The Clarinet BBoard

The Clarinet BBoard The C4 standard

New Topic | Go to Top | Go to Topic | Search | Help/Rules | Smileys/Notes | Log In

Previous Message | Next Message

Re: Embouchure Fatigue

Author: Chartcom
Date: 2020-01-27 12:17

Very interesting comments. I have learned a lot from reading them. As a clarinet player on and off for the past 50 years (I was an aspiring professional in my youth but decided better to keep it as a hobby) I have experienced many ups and downs regarding embouchure. As at least one comment above has suggested this is very common and I would agree. In my case there are two main themes involving embouchure. The first concerns the reeds, one of the most challenging, if not the most challenging aspect of playing the clarinet in my view. To learn how to shave and adjust reeds is one of the first things to learn. In my experience out of a box of ten Vandoren reeds, or any other brand for that matter, one might find one or two if you are lucky that suit straightaway. The others will need a degree of adjustment and many will never be suitable. The strongest reed I could ever take was 2.5 but mostly used 2 and was happy with the tone and sound from that. I dare say that some professionals use stronger and perhaps the tone will indeed be sharper as a result but from my point of view the strength required from the embouchure to produce a sound using a higher strength reed has always been out of the question for me. As for embouchure I started with one for the first 10 years and then whilst studying in Sweden my tutor persuaded me to change it. After that I was never really happy and since then have tried to find the most comfortable. The problem for me is not air escaping, never has been, but I have a fairly thick bottom lip which now tends to provide a dampener to the sound unless I tighten it up. The result is now after many years of not playing at all that I get tired very quickly and my bottom teeth start to bite into my lip. So now that I taking it up again I find that I have to work hard on this since my mouth has slackened and the embouchure has slipped although I am happy to say the sound and tone is still good. In summary I have a lot of work to do on my embouchure (probably need to start from scratch). Any comments would be welcomed and I hope sharing my experience has been helpful.

Reply To Message | Avail. Forums | Flat View

Newer Topic | Older Topic

Topics

Author

Date

Embouchure Fatigue new

Exiawolf

2020-01-16 04:38