have it be synonymous with what you call 'abdominal support'.) There is a fog of misconception about the whole matter, and I see no reason not to try to dispel this fog.
The fog becomes evident when I tell people that it is possible to play some passages very well WITHOUT SUPPORT: you just blow, using your abdominal/back muscles.
Now, someone who understands the matter will immediately agree. Someone who doesn't understand may well say, but, you need abdominal support to play AT ALL – what on earth do you mean?
The difficulty is that 'support' is a RELATIONSHIP between two muscular presences, (1) the abdomen/back muscles, and (2) the diaphragm. Everyone should understand why that's unavoidably confusing experientially when you tell them that you can't FEEL number (2) directly.
But you do have to tell them, so that they have a handle on their confusion. (Otherwise, they're just, well, confused:-) But once they know, then support becomes a perfectly simple, if strange, idea. The magic of the 'magic diminuendo' has the DELIGHT of magic too.
To try to bring out the simplicity, I once made the analogy with painting. Say I'm a sign painter on a ladder, painting someone's name above their shop. I stencil the letters, and then start filling them in, painting normally. I don't need to be too precise about the filling in – I can use fairly crude brushstrokes, using just my painting hand.
But when I come to paint the EDGES of the letters, I have to be more careful.
Suppose I'm right-handed. I rest my left elbow on something, and SUPPORT my painting hand with my left arm, by holding my right wrist with my left hand. Now I'm painting WITH SUPPORT, using the combination of the push of my right hand towards the sign and the opposite push of my left hand away from the sign. It gives me better control, you see.
Painting with support is a special case of painting, just as blowing with support is a special case of blowing. And on the clarinet, this support has other uses than precise control, it turns out.
My view is that we need to represent this view when the subject of support comes up. And, I have to say, you very often don't, here, and I don't understand why.
Every time you ignore one half of the situation, you give more space to MISunderstanding.
Tony
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Author: kdk
Date: 2017-06-04 22:07
Tony Pay wrote:
> Karl, people use the word 'support' here in a very casual way,
> as though everyone is agreed as to what it means. (You
> yourself have it be synonymous with what you call 'abdominal support'.)
> And on the
> clarinet, this support has other uses than precise control, it
> turns out.
>
> My view is that we need to represent this view when the subject
> of support comes up. And, I have to say, you very often don't,
> here, and I don't understand why.
>
> Every time you ignore one half of the situation, you give more
> space to MISunderstanding.
>
Interesting - you're right that I tend to think of support, used in the context of clarinet (or wind instrument) technique, as the deliberate use of the abdominal muscles to strengthen and homogenize the air supply that produces tone. I suppose I consider the other half - "you just blow" - to be something we do naturally without much if any thought and, so, not needing instruction or description. I do include in my post the idea that "support" (of the abdominal muscular variety) is a tool that isn't always needed.
I suppose in my teaching I tend to look for the simplest explanation that a student's level of skill demands. More complete a description of any process than necessary to solve an immediate problem risks eye rolls and distracted glances around the room as the student who asked about (or couldn't do) A waits for me to finish talking about B, C, C prime and D so he can get on with his playing. As a private studio teacher and, certainly, as a school music teacher teaching 4 to 8 young students at a time, I've become conditioned to limit my response to what was asked or required to solve a specific problem. And so, when I write here, I guess I tend to do the same thing. As I implied (actually, I was more explicit than that) twice - once in my first post and once again in my response to yours - without knowing what the OP really wanted to know, it's a little difficult to tailor an answer that he might find useful without going into details that may be several steps beyond his immediate interest.
I suspect he wants to know how to produce a richer, maybe louder sound, in which case my answer might well have been even simpler that it was - blow more air. The most immediate caveat at that point is to avoid tightening the throat as a reactive consequence (which Gigliotti's speech illustration focused on). That's even more incomplete than the answer I actually wrote, but I'm not sure it's any less than the OP needs to get to the next level of skill and awareness and solve what I've supposed, without hearing him play, is his immediate problem. It's why so many of the questions asked here by very inexperienced players ought better to be addressed by a teacher in person who can hear the problems the student may not know how to ask about.
None of this is meant to dispute the need here of more complete and carefully thought-out analyses than I admit I often write. Yours often force me to think farther than previously and I'm certain I'm not alone. And even if I decided to try to go into the same level of detail, I'd risk simply parroting what you've already written, since I've learned much of it from those past posts.
Karl
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2017-06-05 00:50
Karl Krelove wrote:
>> Interesting - you're right that I tend to think of support, used in the context of clarinet (or wind instrument) technique, as the deliberate use of the abdominal muscles to strengthen and homogenize the air supply that produces tone. I suppose I consider the other half - "you just blow" - to be something we do naturally without much if any thought and, so, not needing instruction or description. >>
So, let me say this again, because I haven't got it over to you yet:
The 'other half' of support isn't "you just blow". The other half of support is the diaphragmatic resistance that the abdominal muscles blow AGAINST. That obviously reduces the strength of the effect of the abdominal muscles – that's why I say, "playing with support means, playing quieter than you're blowing" – but there are all sorts of advantages.
When I first posted about this, Liquorice, a highly able working professional clarinettist said, in the Keepers thread entitled 'Support' which might be worth looking at:Quote:
I've waited a while before responding to this post, because I had to think long and hard about what Tony was saying. At first it ddn't really make sense to me, but after some attempts at the various things that he is describing, I realise that it is in fact EXACTLY what I am doing. I've never fully understood the anatomy of the opposition between diaphragm and abdominal muscles, although I did have a sense that that is in fact what is going on. Thank you Tony for giving an explanation of "blowing the clarinet" that for me finally makes sense. ...and that description of his experience mirrors my own experience when I stumbled over the explanation myself.
>> I do include in my post the idea that "support" (of the abdominal muscular variety) is a tool that isn't always needed. >>
So, what I'm saying is rather: that support of the DIAPHRAGMATIC OPPOSITION variety is a tool that isn't always needed. That's true even though I myself, and others, very very often use it.
>> I suppose in my teaching I tend to look for the simplest explanation that a student's level of skill demands. More complete a description of any process than necessary to solve an immediate problem risks eye rolls and distracted glances around the room as the student who asked about (or couldn't do) A waits for me to finish talking about B, C, C prime and D so he can get on with his playing. As a private studio teacher and, certainly, as a school music teacher teaching 4 to 8 young students at a time, I've become conditioned to limit my response to what was asked or required to solve a specific problem. And so, when I write here, I guess I tend to do the same thing. >>
As Sarah Elbaz reported here once, it's quite easy for even young students to catch on to the idea of the 'magic diminuendo'. Unfortunately, older students who are in difficulties can find it difficult to let go of the often erroneous ideas that are blocking their appreciation of it.
>> As I implied (actually, I was more explicit than that) twice - once in my first post and once again in my response to yours - without knowing what the OP really wanted to know, it's a little difficult to tailor an answer that he might find useful without going into details that may be several steps beyond his immediate interest. >>
The OP said he wanted "...to improve my air support and get accustomed to it... I think this is the biggest weakness in my playing."
My feeling is that the first step should be to identify what support actually is ('blowing louder than you're playing, and the magic diminuendo"). And, I think it's more fundamental than anything else. Kids don't need to UNDERSTAND it; they just need to get used to it.
In my own experience, I sometimes can considerably improve my results by asking myself, would it be a good idea to try using more support than I currently am (blowing harder but keeping the same dynamic)?
And I can do this because I know what I'm telling myself; it makes sense, just as Liquorice came to see.
Thanks for your posts, Karl.
Tony
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