 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: brusted
Date: 2016-10-07 21:47
I'm an intermediate student clarinettist, I've been playing for 3 years and just recently it dawned on me that my articulation isn't great. When I tongue, my tongue touches the roof of my mouth (like when you say the letter T) and because of the way I tongue, you'll hear my tongue before the note speaks which just sounds really unclean and rookyish. I asked my band director for help with cleaner articulations and my band director adressed to me that my way of tongueing is incorrect and that my tongue should touch the tip of the reed when articulating. The problem is is that when I tried this, all I do is squeak, my tone is horrible, and it's very difficult to legato tongue. It also feels extremely unnatural to literally touch my reed with my tongue every time to articulate and it seems like there's just no way I'll be able to tongue fast doing that. Even when I try using the very tip of my tongue to the tip of the reed it still sounds bad.
All in all, I just want to be able to blow through my clarinet and be able to articulate at the same time that the note speaks. (tongue, note - same time) not tongue ..and then note speaks moments later)
I'm just really frustrated now as this is my biggest pitfall. I can do everything else on the clarinet except clean articulation so any help and advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks
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Author: johng ★2017
Date: 2016-10-08 01:03
brusted - I am somewhat an expert on the subject of tonguing on the roof of the mouth and not the reed. I managed to get to my 1st year of music school in college by tonguing that way. I guess I found a way to have it sound decent enough that none of my private clarinet teachers asked about it.....until Dr. Jerry Smith at the University of Colorado discovered it. After that I spent a miserable semester learning to tongue on the reed and having many of the same issues you mentioned. But, after all that it was worthwhile and I was glad for it and have been for about 50 years.
I won't spend much time telling you how to do it since it is simple and there are many places on the web and You Tube that do a good job explaining. All you do is touch the reed at or toward the reed tip with the tip of your tongue just as you may have done on the roof of your mouth.....but no other movement in the jaw or excess movement of the tongue. That's it. And now for the hard part of taking the time to get it right. You will be glad you did.
John Gibson, Founder of JB Linear Music, www.music4woodwinds.com
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-10-08 05:17
For you to have gotten your tongue up to the roof of your mouth, you may have been taking too little reed in your mouth to begin with. So you may need to readjust that.
It seems easier for my students to learn at first to stop the reed with the tongue. Start an open G with a good, clear sound, sustain it, maybe counting beats at one per second, for maybe 2 beats and touch the tip of the reed with the tip of your tongue to stop the vibration. If you do it too lightly, you'll continue to produce a tone and the reed will tickle your tongue uncomfortably. So, touch with just enough pressure to stop the sound and not produce a tickle. Do this a few times until you can stop the reed comfortably and cleanly.
Once you've gotten that far, try to do the same thing but hold the reed through one beat while still continuing to blow (that's the part that my students find it hardest to do), then release it to let it vibrate. Don't press into the reed, just move your tongue back away from the reed tip. Do it several times - start without any help other than your breath, stop the reed **while continuing to blow,** release the reed without pressing into it as your tongue leaves it.
When you get to a point of comfort with that, start a note with only your breath, then stop and release two or three times (always without stopping the air flow or pressing into the reed on the release).
Once you can do this, you can apply the same principle to a slow scale or to articulated patterns. At some point, you'll want to start the initial note by touching the reed just as you do during the stops, beginning the airstream first, and then releasing the reed just as you do with the mid-stream stops and releases.
The important part of the whole process as you add more notes and then begin to speed up, is that you use only the amount of pressure on the reed that's needed to stop it from vibrating (or, as standard instructions say it, "as lightly as possible"), you maintain the airflow during the stops, and you don't add more pressure as you move your tongue away to release the reed to allow it to vibrate.
John and Alexi are right that there are lots of YouTube tutorials on this that go into more detail and give you sound to model on.
Karl
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2016-10-08 20:02
Brusted,
Unfortunately, many of us traveled a path similar to yours. It is one of the greatest hurdles I face in learning the clarinet. I always pick up bad habits, and then have to take (what feels like) a step back in time to a point where I sound like a beginner again, and have to re-work stuff I used to be able to easily play. (Especially when I was first starting college - I had a lot of bad habits.) It can be frustrating to see your peers proceeding right along while you go backwards - but don't let it discourage you - It pays off big time in the future.
