 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Jangles1099
Date: 2024-04-17 19:59
A common topic in professional sports are about when an athletes prime is. Usually I personally feel like athletically it's mid-late 20s. My question to you is when was your "prime" of playing clarinet? Has there ever been a point where you feel you noticed you weren't as talented as you were a few years ago? Or are you more like the famous quote from Hokusai "When I am 80 you will see real progress, At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvellous artist. At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before."
When I was younger I had hoped that someday I would be able to answer this question, however my days of trying to be a pro player are over as I decided many years ago to become a band director instead of going into performance
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Author: Reese Oller
Date: 2024-04-17 21:49
I have a clarinet teacher who is I think in his mid-60's, and I think he sounds absolutely fantastic. Even if he was better in his youth, he still never fails to impress.
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Author: Tom H
Date: 2024-04-17 22:25
My "prime" was probably about age 45-- after I retired from teaching band and started practicing a lot more. I did play the Nielsen at age 36, but that consumed all my practicing minutes at the time. At 70 (8 days from now) I still play principal in a band and occasionally am still a featured soloist. I don't have the enthusiasm for soloing that I used to. In viewing tapes of solos from the past I can see a difference compared to my more recent ones. The technique is still there but the mind is a bit lazy. Uh, what was I just writing about?
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Post Edited (2024-04-17 22:28)
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2024-04-18 02:29
I can't answer for myself, but those whose clarinet playing I have loved and followed seem to peak in their 60s. By the time they're in their 80s, the tone has changed...many times is thinner, etc., and the notes aren't as technically fluid.
I haven't noticed the same thing of (say) trumpeters.
However - lots of folks pay to hear/see performers who are past their prime, and lots of folks play and enjoy music past their prime.
It's a wonderful world all around!
Fuzzy
;^)>>>
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Author: Jarmo Hyvakko
Date: 2024-04-18 05:08
I am in my 60's. In some things i was perhaps better in my younger years but in some things i am better than ever. Every now and then i play a clarinet part and notice: i wasn't able to play this in my 30's. Now i am.
Being a musician is a journey. A lifelong journey. Just learn to practise, practise and practise, meticulously, carefully, effectively. And every day! Every day being more important than how many hours a day.
Jarmo Hyvakko, Principal Clarinet, Tampere Philharmonic, Finland
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Author: ruben
Date: 2024-04-19 12:44
Some people are perhaps past their prime, but they were -and still are- so good, nobody notices this. There are compensatory factors that make up for diminished physical strength and technique: a greater understanding of the music, more nuancing, etc..
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: donald
Date: 2024-04-19 15:08
I'm 55 and feel like I can play far better than at any other point in my life. I really wish I'd played this well in my 20s, I probably would have won the orchestral positions I trialed for (my experience was that auditions went fine, but then trial period exposed weaknesses). Like Jarmo above, I often find there are passages I can now play well with minimum bother - that I needed to work on, or fake, in the past.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2024-04-19 17:45
I would speculate that a player who reaches full-time status probably reaches his or her prime sometime in the mid-30s. For those of us who play part-time and do something else as a day job, it can be different. I probably played my best a couple of years after I retired from teaching school music at 60 years old. I'm sure I was past my physical prime by then, but my technique improved because, for the first time since I started working - a couple of years after I finished my graduate degree, I had time to practice and explore.
Karl
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Author: Julian ibiza
Date: 2024-04-19 20:27
Well!... Leslie Craven's angle on professional playing is basically that you need to practice hard when you're young, and then you just need to keep on practicing hard to maintain your performance...And when you slack off .... you will start to drop the ball. So I suspect that passing one's peak as a player may have as much to do with that element, as it likely does with age itself .( within reason obviously).
Julian Griffiths
Tel. 34 696 798 853
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Author: donald
Date: 2024-04-21 13:49
Obviously more time to practise will make a big difference... but as a 55 year old with a 2 year old daughter (and no extended family to babysit) I'm not getting a regular routine in, but now can achieve more in 30min than I used to do in a couple of hours. A whole bunch of things my teachers told me in my 20s didn't really "click" until I was 40 (far too late, but better than never).
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