 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Carol
Date: 2001-12-25 06:22
I am obsessed!!!!! I love dixieland music. I play with a little band once a month. But I am wondering if there is a special trick to playing riffs - sometimes I can, I sometimes I get lost. I listen to lots and lots of old records, Sidney Bechet, all those, but I feel that there is something that I am really missing out on. Anybody got any help for me. I study the chords, I play by ear, I try - I try. Does anybody have any more suggestions for me? Thanks so much, Carol.
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Author: chuck
Date: 2001-12-25 16:24
Listen, listen, listen . . . and start with Armstrong and Fountain. Chuck
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Author: Dan
Date: 2001-12-25 17:55
Carol, we have a local group that plays once a week not too far from where I live. My step-son, who is not a musiciain, has chatted with a few of them...really nice guys. I suggest you might try doing the same. During one of their 15 to 20 minute breaks, just go up to the person playing clarinet and introduce yourself. You never know what might happen. Just remember, the person you talk to was once exactly where you are right now. Good luck!
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Author: willie
Date: 2001-12-25 23:17
First you have to know the chords so as to stay within that structure. You either be playing harmony or doing arpegios in that chord mostly. Ther are other options too so get some recordings and listen to different atrists and thier different styles.
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Author: Bob Arney
Date: 2001-12-26 00:08
What I am going to say will sound dumb. Having said that let's get on with it.
Carol, a lot of it is in your head. You have to "hear it" before you can play it, otherwise most riffs will sound "canned" as if you borrowed them from some record. Also, you have to know where the lead is going and what he(she) plans on doing with it before you can jump in. You say you play by ear, if so what Willie said is a must. Not only that you must know whether you can pull it off--there's not much worse than being hung out to dry when the lead goes left and you turned right!! 8-[
Bob A
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Author: ron b
Date: 2001-12-26 00:59
Once a month is NOT enough ....
Find a patient like-minded piano or guitar/banjo player and play together as often as possible. After a while you'll begin to 'hear it' as Bob A. so aptly describes the process. Then when you practice alone you'll be playing what you hear/feel. I've played Trad most of my life, have met and associated with many players I admire to this day. We all have one thing in common... we started exactly the same way you are, Carol; with a love of making music. Hang in there, you're doing much better than you think you are. We're all our own worst critics :]
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2001-12-26 04:08
Carol,
Don't just listen to the recordings. Play along with them. I don't mean that you should memorize the riffs on the recordings note-for-note. Just play along at your own pace and try to fit in. When I first started on the clarinet, my Dad would turn on the radio for the last 10 minutes of each practice session and make me play along with whatever was on at the time. At first, I hated it but now I am eternally grateful. By the time I was in Junior high, I had already begun to develop a good enough ear to "play around" the melody lines of many of the old standards. By high school, I was making a fair amount of money on weekends playing with rock and "lounge" bands. Learning chords can help but I hear too many Kenny G wannabes (who don't understand him at all, IMHO) who have no ear and think that running through arpeggios at 90 miles an hour is improvisation. Everything they play sounds the same. Borrrrrringggg! IMHO, learning chords should be an extension of, not a substitute for, learning to "feel" progressions and "feel" the underlying melody. My $.02.
Happy holidays,
jnk
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2001-12-26 04:55
Do you know Jamey Aebersold jazz play-along series? This is famous world wide. You can easily find its URL.
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Author: allencole
Date: 2001-12-27 06:55
On the technical side, learn your scales and arpeggios--particularly the major ones--pronto. These will provide you a good framework to feel your way around in.
Theorywise - Learn to hear chord progressions so that you know where a song is going. I learned this primarily from playing guitar, but you can do it on a band instrument with a little work.
Otherwise - Get some dixieland records with a clarinet player that you really like and play along with them. Just play the songs over and over, and try to pick up licks that you like the sound of. Make up some of your own and see how they fit.
Your best teachers for this are recordings of what you want to play. Keep hacking at it, and don't expect to get it all right on the first try. If you do this every day, you'll see steady progress.
If you need info to get started with chord progressions, you can try some of my online learning activities at http://www.jamschool.net.
Good luck, and keep hacking at it.
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Author: Charlie Coleman
Date: 2001-12-27 14:42
Hello to all - I just want to say that if the internet had been around when I started on clarinet some 55 years ago, I might well be a musician rather than a retired EE. I hope all who benefit from the expertise of the professionals who inhabit these sites really appreciate the help and advise that is freely given! I have always been mostly an 'ear' player and I have learned quite a bit since surfing the jazz sites even though I have a resource of over 1000 jazz records from Armstrong, Bix, Tesch, Bechet, up to and including Goodman, DeFranco as well as the great contemporary trad clarinetists - Joe Lukasic of the Buffalo Ridge JB out of Cincinnati, Ohio just blows me away! BTW I hope that everyone is aware of redhotjazz.com - a great site for early jazz. Best Wishes for a JAZZY NEW YEAR! Charlie C.
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Author: ~ jerry
Date: 2001-12-28 00:37
Charlie,
I think they were developing the internet 55 years ago but never imagined it to turn out like this. Anyway, the internet as we know it today, has been around a lot longer than I've been lerning clarinet.
Wish I could retire and lay around all day learn to play this infernal instrument .....especially jazz.
Thanks for the tip on the Jazz site.
~ jerry
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Author: - ron b -
Date: 2001-12-28 03:38
Retire and lay around all day? On which planet?
One hundred and fifty-five years ago cross country travel would have been relatively safe if you stayed with the wagon train. One hundred years ago concert pitch was being standardized to A-440.
Fifty-five years ago 'They' were trying to get snowy tv pictures to broadcast more than ten miles across town while cops were communicating, as best they could, by am radio. Balanced action manual typewriters were unbelieveably sophisticated. 33 1/3 recordings were the very latest thing and almost everyone in urban U.S.A. and Canada had indoor flush toilets. Buck Rogers saw the computer age coming but didn't know how to explain it in laymen's terms. Rocket ships were the solid fuel type. Even so, space travel and automatic lawn sprinklers were right around the corner. Travel by railway was common while air fares were becoming more affordable to us common people. It was a marvelous time, even without the Internet.
With all our faults and drawbacks it's still a marvelous time.
Happy New Year!
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Author: ~ jerry
Date: 2001-12-28 12:27
Hey, Ron.
Saw my first TV when I was 12 yrs..................watched Bulldog Drummond and the Lone Ranger through snow thicker than what they have in Buffalo right now........transmitter in Los Angeles and I lived in san Diego...................I could not play clarinet nor did I want to -- it wasn't "cool" to play a girls instrument -- the "boss" instrument of that time was the trumpet but I had neither the desire nor the discipline to learn any musical instrument. Ironically enough, the two younger girls next door to me at that time played trumpet.
You're right-on about the "time" both then and now (well sorta -- before 911 anyway). Just last year I was tellling some of the younger ones in the office that there was no better time to be alive that now (in this country) -- no wars, no fallout shelters, no A-bomb fallout practice at school and no threat of nuclear holocaust. The information revolution is here, the economy is great and there has never been a better time to reach ones goals. I guess I was a teeny bit optimistic, but the current condition is another speed bump in the road to developing a stronger nation.
A happy and prosperous New Year to everyone world wide.
~ jerry
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2001-12-28 16:41
Jerry,
They couldn't have been developing the internet 55 years ago. Al Gore hadn't been born yet! ;^)
Happy new year,
jnk
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