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Portnoy on Embouchure

Author: Windy Dreamer
Date: 2018-11-16 21:40

See Portnoy " The Embouchure and Tone Color".
This is a truly fascinating and inspirational short article.
During the 5 to 6 years I have played clarinet I have vested all my energy into color with no consideration of the frequency precision of tone. Most of the students I speak with are entirely opposite , vesting all their energy into attempting to maintain perfect frequency of tone throughout the duration of a note.The last student I spoke with plays with a digital analyzer mounted on her clarinet as she plays with her student orchestra. A few weeks ago I spoke with another student that keeps her analizer more discreetly on her lap while she plays in orchestral settings.To these type of students color and character of tone are meaningless. I often wonder what kind of teacher could tolerate such nonsense.
In the article Portnoy asserts " many players take in too much lip ". He continues with the assertion that with minimal lip a player could master greater control of color. Given that color and character of tone are of utmost importance to me I assessed how much lip I take in and attempted to play with the most minimal lip possible.I do take in a lot of lip. It would not be possible to take in more. With minimal lip it took almost 10 minutes to produce a single short tone.A few hours later I could almost play the notes of the ring keys.The experiment looks promising with tones that are much broader and richer than I have ever produced before. Unfortunately my highly reworked reeds are much to soft . Pursueing minimal lip would mean that I would have to learn to play almost from scratch with a wholly different reed technology.
Is minimal lip really the key to mastery of color and character of tone ? Do most modern teachers even care about color and character of tone ? Based on my short experiment it is tempting to abandon maximal lip in favor of minimal lip.I do not think it is possible to play both ways. The groove in my lip formed from past method of play is a real barrier that is rapidly breaking down with the attempt to play minimally.Loss of that groove would make it impossible to play as I have up until now.

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Portnoy on Embouchure new

Windy Dreamer

2018-11-16 21:40