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Re: Practicing

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2018-04-05 02:42

BGBG wrote:

> I think the most difficult thing about clarinets is that as
> soon as I read some tip or procedure and start doing it I then
> read that some totally opposite procedure is what everyone is
> using.

Well, that's not really a difficulty with the clarinet. It's a difficulty of trying to teach yourself without in-person help. Folks here have to try, using your problem reports, to diagnose something that we can't hear. Each person imagines the problem differently, and different causes for any given problem will suggest different solutions.

When you ask questions about things like reed procedures, there just aren't right answers, so you get an entire gamut of anecdotal ideas with no real way to discriminate among the ones that work and don't work because you have no real frame of reference by which to judge results.

By the time you've tried five suggested solutions to a problem, you've confused yourself to the point that even going back to where you started may be difficult.

If the stimulation of learning as a DYI project is your main interest, you should be enjoying the challenge. If actually learning to play the clarinet as well as you can is the greater interest, you need to have access to someone who can listen and diagnose in person in real time based on actually hearing and seeing you in action. You don't need weekly lessons with a teacher - just someone who is knowledgeable to whom you can go as needed with your questions.

For what it's worth, the best help you could get right now is to have someone point you toward a working setup that, if it isn't perfection itself, will not get in your way and will not cause you problems in basic tone production. Having found such a setup, you should then stop trying to solve problems by changing equipment around - don't change mouthpieces, ligatures, reeds (except if one breaks or has obviously deteriorated over time). There are many problems that can cause "squeaks and such." The more variables you can keep unchanged, the more likely you are to find a solution. Changing too many things at once just complicates the search and leads to frustration.

Karl

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