I don't have any specific info/tips to offer - other than to let you know you're not alone, and that the work will pay big dividends in the future. Keep at it!
Fuzzy
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-10-08 20:51
fuzzy wrote:
> Unfortunately, many of us traveled a path similar to yours. It
> is one of the greatest hurdles I face in learning the clarinet.
> I always pick up bad habits, and then have to take (what feels
> like) a step back in time to a point where I sound like a
> beginner again, and have to re-work stuff I used to be able to
> easily play.
> I don't have any specific info/tips to offer
I have one "tip" to offer, not so much to Alan (brusted) but certainly to parents whose children want to begin playing an instrument. So many "bad habits," unproductive or even destructive playing approaches can be avoided if the beginning student takes at least a few lessons with an experienced player, if only to start out on the "right foot." It's hard to imagine a competent clarinetist who (a) would have taught or (b) would not have heard tonguing against the roof of the mouth. Most clarinetists who teach beginners would introduce tongued articulation within a couple of lessons.
Even for adults (like Alan) whose playing seems to have hit a wall of some kind, a couple of in-person, face-to-face lessons with a competent (I say that word over and over) clarinetist, even better if he or she has teaching experience, can solve problems that all the trial-and-error in the world may not.
Formal lessons don't need to involve a life-long commitment. They can with the right teacher be very specifically goal-oriented. But as an alternative to self-directed experimentation, they can help avoid a lot of confusion and wasted effort.
Karl
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2016-10-08 22:04
Karl,
First off, thanks for the advice - I agree with you 100%...Parents: whenever it is possible, hire a good private instructor!! It will save your student immeasurable time, frustration, and effort later on! It will also increase the student's enjoyment - along with those within earshot! 
Having said that - not everyone comes from a background or environment where such extravagances are possible. I would dare say that 99% (or more) of the kids I played in band with (through high school) received absolutely no lessons of any kind outside of normal "band" class. Their parents didn't even buy instruments, but instead used "school" instruments, or leased instruments. Lessons simply weren't an option - not only due to funding, but also due to the fact no one offered lessons within 100 miles.
Once I began traveling the 200 mile round-trip for lessons (from no less than Ralph Strouf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Clarinet_Association - it took him two years to realize I was not tonguing correctly; so I do believe it is possible for competent teachers to miss improper tonguing of a student. (I think we students are pretty good at finding ways at - improperly - mimicking "pretty" sounding music.)
For another thread: The "tip of the tongue" is HUGE, and can be interpreted differently based on individual biology and visualization.
Tony: Thanks for the link to your article!
Fuzzy
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-10-09 01:01
>> Here's what I came up with in my progression from 'unreliable articulator' to 'satisfactory articulator' in the period from my teens to early twenties.>>
I suppose I'm understating my case here: you can sample my articulation abilities in my recordings of the Mozart concerto with Hogwood and AAM, my recordings of the Spohr first and second concertos with the London Sinfonietta and my recordings of the Weber and Crusell concertos with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, all available on Spotify or in the catalogue.
Earlier, articulation was always a major difficulty for me. (I remember being terrified of bar 13 of the Mozart concerto as a teenage soloist with the National Youth Orchestra.) I was never TAUGHT to overcome the difficulty; I had to think my way through it for myself, having ceased taking formal lessons at around 17.
I suppose that when people say, you should find yourself a good teacher, this shows rather that you should think about the matter more deeply for yourself. Because, who knows what a teacher knows? I can think of several 'teachers' I've encountered HERE whom I wouldn't personally trust.
Tony
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2016-10-09 02:45
Tony,
Coincidentally, the exact Mozart recording you speak of is the one I tried to emulate as a high-schooler (that was when CD's were "new" technology...I still have that CD)! It served me well for years...yet still, at some point, a student does need someone who knows more about the topic; to share one or two words of explanation. (At least that was true for me).
Even today, I find that interacting with the "pros" once or twice a year is helpful to understand a particular block I might have in progressing my abilities.
However, out of the four instructors I had in college, I concur that only one gave me "good" information which improved my abilities and stuck with me.
:)
Fuzzy
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-10-09 03:42
I overstated my case.
Of course there are good teachers. But I think that what we can do HERE is to say, not what (possibly even great) teachers have told various people to do in the past, but what is TRUE about the problem. That may help people to engage with it.
