Author: mmichel
Date: 2021-02-10 08:14
Hello all,
I have a crossbite/slight underbite (i.e., my top incisors sit just behind my bottom incisors), and I wonder how this should impact my clarinet embouchure and posture.
I'm primarily a saxophonist. I've been playing saxophone for over 30 years and, on that instrument, my underbite has never been a problem because the mouthpiece enters the mouth nearly perpendicular to the mouth.
Though I've also doubled on clarinet off and on (mostly off) for much of that time, I've never really focused on the mechanics of good tone production. Instead, like many saxophonist doublers, I'd start practicing clarinet a few weeks before a gig that required it, then consign it to the closet when the gig was over.
That changed for me recently. For the past two years, I've practiced regularly and made concerted efforts to work on my technique and sound. To that end, in addition to working on tone exercises, I've been trying to correct my embouchure and posture. However, one problem that I've encountered is that the generally prescribed posture (i.e., head up, elbows tucked, clarinet at a low angle) seems virtually impossible for me to achieve with my underbite. With my head up, I can't play the instrument at anything below a 45 degree angle (and even that is pushing things).
My guess is that the prescribed posture is based on the fact that something like 95% of people have an overbite, and I haven't been able to find any information on how this posture should be adapted to accommodate an underbite.
For those of you who are teachers, have you encountered this problem with any students? If so, how did you resolve it?
Thanks
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The Clarinet BBoard
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