 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2020-09-11 16:31
Hi,
I wondered if anyone could recommend good books for training in sight reading on the clarinet?
I'm just starting out on Grade 4 and am finding that my memory for fingerings is letting me down.
I keep forgetting which fingers are needed even among C4, D4 and E4, which is a real bind when I'm also trying play complex dynamics and get up to D6.
I have "improve your sight reading" by Paul Harris, and "A tune a day" books 1 & 2 and book of Christmas Carols that I can go back to. I just wondered if there are any other books that people would recommend?
I suppose I'm mainly looking for simple arrangements of well known tunes. (No dynamics, and not too much complicated timing, but lots of practice of fingerings.)
Thanks!
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-09-11 17:53
Online, I like the Sight Reading Factory program. For the small fee, you get a great variety of rhythm and melodic patterns to practice, and you can choose the level of difficulty you are prepared to attempt. https://www.sightreadingfactory.com. Some studio musicians, whose job depends on sight reading finesse, recommend Joe Allard's Advanced Rhythms book. Rhythmically, it takes over where the old Pasqual Bona Rhythmical Articulations leaves off. They also recommend Joe Viola's Chord exercise book, which forces you to read endless series of double flats and double sharps. (The better your "ear" is the more you can play these "by ear.") The Bugs Bowers Bop Duet and Rhythm books are good (Jon Manasse uses them) and so are the 3 jazz concepts volumes by Lennie Niehaus.
Sight reading is never really "on sight"; it is always a matter of applying, recognizing, (or, at a level of greater difficulty, altering) patterns you already know. The process would more aptly be called "recognize and play" rather than "sight read." If you already know the scale and arpeggio patterns found in Baermann's Clarinet Method, book III (and the etudes in Baermann Book IV), and the Stark Arpeggios, then your brain and fingers will just recognize them as "chunked" patterns and automatically play them. If you don't know the Baermann and Stark material (whether you learned it from those books or in some other way), then you will not be able to "sight read" it. When confronted with such patterns in a piece of music you will have to stop and take the time to learn it on the spot.
Good sight readers collect and mentally hoard patterns of music. They push themselves outside their comfort zone and practice those Bartok scales and Stravinsky changing meters. Oliver Nelson has some patterns in his Patterns for Improvisation book that most clarinetists would never think of playing. Fred Lipsius' book Reading Key Jazz Rhythms is compendium of rhythms you might not expect to see but you can bet they will turn up somewhere. If you know them, you will be able to "sight read" when you meet them on the road.
Brazilian choros make excellent practice and sight-reading material; they are especially good for developing nimble articulation and accurate rhythmic subdivision and syncopation. Internet has hundreds of choros available for
free download. You can start with the first hundred or so here:
https://www.slideshare.net/jairoflute/songbook-choro-vol-1.
https://www.slideshare.net/jairoflute/songbook-choro-vol-2.
Don't overlook the Klose method. Especially the duets. They give you practice in the rhythms and harmonies of the classical and early romantic periods (great for Mozart and Rossini). Henri Sarlit's 20 Etudes de deciffrage is another valuable duet book for practicing sight-reading.
A quick source for (about 70) familiar melodies is Sally Adams' Mini Fake Book for Clarinet. Presto Music has it for under $12.
Post Edited (2020-09-12 20:09)
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Author: Ken Lagace
Date: 2020-09-12 16:18
I have found that good sight reading is a matter of seeing far ahead of what you are playing. My test with students is to play any piece, and without warning cover the music to see how far they can continue playing. If it is a measure or more, they always are better sight readers. Alone, you might set a short timer and when it stops, close your eyes and see how far you can continue.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2020-09-12 23:20
SunnyDaze wrote:
> I'm just starting out on Grade 4 and am finding that my memory
> for fingerings is letting me down.
> I keep forgetting which fingers are needed even among C4, D4
> and E4, which is a real bind when I'm also trying play complex
> dynamics and get up to D6.
IMO, practicing and eventually mastering the Klose daily studies (which include scales, arpeggios, etc.), and/or Baermann's rudiments or even the rudiments in the Rubank Advanced Method books (I and II) will reinforce the fingerings you're forgetting better than dedicated "sight-reading" exercises. For one thing, you're more likely to know when you've mis-fingered a note in a diatonic scale than in an unfamiliar melody. And you'll get around eventually to all the fingerings, not the sampling in whatever dedicated melodic exercises you sight-read.
