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Re: Altissimo F# on Eb

Author: EbClarinet
Date: 2019-10-12 10:57

I'm an Eb Clarinet specialist. I've been playing since I was 28 and I'm 47 now. That particular F# is out of tune on most Eb Clarinets. Mine is almost 40 cents flat. If you choose to play it then use the fingering that works best but you're going to have to BITE to play up there in "tune." I don't know the song but if you have any thing higher than that then you're going to have to lip those notes down, which is NOT easy 2 do in rapid passages. You've already hit the nail on the head to play it down an octave.

I played The Nutcracker on Eb and I had an A to F slurred in a sixteenth note passage. There was NO way to blow through that so rapidly so I took that run down and octave. My junior high school band director played 1st flute (she's older and retired) had a super C on flute that she took down an octave.

In the college band I came out of, the 1st chair Bb Clarinet player told me the Eb clarinet player took a LOT down an octave to play in tune. How ever, that takes all the fun out of mastering the Eb. My best advice would be to play some long tones from the low E all the way to the altissimo G and play around with a tuner and see what you can do lip wise. Your reeds and mouth piece set up sounds fine.

Hope this helps!

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/mbtldsongministry/

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