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Re: Help?

Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2023-01-17 06:40

Ok, I may be making too much of my own problems with biting but I just thought I'd pass along some issues that I had which had some of the manifestations that you describe.

Playing large intervals, particularly moving downward, was always problematic and I could never quite do them fast enough. I had to use padding in between my lower teeth and my lower lip (I still do though probably not a necessity any more). Then the worst issue was that the lowest G through B (the G sitting under the second ledger line under the staff was the worst) were untenably sharp at low dynamics. This came up during the initial clarinet solo in Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. That low A came out and stayed far too sharp as the violins came in to expose the problem. It was an ear opening and embarrassing moment.

You mentioned tuning "just the mouthpiece." I would disregard ANY mentions of what a mouthpiece should sound like by itself. The references that I ran into in the past were quite dated and mouthpieces of the 40's and 60's had much smaller tone chambers and naturally played much higher....by themselves.

As KDK mentions the throat notes are more "pliable," so if putting too much energy into your embouchure turns out to be a problem (just a suggestion) for you, you can start to retrain by playing the open G (second line of staff) as relaxed as possible always working to bring that pitch DOWN. When things line up properly you'll be surprised how much more evenly in tune ALL the notes become up and down the horn.

..................Paul Aviles

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