> I have "improve your sight reading" by Paul Harris, and "A tune
> a day" books 1 & 2 and book of Christmas Carols that I can go
> back to. I just wondered if there are any other books that
> people would recommend?
>
Probably any intermediate method book that includes a lot of melodies would do. Look at the websites of publishers like Alfred Music Co. or Kjos that publish a lot of school music.
> I suppose I'm mainly looking for simple arrangements of well
> known tunes. (No dynamics, and not too much complicated timing,
> but lots of practice of fingerings.)
The problem with sight-reading "well-known tunes" is that you may not actually read them if you know them well enough by ear, which defeats their purpose as sight-reading material. You may be better off with unfamiliar but not over-difficult materials that you can't "cheat" with (meant in the most innocent sense possible).
Karl
>
> Thanks!
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Author: kdk
Date: 2020-09-12 23:24
seabreeze wrote:
> They also recommend Joe Viola's Chord exercise book, which
> forces you to read endless series of double flats and double
> sharps. (The better your "ear" is the more you can play these
> "by ear.")
Not being a studio musician, I confess that slews of double sharps and double flats seem less relevant to me when I'm sight-reading in an ensemble situation, even professional (paid) gigs. I've always viewed those double chromatics, if they happen more than occasionally in a given composer's music, as the composer's showing off his prowess as a harmony theorist or as artifacts of digital transposition that should be edited. In my experience most music handed out at pickup sessions is reasonably conventional, or it should have been provided to the musicians in advance.
> Sight reading is never really "on sight"; it is always a matter
> of applying, recognizing, (or, at a level of greater
> difficulty, altering) patterns you already know. The process
> would more aptly be called "recognize and play" rather than
> "sight read."
This is very much to the point, IMO. The bigger your recognized "vocabulary" of musical patterns - diatonic scales, arpeggios, scales in thirds and other intervals and chromatic scales, the better your ability to decode longer note groupings that are mostly based on them.
> If you don't know the
> Baermann and Stark material (whether you learned it from those
> books or in some other way), then you will not be able to
> "sight read" it. When confronted with such patterns in a piece
> of music you will have to stop and take the time to learn it on
> the spot.
>
Because then you aren't recognizing groupings, you're reading the notes one at a time. It's analogous to reading written verbal language letter by letter and "sounding out" each word. And by the time you manage an entire word, you may not remember the context in which that word is being used.
> Oliver Nelson has some patterns in his Patterns for
> Improvisation book that most clarinetists would never think of
> playing. Fred Lipsius' book Reading Key Jazz Rhythms is
> compendium of rhythms you might not expect to see but you can
> bet they will turn up somewhere. If you know them, you will be
> able to "sight read" when you meet them on the road.
>
I suspect this kind of material is beyond what SunnyDaze has in mind That said, I would ask, how good a bet is it, really, that you'll ever see those patterns if they're so unusual? Improv is different - you're playing sounds you've imagined without the intermediate step of having to read them (and no real penalty if you reproduce them inaccurately - "there are no mistakes in jazz"). You may get some really good ideas from exercises like that, and maybe broadened horizons for your improvisations, but are you really likely ever to have to read them (much less remember them if you do run across one)?
Karl
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Author: Plonk
Date: 2020-09-13 00:27
I'd suggest you get hold of some repertoire books at a lower grade than what you are- start at pre grade 1 if you're sometimes struggling with e.g. C4.
Practise sight reading every day. Do 1 piece a day.
Start by looking at the time sig and tap out the rhythm.
Then try to sing the music - this might be hard at first but persevere.
Then "silent play" it by moving your fingers on the keys, in time, at a manageable tempo, without blowing.
Finally, play the piece.
If you make mistakes or fluff, look carefully again at the offending notes and try to work out why you went wrong- perhaps an awkward rhythm or crossing break or forgotten key sig etc. Draw a circle round these bits and write down your reason.
Next day start by reviewing the previous day - read your reasons and try playing those tricky bits again- practise them if necessary.
