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Re: Faster fingers

Author: Agomongo
Date: 2016-05-23 05:55

There's something called Classical Fingers. It's not gimmicky considering that Mark Nuccio was about to make them, but someone else got to making them before he did, haha. It's well worth the investment. I haven't been using them, which is a mistake, but when I did I noticed my playing got a lot better.

Of course this invention isn't the shortcut. Slow practice is needed too.

I remember my bass clarinet teacher Ryan Yure giving me a tip. He said that he once asked hi oboe friend who had phenomenal legato fingers "How do you play so smoothly?" He replied, "I just practice my fingers." So what the oboe player told him to do was to practice slowly with the just the fingers pressing down on the keys as lightly as possible and to coordinate the keys exactly together. When doing that he was blowing NO air into the clarinet. Keep the fingers as close as possible to the clarinet as possible. After awhile I then tried what Bonade recommended to his students to gain better legato which was to raise the fingers as high as possible and then to gently put the fingers down. Of course I did the Bonade legato exercise with no air being blown into the clarinet.

I've tried doing that and it's changed my life. I did that for the Stravinsky Three Pieces Mov. II and I absolutely nailed it at my juries.

So I like to practice just fingers slowly and lightly with no air used. Doing that will take out other distractions like intonation and air.

I know that you asked for fast fingers, however I like to think of legato fingers... but faster.

I also like to start at half tempo and move the metronome 10 BPM up and play each tempo once. Once I find the tempo that starts to have mistakes, messy notes, etc. that's the tempo I practice it at for awhile. For instance, if I have a piece at 140 I'll start to practice it at 70 then play it once if no mistakes happen I'll move up to 80. I'll keep doing that until I start to hear and feel mistakes. For instance, at 110 I start to notice uneven fingers and my body don't feel confident. After awhile of doing that I also like to do the Burt Kaplan metronome method.

Post Edited (2016-05-23 06:18)

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Faster fingers new

Napat Techa.

2016-05-17 18:49