Saying that you have to find a 'good teacher' doesn't help that much. How are you to know the difference between good and bad?
I'm rather ashamed of having paraded whatever credentials I have. I did so only to make it more plausible that what I wrote may be worth reading. And notice, what I wrote contains no direct instruction. Rather, it describes the characteristics of the physical situation in varying ways.
Direct instruction is useful only if you can give it – and then respond to the result, as you can in a lesson.
That's not possible here.
Tony
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-10-09 07:30
Tony Pay wrote:
> I was
> never TAUGHT to overcome the difficulty; I had to think my way
> through it for myself, having ceased taking formal lessons at
> around 17.
>
Yes, at some point you have to take the responsibility for solving your own problems. But you *did* start with a teacher - it wasn't DIY from the beginning.
> I suppose that when people say, you should find yourself a good
> teacher, this shows rather that you should think about the
> matter more deeply for yourself. Because, who knows what a
> teacher knows? I can think of several 'teachers' I've
> encountered HERE whom I wouldn't personally trust.
>
Alan has only been playing for 3 years, and he doesn't say whether or not he began with a clarinet teacher or just picked the instrument up and started playing it. But there are many other posters here who say explicitly that they are entirely self-taught. It isn't hard to imagine why someone starting on his own (whether or not that's Alan's case) might want to articulate against the roof of his mouth - it's as close to articulating natural speech as you can get with the mouthpiece in the way. Maybe a mediocre teacher whose major instrument isn't clarinet might miss hearing it. The odds are almost nil that even a mediocre clarinetist, much less a competent one, would deliberately teach a student to articulate on the hard palate.
In your article, which I find to be immensely useful and personally meaningful to me, you touch on the importance of imitation, especially for young children. Even beyond infancy, many skills are best learned, at least in their most rudimentary form, by imitating. A teacher can be important by providing a model for the learner to imitate. Thinking through a problem and experimenting with your own solutions is a far more effective learning technique in my experience when you already have established the basic skill structure to work with and expand.
Thank you for citing "SOME METAPHORS FOR ARTICULATION" again.
Karl
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-10-09 07:32
Tony Pay wrote:
> Direct instruction is useful only if you can give it – and
> then respond to the result, as you can in a lesson.
>
> That's not possible here.
>
Yes!
Karl
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-10-09 15:46
First, Karl, thank you for your kind appreciation. Let me say in return what I've said here before: what you write is always clear, to the point, and extremely helpful.
You wrote:Quote:
Tony Pay wrote:
"I was never TAUGHT to overcome the difficulty; I had to think my way through it for myself, having ceased taking formal lessons at around 17."
Yes, at some point you have to take the responsibility for solving your own problems. But you *did* start with a teacher - it wasn't DIY from the beginning. There are a number of issues on the clarinet that are crucial, in the sense that if you have a wrong idea about them, however subtle, you can hold yourself back without knowing quite why. 'Articulation' is one; 'support' is another.
What was wrong with what I did with the first WAS quite subtle. It was just that I thought that a 'tongued' passage was something you PLAYED with your tongue. What I needed to think myself into was the notion that a tongued passage was something you played rather with your BLOWING, and MODULATED with your tongue.
Of course, I didn't really 'think' that. It was built into my whole address to the instrument, in that I approached a staccato passage differently from the way I approached a legato passage.
I can perhaps trace the beginnings of my problem to a moment in my first year of lessons. I had asked about 'tonguing', which was giving me difficulty, and my teacher said that staccato was 'like spitting grape pips out from between your lips' – at which point he demonstrated a rapid, soft plosive thup-thup-thup... that I couldn't imitate at all.
I don't blame him for this, because he would very probably have corrected my understanding, and therefore my playing, a bit later. Unfortunately I then changed teacher to go to the Junior RAM on a scholarship – which in another way fortunately meant that my parents didn't have to pay for my lessons – and the matter was never properly addressed.
What I'm trying to get at is what I talk about in the first few paragraphs of the METAPHORS paper. A teacher who just 'says what to do' can't interact with your assumptions, because their instructions get plugged back into your mistaken system. YOU have to discover what your assumptions are for yourself.
Unless you're lucky to begin with, of course...
