 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2019-01-30 23:58
This thread is actually a continuation of a reply posting I made on another thread. I decided to start a new thread because I felt the O.P.'s original "clarinet" question had been answered and that no further responses would be forthcoming. Also, I felt that this subject was important enough to warrant its own thread.
My complete and detailed inquiry as to "how to find a good teacher" can be found here: (Scroll towards the bottom...)
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=471554&t=471554
For the sake of uniformity or compactness, I decided to include Bennett's and Nathan's replies:
First, Bennett's reply:
"If there's a music store where you live (or close by) that sells clarinets, ask them for the name of a teacher. Or consult the music department in a nearby college."
Second, Nathan's reply:
I think there are two questions being asked by Dan.
1) What makes a teacher competent
- experience teaching beginners
- emphasis on proper fundamentals of embouchure and air support (not a bite-and-blow B40 with #5 reeds).
-has at least a bachelor's in education and/or performance
-has a good reputation from current and former students as well as other teachers in the area
-charges a rate consistent with the area
2) How does a beginner find a competent teacher.
-contact the local university/college professor, if there is one
-if not, contact local middle/high schools to see who they recommend (best to contact several just in case)
-if neither of those work, post here on the bboard with your location and see if anyone knows a nearby teacher
-online lessons. While not ideal, since nothing can replace being in the same room 1 on 1, online lessons can still give you good information and get you started in the right direction. Ideally, it would be someone who has beginner experience.
There's plenty more to add to both questions, just my thoughts at the moment."
At this point, I would like to open this thread to everyone for your comments.
Thank you.
Post Edited (2019-01-30 23:58)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2019-01-31 07:47
My first search would be amongst local performing groups such as symphonies, chamber orchestras and military bands. Usually regular performers have the best components required for instruction.
That said there are some really incredible players that just don't know beans about teaching. The great trumpet player Maurice Murphy was renown for not having much to say that would aid a student's inability to achieve a certain task. He'd just pick up his trumpet and play the example (amazingly of course), but leave the student even more dumbfounded. Of course when you've played virtually every John Williams score (Raiders, Star Wars, Jurassic Park), you don't need to hone your teaching skills.
I think the other valuable teacher searching tool would be to be comfortable switching instructors. If after a few weeks there is no comfort level, or you don't feel you are heading in the right direction, feel free to try another instructor. Sometimes it comes down to finding someone that "talks your language" rather than simply "knowing more stuff." If that makes sense.
....................Paul Aviles
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2019-01-31 17:47
I think it depends on the level you're talking about to start. Beginner, intermediate, advanced, college?
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2019-02-01 00:07
Ed,
Absolute beginner...someone who has never even formed an embouchure before.
When I was somewhere around 13 (1960?), my first teacher was located inside a music store. Benny Goodman was very popular at that time and I can still remember seeing caricature posters of him playing the clarinet with a very broad smile that went almost from ear to ear. That was the method that was taught to me.
I always had trouble with air leaking from the right side of my mouthpiece and all my teacher would say is that I had to "close the gap". I thought to myself: "How can I do that when you're telling me to smile more?"
Till today, I don't think he even had a clue as to how a proper or correct clarinet embouchure should have been formed.
Later in life (probably in my late 20's or early 30's), I visited another "teacher" who lived fairly close to where I lived simply to have a one visit "embouchure check". I showed him my "smiling embouchure" and his assessment was that I was doing it correctly.
IMHO, both of them were flat out wrong.
Fast forward a few decades and low and behold...I developed embouchure dystonia.
I haven't played again since that disorder set in.
I believe that if I had been taught the correct or proper embouchure formation right from the start, I would possibly still be playing today in my 70's.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2019-02-01 18:29
I also began lessons at a local music store and choose the clarinet because of Goodman. I have no recollection of what was said about an embouchure when I was young. I do recall asking my teaches later as I advanced if I had a good embouchure but no one ever criticized it. When I became aware of leaking air at times I self evaluated, asked some questions and basicly solved the problem myself over time with slight tweaking. So I don't really have a good answer for a beginner. I think it's beginners luck to a point that your first teacher does a decent job in explaining and showing a student how to form a decent embouchure.