Then sight read a new piece - rinse and repeat.
Post Edited (2020-09-13 00:28)
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-09-13 01:17
Karl,
I responded to SunnyDaze's question by taking a very long view of what
sight reading might mean and require. Short range, try simple scales and arpeggios, duets like Klose's, an automated program that gives you control over the level of difficulty, and some exploration into choros. I like choros because they are so strong in both the melodic element and the rhythmic placement that they force you to pay attention to everything--the notes and the time division. (And you can get over a hundred of them online for free). Fred Lipsius' book can be useful to clarinetists because they don't see anything much like his rhythm patterns in the Rose, Baermann, Klose, Cavallini, JeanJean orbit, but in the music of today (and at least the last 50 years) these rhythms are ubiquitous. I believe he learned at Eastman that classically trained players need to recognize the rhythms of jazz and commercial music that the standard etude books don't cover.
Long-range, some of the ideas here came from the late Lonnie Shetter who played with the North State Texas Jazz Ensemble, worked as a studio player in Los Angeles and recorded with Don Ellis in his famous mixed-meter band of the 1970s. He is one of the few studio guys who actually made the cut to play the raga-like rhythms in that band's charts. Multiple and odd meters aside, he noted that in many jazz and advanced commercial charts arrangers write accidentals in and dispense with key signatures. This requires a sight reader to know and respond to each note "by any name it can take." The chord book by Joe Viola (fondly remembered as a teacher at Berkelee School of Music) is wonderful for presenting all the most encountered chords and extensions and the notes that comprise them in all their guises. Intermediate clarinet students can easily play through about three quarters of the book. The gaps (and the gasps) come with the rest, but they go away if you practice the chords slowly and keep saying to yourself "this is a familiar pattern and I know all these notes but under different names." After a while you get to know them under ALL their names, and your sight recognition and reading improves. As you say, practically speaking, on most gigs players do not encounter lots of double flats and sharps but still it helps to have the confidence to play on the page whatever notes come up. Regular work in Viola's book improved the accuracy of my sight reading more than anything other than Joe Allard's advanced rhythm book.
Oliver Nelson's patterns are not bizarre; they are from notebooks that he complied to spur his own creative imagination as a gifted tenor sax player and arranger. They are just off the beaten path for classical clarinetists but they shouldn't be. The same can be said for the Bugs Bowers and Lennie Neihaus books. The rhythm and harmonic conceptions in them (dating from 1950s jazz) should be part of every working clarinetist's vocabulary. Julian Bliss (a Wayne Shorter fan) has been pointing out the need for this sort of thing and Jon Manasse has a YouTube video playing a bop duet with his son. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAfW6npL-UQ. By embracing styles and sight reading experiences outside the narrow classical/romantic tradition, classical players do not become less adept; they gain stylistic perspective and flexibility.
Post Edited (2020-09-13 16:28)
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Author: Bonnie
Date: 2020-09-13 22:53
There's a Facebook community, Clarinet Etude of the Week (EOTW) Amateur Edition you might want to check out. We're working in Lester's Progressing Clarinetist, and Melodious and Progressive Studies Book 1 (Hite edition) right now. Both are available from Amazon and other sources. A new etude in each book is assigned each week, but you go at your own pace. Videoing and posting on the site is encouraged, but not required. I call this a community because it is an encouraging group of people, most of whom came back to the clarinet after years off or began learning as adults. The Progressing Clarinetist book has fun melodies that are deceptively simple, and give you the opportunity to make what you like of them. There are many different levels of players from quite accomplished to beginning.
bdskees@comcast.net
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Author: Luuk ★2017
Date: 2020-09-14 15:11
Regards,
Luuk
Philips Symphonic Band
The Netherlands
Post Edited (2020-09-14 15:18)
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Author: Luuk ★2017
Date: 2020-09-14 15:19
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Have a look into this: Gabucci 60 Divertimenti. I've added two pages as examples. They're short (half a page), musically interesting and diverse.
This is my favourite refreshment after a long holiday.
(Really sorry this post appears multiple times - I had problems with the attachments)
Regards,
Luuk
Philips Symphonic Band
The Netherlands
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Author: kdk
Date: 2020-09-14 16:49
Luuk wrote:
> Have a look into this: Gabucci 60 Divertimenti. I've added two
> pages as examples. They're short (half a page), musically
> interesting and diverse.
