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finger problems and chair test

Author: TayTay3000
Date: 2014-01-22 02:51

Hey I'm a sophomore in the highest band at my school and we were just notified of a chair test coming up. I started practicing the piece we were assigned to play and I want to do it really fast since there are a bunch of juniors and seniors in the section. I started practicing slow but then when I started gradually moving the tempo up my fingers would play the first few measures fine but when it got to the later parts in the piece my fingers turned into a hot mess. I practiced that part slow then fast to where it sounded fine. When I pieced the chunks my fingers got into the hot mess again. Please give me ways to practice it so that my fingers are in control and stay in control. I want to move out of the 3rd part and up to the second.

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Re: finger problems and chair test

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2014-01-21 22:22

There was an entire thread related to this recently. Look at http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=398079&t=398079.

But even before you worry about practice techniques, you have to think about whether the piece is meant to go as fast as you're trying to play it. I've sat though any number of clarinet auditions for high school County Bands in which predictably at least a couple of students try to play the Mozart Concerto 3rd movement or the Weber Concertino (two of the pieces in the audition rotation) much too fast to be musical, so that they'd be downgraded for sloppiness if they couldn't handle the speed and for poor musicality even if they could. Auditions aren't Olympic races and bat-out-of-hell tempos aren't justified just because they're faster than anyone else's.

You haven't said what the piece is, but decide first what is a musical tempo, then figure out how to learn it.

The approach in the thread I've cited is a useful one in some circumstances.

Karl

Post Edited (2014-01-21 22:31)

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