I did have one young student in my early teaching days that refused to even try correcting a horrible embouchure. When I became frustrated I spoke to his mother and explained how terrible it was and he has to make an attempt to improve it so he can sound good. Her answer was, he just wants to play. i encouraged her to find another teacher for him. I said I can't teach someone that refuses to even want to play correctly.
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
Post Edited (2019-02-03 18:46)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2019-02-01 19:27
Amen!
Of course I still bang my head against the wall as long as the student (for whatever reason) wants to continue hearing things to try but continues to flagrantly refuse trying them.
It's a living
.....................Paul Aviles.
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Author: undertheroyalsunmusic
Date: 2019-02-01 19:34
well, just message me, and I'll give lessons. I love teaching beginners. My educational goals are to glorify/enjoy the beauty of the Clarinet, and create a space where once can clearly see their path to a beautiful expression of the heart.
-r
Under the Royal Sun Music.
Austin, TX
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2019-02-02 00:03
Attachment: Benny Goodman.jpg (24k)
Here's a photo of Benny Goodman.
I watch a lot of clarinetists on YouTube. Only once did I see a guy play with what I would call an extended smile and he was playing an Eb clarinet.
Even on this BB, when a newcomer seeks advice about embouchure formation, I have never read anyone emphasizing the importance of "smiling". Rather, what I've read, more than a few times, is simply forming an "O" around the mouthpiece.
Is the "smile" technique still being taught?
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2019-02-02 00:23
I hope not. I recall a photo of Joseph Longo endorsing the Leblanc L-200 that should a prominent smile embouchure (can't tell you why I remember THAT).
Perhaps if their personal physiology enables them to do that without leaking air all over the place then there is no specific reason to change it............but
It is so much easier to accomplish the goal of thinning and smoothing out the lower lip over the lower teeth by "pulling" down and back instead of "up." You'll look like a parrot instead of demented clown (I'll take the parrot any day).
..............Paul Aviles
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Author: undertheroyalsunmusic
Date: 2019-02-02 00:38
I remember in my university days that in woodwind pedagogy class we were taught that the flute embouchure requires a smile to focus the shape of the aperture (the tiny hole that the lips make to blow breath over the blow hole on the lip plate). And the clarinet required one to form an embouchure by focusing the muscles all around the mouthpiece much like sucking a milkshake through a straw (but you do not suck you blow)....Then I remember some other students getting confused about which was which, and i'm sure some of those students got their degree, and are currently teaching public school band, and who knows if they ever learned the right way to teach about embouchure. The main reason I dropped out of college was that this was a common phrase to hear: "you learn more your first year of teaching than all four years of college," well, i took that to heart, dropped out eventualy, and got a grant to teach middle school kids on a community service exchange program (they do one hour community service, and i get paid $50 FOR AN HOUR LESSON) I had 17 students, and was doing well. then I got a D.U.I. spent time in jail, and when I got out, none of my students' parents wanted me to teach their kids anymore. So i moved to Austin, TX and i began playing professionally with various folk/punk/new-music groups.....bottom line, public schools do not teach music properly.
Music is a language, and one must approach learning it much like they learned to speak their primary language. Listen, and emulate. if we all had to learn how to read while we were learning to speak, no one would be able to learn how to speak properly. First, one must recognize the proper expression, only after that is learning how to describe the expression is possible. Music is an aural tradition not a visual tradition. Every student i get that is in public school has so many problems learning to play and read at the same time. I sincerely believe that if one were to learn a single major scale, all corresponding modes, and a few relevant melodies by ear, then their ability to internalize concepts like intonation, pitch recognition, aural imagination would be profoundly different than the current teaching methods produce. this would take three years to achieve a greater understanding of music than the current trend of a kid going through 8 years of public school training, arriving at my studio, and when i ask can you play twinkle twinkle little star, they ask do you have any music for it? I akin this to a person being able to read Shakespeare, but not being able to describe how to make a peanut butter sandwich without a script in front of them. Music must be taught in a way that the abilities developed are useful. The ear must be trained, and the mind must be guided to learn how to make musical decisions.
