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RE: Help for this sore right thumb

Author: donald nicholls
Date: 2001-10-29 10:32

now, a very fine player in a professional symphony had some lessons with Jozeph Balogh.... he got her to remove her thumb rest and play without padding etc... and somehow her tone got clearer. RUBBISH i said to her. But she insisted that he was correct- it had somehow improved her tone. Well..... after thinking about this for a year i tried it out for myself- for a different reason (i gave my extended thumb rest, made out of VW fuel tube, to a friend who was having trouble with muscle strain and needed to be able to adjust the angle her thumb approached the instrument). I found the folowing things...
1) my tone improved
2) i had to seriously address defficiencies in my "hand curvature"- i had to improve my finger action to hold the clarinet steady etc I'm reasonably sure that i had to push up slightly harder with my right thumb (advised by some good teachers anyway).
well, i'll bet you a 'hapenny bun that the two are linked. I've spent too much of my 32 years of life NOT LISTENING when people try to make my life easier. This one is good advice, but probably not for any simple reason but a collection of related reasons.
Of course, we're talking a 2% improvement here, so unless you've done more obvious things to improve your tone (reed/mouthpiece/barrel/clarinet/ligature/good teacher/PRACTISE) you probably won't notice a thing.
donald

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