I'll second this as one sight-reading source. I've owned my copy for decades and have used material from it for the sight-reading portion in auditions I've set up.
Luuk, is it in print? My copy is published by Ricordi, apparently distributed in the U.S. by Belwin-Mills. To give you an idea of how old my copy is (the copyright year is 1957), the printed price is $2.00.
Those were the days!
Karl
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2020-09-14 20:33
Gosh! I had no idea that there would be so much to be said about this. I thought the answer would be "just keep practising". Thanks so much for taking the time to write all these comments. They will keep my busy for about ten years I think. :-)
I had a go today at just playing simple tunes, and I find that if I play tunes that I know by heart and with no dynamics, then it frees up a lot of my head space to deal with getting my fingers to where they need to be. I also get on much better at breathing and articulation.
Partly I'm also quite tired from the lockdown and months of homeschool, and I kind of long for a tune that I can play like a mindfullness meditation exercise, rather than something that will stretch me. Going back to this familiar music is very nice.
My main musical experience is in choir singing and in playing Scots fiddle music, and I have a nice set of fiddle tunes that I play through on my violin just for relaxation - and have been playing for 30 years (they are almost all I can play on the fiddle). The tunes are so automatic for me that I wondered if they would help with my clarinet fingering.
I tried them today and it is very interesting to try and play them on the clarinet. When playing those very familiar tunes, my breathing and articulation are better. I am able to concentrate on just getting my fingers right, while I almost sing the tunes. It's very noticeable though, that I play the tunes much slower on the clarinet than I do on the fiddle - perhaps at half speed. I think I might try keeping playing them and see if I can speed up, and just enjoy the process of playing nice familiar music. Having that relaxation might help my breathing and articulation as well I think.
It's funny the intervals that are easier on the clarinet than the fiddle too. Going from A4 to a5 is much easier on the clarinet than the violin, while going from A4 to B4 is easier on the fiddle.
Thank you very much again for the lists of books that I could work through. I will start on those, and I think they will last me a whole lifetime. I really appreciate the time you all took to write them down.
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-09-14 20:44
SunnyDaze,
Yes, by all means play your Scots fiddle tunes on the clarinet! Play samba, tango, bossa-nova, jazz, folk songs--everything. Get Hymie Voxman's Classical Studies for clarinet (a fat book at a lean price) for Bach and Handel transcriptions. The pulsations of Baroque music add life to the clarinet. The Gabucci book is fine and you should read through it, but it's still in the narrow classical/romantic/operatic orbit, and there's lots of planets in the musical solar system besides that one. Get your musical telescope revolving to take them all in!
Speaking of Scottish music, do you know the clarinet solo from Mendholssohn's "Scottish" Symphony 3?
Post Edited (2020-09-15 00:58)
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2020-09-15 02:06
Hi Seabreeze,
Thanks, I have bought those two books online. I will have a go. I like the idea of touring the world in music. That seems very nice.
I am starting somewhere around here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaqtxlFeWgQ
I'm enjoying the fact that it is ergonically very easy to get to the top notes, which is kind of harder on the fiddle. :-) It's funny to realise how much inertia the reed has though. I hadn't noticed that before.
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2020-09-15 16:06
I just discovered a weird thing.
I tried playing my fiddle music on my clarinet, and I can't play it very very fast but I enjoyed it anyway, because it is cosy and familiar.
I also played some tunes from a hymn book, which are very familiar to me. Some of them were in quite complicated keys (3 flats!) but I didn't really mind as I feel at home with that music and I could navigate my way around it okay, though again not quite fast enough.
After while I plucked up the courage to try my Grade 4 pieces again. Oddly I found them much easier after the fast fiddle music and the complicated keys of the hymn music. They are relatively slow and the difference in the difficulty of the fingering is not really that big.
The thing that I noticed is the difference was more psychological then being anything to do with an improvement in my skills.
It makes me wonder whether the Grade 4 pieces would be much easier if they didn't say "Grade 4" on the front cover of the book. Maybe it is the psychological leap to a new grade that makes it hard?
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The Clarinet Pages
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