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Re: How to hold the horn....

Author: Matt74
Date: 2021-08-01 11:15

I think the thumbrest is the bane of every clarinetist.

Jen’s comment about touch typing may be right. I started Saxophone and Clarinet in middle school, and had a year of piano lessons when younger. If you never did anything with your hands requiring that sort of co-ordination I can see how it would be more challenging.

It’s mostly about practicing scales for me. I find that there is sometimes a very high initial difficulty with certain finger combinations, but that it doesn’t really take that long to push through until you start to get it - but you have to have patience. Perfecting it does take longer. My problem is that I don’t want to slow down and struggle through it until I get it.

That said, you do NOT have to get it right from the beginning. For the most part, I inevitably have to do something wrong before getting it right. This sometimes means having bad habits before good ones. I often go through several bad habits before finding the good one. It’s not really “inefficient”, because that’s the only way to learn.

Thinking about something and doing it are two entirely different things. The trap is when you think you can understand something before doing it. With a lot of things you can only think about them correctly AFTER you can do them. It’s like riding a bike. I think a lot of playing is that way. The reason is that the real concept is not a visual or imaginative one. The real concept is a somatic one - based in bodily sensations. You remember how it feels. That’s why it’s sometimes counterproductive to try to do it “correctly” from the beginning. A concept of “correct” that’s not based in experience way may actually be incorrect, or inaccurate. Focusing on that idea may sometimes get in the way of “getting the hang of it”. Even if it is mostly “correct”, it’s still the imaginative concept, not the physical experience, so it’s actually distracting and impeding progress.

- Matthew Simington

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