Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-04-17 21:32
Good teachers try to find ways of helping their students play without wasted effort. Telling students not to pinch when playing high notes works with some, but others have trouble feeling how hard their lips and jaws may be working; they lack facial body awareness. They have no feedback sensations to allow them to gauge such things.
That is where what I call the "pain and parsimony" part of double lip playing (or exploratory double lip practice) comes into play. Pulling the upper lip over the teeth gives the players an easy- to-feel reminder of just exactly what they are doing with their lips, lower jaw, and teeth while performing. The "ouch factor" of pain in the upper lips suddenly sensitizes them to the knowledge that they are biting too much and need to adopt the principle of parsimony; that is, use no more pressure than necessary to clearly voice and tune the notes in the musical phrase. Practicing scales in intervals (3rd, 4ths, 5ths, etc) with this new-found knowledge gained from double-lipping can greatly contribute to progress in many players as they begin to "feel" the workings of the the facial muscles and the changing tensions in the bottom lip pad and the regulating gauge of upper lip pressure and pain while bridging the intervals.
This approach, of course, breaks down if the student is not anatomically suited to adopt it. For players with short upper lips and sharp or sharply-angled upper teeth, the pain occurs too severely to function as a signal to explore parsimony. Instead, it signals the players to cease performing and protect themselves from further, more serious injury.
Any teaching technique, including double lip, can fare badly when what doctors call "contraindications" are not first determined.
Post Edited (2014-04-17 22:57)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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