 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Martina
Date: 2001-12-26 02:37
I've just finished my first semester in college as a music major, and find myself almost overwhelmed by how much I learned. I have been playing the clarinet for a while, but only started private lessons my junior year in high school. My private teacher helped me improve, but I feel that he did not help me with the very basic fundamentals of tone and embouchure.
One concept that I am still not satisfied with my comprehension of is the idea of voicing and the tongue. My teacher in college tells me to keep the voicing high and to think "eee" to get my tongue in a high position. When I am with him and working on it, I feel that I grasp it, but when I practice on my own, I am not always sure that my tone is "right" or if I am maintaining that high tongue position. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can check myself, or does anyone have any exercises that I can do to improve this situation?
Also, does anyone have any suggestions for strengthening my embouchure and endurance? I know that steady, perfect practicing will achieve that, but are there any excercises out there that can help? Thanks so much for reading this!
Sincerly, Martina
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Author: HAT
Date: 2001-12-26 14:08
Tape yourself and listen carefully. Eventually, you will get the hang of playing and listening at the same time. The eeee position is generally correct. Again, it takes time.
Another important thing you can do for sound quality is listen to lots of recordings of great clarinet sounds. Marcellus, Wright, etc. You can discover your own personal favorites. If you listen enough, your ear will guide your oral cavity into copying what you hear.
Endurance is tricky, particularly if you are making lots of changes. I can only recommend the same thing my teacher, Robert Marcellus, did. Lots of Baermann III (I suggest David Hite's edition). An extra hour a day of Baermann should do the trick within a year. Use a metronome and keep it on the slow side.
David Hattner, NYC
www.northbranchrecords.com
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Author: Sandra
Date: 2001-12-26 14:16
Hi Martina! Good luck with your clarinetting! Your attitude is great, and I'm sure that you will be a fine player. Without hearing or seeing you it's difficult to advise you about your embouchure and tonguing, so it's best to listen to your current teacher. Practice with breaks to improve endurance. If you are tired physically tired (including your mouth) or tired mentally, rest before continuing to practice. When I was in college I played scales and arpeggios every day for one hour or so, regardless if I practiced anything else. Daily practice is necessary to maintain endurance. I also use Klose p.123 and other mechanical exercises in Klose practiced slowly, then with added speed. For tone and embouchure, long tones, so that you can concentrate on position and not mechanics. Mentally set your embouchure and hand position before putting the mouthpiece in your mouth. If you haven't read "The Clarinetist's Compendium" by Daniel Bonade, get a copy. There are many, many threads in the bulletin board regarding tone, tonguing, and embouchure. You may want to research and read them. Good playing really begins in the mind and heart first, so center yourself before practicing and realize that all of this is just a process! You will improve and do just fine!
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Author: William
Date: 2001-12-26 15:39
Bottom line is, in order to develope endurance, you need to do a lot of playing. And all of the above advice is good. One thing that I would add is, to take a trick from the NFL pro football teams, and do "two-a days" for a while. One of the old clarinet masters, Alexander Selmer, recommended breaking up your practice schedule into smaller segments with 15 minute rests in between. He advised never practicing when fatigued. So instead of relying on "martathon" hours-long practice sessions where your lower teeth start biting into your lower lip and your surrounding embouchre muscles become too fatgued to support the quality and pitch of your sound, try two (or three) shorter same day sessions of practice thereby giving your muscles--and mind--time to recouperate. I would recommend that some long tones, scales and other technique building studies be a part of your morning session with orchestral excerpts and solo literature being the main focus of your afternoon or evening practice. Between practices, try completing some of that other homework college professors seem to enjoy assigning. In any case, Happy Holidays and Good Clarineting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2001-12-26 18:11
Martina -
What you actually do with your tongue is often very different from what it feels like you're doing. You need to train your ear just as much as your tongue.
Arnold Jacobs, the great tuba player in the Chicago Symphony, said that you should always be thinking about "wind" and "song" rather than what you're doing with any particular part of your body. It's like walking -- it's too complex and involves the coordination of too many tiny movements to notice and think about everything. You learn the process rather than the individual movements.
Of course you need to break the process down to some extent, experimenting to find what happens when you do this, and when you do that. But it always needs to be put together and practiced as a whole.
Go to the following message and then to the links there: http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=15660&t=15574 , which will take you to lots of wonderful material from Jacobs.
This is something that comes gradually. Keep at it, and always keep the technical parts put together with the process of breathing and singing -- of making music.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: HAT
Date: 2001-12-26 18:50
Seconded on Bonade's Clarinetists Compendium. Notice that you will not see anything in it about long tones. My advice is not to do them but to spend the time with Baermann. I suspect Mr. Bonade would have said the same thing, as my teacher did.
David Hattner, NYC
www.northbranchrecords.com
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Author: Gretchen
Date: 2001-12-26 20:10
martina,
I just finished the first semester of my freshman year as well and it's SOOO nice to know that someone is going through the same thing that I am. I felt like i was the only one having this problem. My teacher at school changed my embochure and my tounge position this semseter. I moved my teeth back on the mouthpiece and raised my tounge in the back of my mouth from where my tounge used to be flat on the bottom of my mouth (saying "aah"), to high where i would say "eee". BIG DIFFERENCE. For a while i had no idea if i was doing it right, unless i checked myself by playing a low C, and just putting the octave key on very slowly. If the high G had a ring to it, it was right. Now it's just a feeling inside my mouth, and if the sound is right, then i'm doing it correctly. But in the beginning of this change, that really helped me a LOT.
Good luck.
Gretchen.
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Author: Sandra F. H.
Date: 2001-12-27 12:40
Second to Baermann! Long tones are good when one is concentrating on a new embouchure position in order to hear the tone without concentrating on the hands or notes. There are threads about this through the BB re: register jumps using long tones that I have personally used in the past and found to be beneficial. To develop a nice tone the mechanical/technical exercises in Baermann or Klose are great, because one must keep a steady, unmoving embouchure in all registers to maintain a consistent tone. To develop endurance, of course, Baermann and other exercises are great! Good luck...keep us posted!
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Author: Lorie
Date: 2001-12-31 18:08
Hi, Martina:
Been there...done that. My teacher changed my embouchure as yours did - and this is really a good change to make as it will make a dramatic difference in your sound - if the corners of your mouth are forward and your tongue is high. I check my tongue position by making sure that I can feel my upper molars with the edges of my tongue. It is REALLY easy to drop your tongue when you are playing loudly and so serious long tone work at a variety of dynamic levels would be useful. I would like to recommend the Kelly Burke Warm Up book. It is great!!! And, it is important that you consistently warm-up with long tones (15-20 mins), scales/arpeggios (20-30mins), then etudes and solo work for the remaining time. If you get into a routine, you will find a comfort zone...Good luck to you.
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