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Re: Thumb position

Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2020-12-31 15:17

Hi bmcgar,

Thanks, yes that was kind of what I was wondering. I do tend to grip the clarinet like a vice.

I just tried playing my complicated piece again, bearing seabreeze's advice in mind. The thing that I am finding helps more than anything else is actually memorising the music on paper before I play the clarinet at all.

I've spent the last 8 or 10 weeks writing out my scales on paper over and over, and then doing that again, but also writing the fingering in every time, while imagining it in my head. Not in a concentrating, working-hard, kind of way, but just as a quiet relaxation exercise. I also did that for the fiddly bits in my pieces.

The result seems to be that when I come back to the instrument, the fingering and sight reading comes to me much more naturally, and I have the space to relax a bit. I'm hoping that as my fingering becomes more and more automatic, I will have more and more space to relax and enjoy playing rather than constantly worrying about where I need to put my fingers next.

The really odd thing is that once one of those fiddly bits becomes automatic in my fingers, the music feels as though it goes more slowly and I have time to relax and enjoy it, even though I am actually playing more quickly than before.

Thinking about seabreeze's advice today, I realised that when I get to that stage, I also find that my thumb is no longer a problem and then it just finds the right spot all by itself without me thinking about it. I think seabreeze may be right, that the position doesn't matter nearly as much as I thought.

I will keep trying and pondering. It's interesting stuff this.

Thanks!

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Thumb position new

SunnyDaze

2020-12-30 15:30