A small anecdote: around 20 years ago I did a class for the Clarinet and Saxophone Society here. A mature student stood up and played quite well; but it was apparent to me that she was suffering from 'my' staccato malady. So, I very quickly went through the 'mud-ud-ud...' routine, because although our time was very limited, it seemed to me to be my best chance to make a contribution to her.
After a few minutes of this, someone from the audience interrupted.
"You're not suggesting that we TEACH it like this, are you???" he said, in tones of incredulity.
Tony
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Author: SarahC
Date: 2016-10-10 00:47
There seems to be three ways to tongue
There are some people who very successfully (i.e. on the performance circuit) who use the behind the top teeth tonguing, as per flautists. I also found that it avoided squeaks but I wasn't completely happy with the beginning of the notes. Maybe because of my baroque articulation past, I wanted a crisper sound. I had the feeling you needed more back air pressure to keep this type of tonguing as crisp as I would like. This type of tonguing is mentioned in some respected books (as being successfully used by others).
Then there is tonguing exactly on the tip of the reed, sort of horizontally touching. Not sure how to explain. But honestly, this never worked for me, it does depend on your tongue shape. From memory I think that Dr Downing describes the tonguing for this method
Ridenours book is the clearest explanation of tonguing on the underside of the reed, just about 1mm (ish) below the tip.
David Pino describes tonguing in his book, and describes his own slow tongue movement. and says doing a double tonguing forward and back movement corrected his slow tongue movement. I found this helped me immensely. And switched to this for a while, and it taught my tongue to move a lot smaller (I think before that my tongue felt like it was big fat and swollen in my mouth.. which is funny because i play lots of other instruments and my tongue works fine! haha.. something about having this mouthpiece so far into your mouth I guess! The oboe/recorder/flute barely if at all go in your mouth!)
But I do remember when i first tried tonguing on the reed it squeaked, but it is worth persevering with it in the end, from my opinion, because then you can get a beautifully crisp sound to start each note. But hey.. again I put in my disclaimer... I really should have been born in the baroque period..
All the best
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Author: brusted
Date: 2016-10-10 05:00
I've been trying to tongue the right way lately but literally all I do is squeak. But that isn't my main concern. Mainly, I was concerned about when I finally build the muscle memory to articulate this way without squeaking, how in the world am I going to tongue fast this way? It's almost unfathomable to think one could tongue very fast stroking their reed like a snake bite.
So how do I go about learning to articulate the right way? I can't really find any Youtube videos that give exercises to articulate the right way after a long period of time of being in the habit of doing it the wrong way. (Clarinet articulation rehab if you might)
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Author: brusted
Date: 2016-10-10 05:13
I'm getting better at tonguing the right way as I have been practicing it heavily the last couple of days but my another problem I face is that when I tongue low notes, this really loud high pitched overtone sticks out really bad. It doesn't do that on Open G's down to D's but C# and lower, I get this really nasty polyphonic sound. If I focus really hard on my embouchure and such, I can prevent this but otherwise it just seems like this occurs inconsistently. Has anyone else faced this issue or know why this is happening? And again thank you all for your help.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-10-10 10:50
It's possible that we can't help you without hearing you, as Karl suggests; better to work with someone expert who can hear you.
But, a question: what happens when you try the experiment, "Metaphor 1 – 'mud'" in my article? Do YOU have a question about what happens?
The idea is to get you away from what you 'normally' do when you articulate.
Tony
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Author: SarahC
Date: 2016-10-10 14:29
tonguing like a snake bite? not sure i understand
but speed is in minimal movement. touch the reed gently (no need to push it against the mouthpiece, just stop the vibrations) and then release, just enough to allow the reed ability to vibrate. Either an up down (ish) movement to the underside of the reed (near the tip), or a in out (ish) movement to the very tip of the reed
David pino is interesting because he used a double tonguing to improve his speed, but i found that was enough to improve both my single and double tonguing speeds. like a te-le tonguing
I highly recommend getting your hands on some pedagogy books, then you can try a variety of techniques and decide what will work for you.
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Author: AndyW
Date: 2016-10-11 18:47
// Quote:
// https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ytdtPIdmG0
--
//Bass clarinet, but the concept applies for soprano clarinet.
// End Quote
I'm a little confused by that video, as he is clearly tonguing each note during what he calls the 'legato' scale....that's not my understanding of legato on clarinet...
[i might call what he's doing "portato" or "marcato" ,
in contrast to the staccato.]
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