-r
Under the Royal Sun Music.
Austin, TX
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Author: SoundofPraise
Date: 2019-02-03 08:42
Hey just wanted to say to Ed, your website (eddiesclarinet) is very helpful. Thank you!
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2019-02-03 18:58
Lets not forget the importance of the upper lip to seal and support the embouchure. It needs to be folded into the upper teeth against the mouthpiece. Not unlike double lip but not under the teeth. I sometimes had my students play double lip for a few minutes a day to get the concept. As far as the smile thing, yes, I taught that as well to get the concept of the "flat" chin but then emphasized a slight "pucker" formation as well. A bit of a combination of both .The bottom lip puling down against the teeth gently forming a flat chin but not rigged while slightly forming the "oo" to surround the mouthpiece with your side lip instead of pulling back and blowing foward.
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2019-02-03 19:52
Don, it's interesting to know that the "smile" style of embouchure formation was more widespread than I thought back at the time you and I were beginning. My first teacher was the local high school band director. He played mostly sax, some flute and some clarinet in the local big bands (there were still a few around in the '60s), and he was very explicit about pulling the lips back into a smile. My next teacher, my first elementary school band director and later my junior high band director, was a trombonist and did nothing to correct what I was doing. They were both terrific *teachers* and the high school teacher was even a woodwind doubler. It was only after I began studying with more accomplished symphony clarinetists that I began to change my approach.
But I don't remember anyone's saying explicitly the things that Ed P describes until I got to Temple and began studying with Anthony Gigliotti. He said pretty much the same thing about using the upper lip in a way that's similar to a full double-lip embouchure, and watching him and several of my previous teachers play, it was obvious he was closing in on the mouthpiece, not pulling the corners back. I had a clear impression that this active use of the upper lip was something Bonade taught at Curtis.
It wasn't until I took a lesson with Harold Wright that I heard the words "rubber band" and "gasket" to describe how the lips (both) should function. He was famously a double-lip player and wasn't so concerned about using the upper lip because his embouchure more or less guaranteed it, but I hadn't yet converted, so his comments were aimed at what I was then doing (or not doing).
I've always wondered - how well accepted outside the eastern U.S. or more broadly, outside the entire U.S., is the style of embouchure that Ed describes and that I heard about and observed from a number of teachers, all of whom had a connection to Curtis and, mostly, to Bonade? Bonade, of course, was a product of European teaching. Was this approach universal in Europe and simply took over here through European players' influence?
Karl
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Author: EaubeauHorn
Date: 2019-02-03 22:52
I also developed embouchure dystonia from lack of proper instruction. On horn, not clarinet, but the same thing....improper mechanics and teachers, (many of them) who would say things like "use more air" or "Play the sound you hear in your head."
Really, the ONLY good teacher I have had in the plethora of various musical and sporting things I have tried to learn, was my oboe teacher. It was so damn simple when properly explained and I advanced rapidly. He did not know how to teach vibrato though which in retrospect I find amusing. I had to learn it from videos on the internet, but did manage it. With the horn....I got too far along to make dramatic changes in my embouchure, and at the eleven year point my chops went haywire with dystonia because I kept plugging away at trying to play high without knowing how. I took a four hour lesson from Jan Kagarice and found out the source of the problem and how to fix it and can play now, but I do not play under stress situations any more. At nearly 70, that doesn't matter. She has fixed a few hundred people with dystonia. So has Joaquin Farias with a different approach.
I think it is just damn hard to find a good teacher. People have different ways they learn, and the teacher needs to teach in the way the student needs to learn. I'm a visual learner pretty much, and if it can't be shown to me or isn't a really simple verbal explanation... chances are I'm not going to get it. I still remember taking a couple of golf lessons. The guy went round and round verbally and I got nowhere. Then he suddenly said "Do this!" and showed me a chip swing. I did it, and he figured out how to teach me. Others I have known, can't do squat from being shown and have to have it put in words.
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2019-02-04 02:34
Thanks everyone! I found a lot of useful information in this thread!
