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 Re: Beginning doubling on clarinet from trumpet
Author: kurth83 
Date:   2024-05-13 07:33

Didn't find a teacher until Feb 2024 (about 3 months back). She was principal of a smaller symphony for over 20 years. I got lucky finding a teacher like that. And she's been amazingly helpful. Had to relearn a lot of things, and replace bad habits with good ones. She is also 1st chair in the symphonic band I play 2nd trumpet in. :-)

I have been avoiding posting mostly because I am practicing a lot and getting good on an instrument takes time. A glowing report after 6 months doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. In a few years we'll see if I've developed into a decent intermediate player.

The physical mechanics are looking promising but developing strength to play on an adequately stiff reed has been more challenging than I had hoped for. The mechanics of clarinet fingerings are also significantly harder than I expected.

At this point I have a decent A above high C, and enough endurance to play a few hours a day. I am playing on an M13 Lyre, with a 2.5 or 3.0 reed (still developing adequate endurance on the 3), and my newish CSVR. I bought every Vandoren mpc from the BD5 and M30 and smaller gap sizes down to the M13. Spent some time on all of them before landing on the M13 lyre, my teacher says I sound and articulate best on that one for now.

Once I switched to the M13 lyre (which was quite recent) I actually make a sound that to me sounds like a real clarinet, which greatly adds to the enjoyment of playing. The previous mouthpiece/reed combos always had some kind of tonal problem for me. It lacks a little volume compared to say the 5RV lyre (my teacher's preferred mpc), but the sound it makes is very nice.

So lot of the enthusiasm I wrote with earlier has mellowed into dedication at this point, with the realization that clarinet playing is a bit harder than I expected it would be. But much of my earlier impressions have held true, coming from trumpet brought a lot of good foundational skills and a few bad habits that had to be overcome. I am still very much enjoying clarinet and I always expected it to be a multi-year project.

We are basically going through the Rubank intermediate method page by page. With me struggling to learn all the alternate fingerings for the key signatures. At this rate it will be a few years to complete those method books (Rubank has 3 in that series). We also mix in a few musical pieces from other books to keeps things interesting.

Just getting the basics of fingering, tone production, tonguing, and style feels like a project that will go on for a while. She plays with wonderful style which I strive to emulate and it has some key differences from classical trumpet style. Two examples are that trumpet tends to use a bell-tone by default approach and clarinet uses a more sustained (legato) by default style, which is the best I can describe it. Tongue-stopped staccato is a no-no in classical trumpet style (although tongue stops are heavily used in jazz trumpet), but is part of the accepted repertoire for classical clarinet technique.

I can tell some typical student stories, she held a ruler over my fingers to get me to keep them down, "no flying fingers" she says. We did many studies to eliminate "blips", the pseudo grace notes when the fingers don't go up and down evenly. She watches me play and calls out bad finger technique when she sees it, and listens and calls out anything that doesn't sound right too. She basically holds my feet to the fire to play things right and get them to sound good. Exactly the kind of teacher I wanted.

In a few years I hope to start looking at some of the local amateur bands and orchestras, we have a variety of proficiency levels in my area to choose from. I'll start with the easier ones of course. :-)

And at some point I have to buy a saxophone or two...

Aging classical trumpet player beginning to learn clarinet as a second.

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 Topics Author  Date
 Beginning doubling on clarinet from trumpet  new
kurth83 2023-08-26 10:04 
 Re: Beginning doubling on clarinet from trumpet  new
kurth83 2023-09-04 00:46 
 Re: Beginning doubling on clarinet from trumpet  new
Jaysne 2024-04-19 19:53 
 Re: Beginning doubling on clarinet from trumpet  new
kurth83 2024-05-13 07:33 
 Re: Beginning doubling on clarinet from trumpet  new
Jaysne 2024-05-13 16:28 


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