One thing I forgot to add about my first teacher was the fact that, as he sat across from me, he would actually use the first finger of his left hand and touch the facial muscles on my upper right cheek as the ones "to pull higher". I couldn't do it when I was 13 and I still can't do it today.
So much wonderful embouchure formation information above!
My original purpose of this thread was to help other beginners get started correctly so that they wouldn't develop the disorder that I have which shows no abatement.
Another point that I would like to add is the importance of having a parental figure who is truly interested in developing whatever musical talent their child might have. Along with the clarinet, I also played the double keyboard organ. I only had a few lessons on the clarinet and, with the organ, 6 months of free lessons came with it. Once the free lessons ended, my mother refused to pay for any more. Many, many years later, I took the opportunity to take a moment and thanked my mother for buying me rather expensive instruments when I was much younger. She looked at me and with a little twinkle in her eye and a slight smile replied: "They kept you off the streets." My response was one of shock and sadness. Here, for several decades, I was convinced that she was truly interested in helping me develop my musical talents! Then I understood why there were no extended or extra lessons on either instrument. Her response still saddens me to this day.
To sum up an embouchure interpretation I gleaned from the above responses, if a true beginner tires too quickly, it might not be just that their embouchure muscles are not fully developed yet. It might actually be that they simply are trying to play with the wrong embouchure formation for them. (And, I must admit...the Benny Goodman embouchure formation was rather tiring and frustrating for me.)
After reading the above responses, I have to agree with EaubeauHorn in that it can be extremely difficult to find a good, competent teacher.
An appropriate or proper embouchure should feel comfortable, shouldn't it?
Post Edited (2019-02-04 09:28)
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2019-02-04 20:45
I taught online a student who's previous teacher taught him that the Chromatic F# fingering used only the 2nd RH side key, not the bottom and 2nd!!!!
Teacher was an oboist who from what I saw was using book knowledge but not actual playing knowledge......
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2019-02-05 00:48
David,
When I read what you wrote, I laughed so hard and then I began to feel so sorry for that individual!
That's why I would recommend that a teacher have at least "some actual clarinet playing experience" as well as the appropriate academic background.
Maybe a good question to ask a future teacher might be: "Who taught you to play?" And then: "Was the clarinet their principal instrument?"
Thanks again, David. That was a real eye opener...
Are there any other stories out there from teachers? I'd love to read them and would look upon them as "cautionary tales" to others who may read this thread in the future.
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Author: Musikat
Date: 2019-02-06 05:19
My first teacher was a young woman who lived in a trailer park next to the high school. I don't remember anything she taught me, but when I got more serious about playing and practicing in high school I had a permanent chapped spot on my lip and chin because my embouchure was completely wrong. In spite of that I was accepted to Interlochen arts camp the summer after my junior year, where Fred Ormand (I believe that was who was the private teacher that year) had me spend the summer changing it by walking around all the time I wasn't playing with the back of my thumb just under my lip, pretending to blow out a candle. It worked and I have never had that chapped spot since!
After that I studied with the principal clarinetist in my local symphony for a bit, followed by the music professor at the nearby university. Good teachers are so important. When my son began playing clarinet, I started him out to save money, but as soon as he hit middle school I took him to a friend of mine who has been teaching for many years and is great with kids. If he sticks with it and gets more serious, there is a local professional who leads my clarinet choir and is an amazing teacher. I may change him to her in a few years to give him a different perspective.
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2019-02-06 06:27
Musikat,
Thanks for your input! Much appreciated! It sounds as if your first teacher wasn't fully qualified and I'm glad that Interlochen was able to correct your embouchure problem.
I've tried the method you described that Interlochen wanted you to use. When I do it, my right muscles are very weak due to embouchure dystonia so I have to offset my mouthpiece slightly to the right. However, when I tried the method you mentioned, because my thumb nail is obviously curved, when I pushed in on the sides, I could sense that the flatness of the skin over my lower teeth near the left and right edge was "crunching up". I sense this hopefully wouldn't happen with a flat reed surface. Actually, I look upon your method as the "drawstring" approach which has been mentioned on this BB before.
Thanks again for sharing your experiences!
I'm looking forward to reading first teacher experiences from others!
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