The Clarinet BBoard

Re: Improving grip in keys - sticky stuff?

Author: SecondTry  Date:   2022-12-07 20:43 Hi Jennifer: I smiled when reading your post given the irony that a player or two, this one included, has been known to take a tad of grease from behind an ear on a finger, and spread it over the two top right pinky keys to facilitate the very slide your discussion hopes to reduce/eliminate. As you can probably appreciate, the occasional musical notation, especially for players lacking a left pinky Ab/G#/Eb/D# lever, finds the need, or at least the greatest ease for the player to player to slide from one of these top keys to the one immediately below. For example, in case I've lost you, lets suppose you've been tasked with playing, the notes , , and in rapid succession. In the absence of a left pinky key, one often takes the by sliding the right pinky down, followed by the with the left pinky, and the , as mandatory, with the right pinky. One could also do a mid note pinky swap on the or but the prior method has "gravity on our side." Cheers Post Edited (2022-12-07 20:43)

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Re: Improving grip in keys - sticky stuff?

Author: SecondTry  Date:   2022-12-08 08:30 Tom H wrote: > Actually, I just licked the pinky... no spitting. > As many people know, Tom has a terrific etude book out (he did not ask me to plug it, and I am not compensated) called the Most Advanced Clarinet Book. The name is not an exaggeration. In the best way I can describe it, and I mean this in the best way, Tom's etudes have a near perfect level of randomness in notes, rhythms and accidentals that make the ability to memorize content extremely difficult such that the player much CONCENTRATE and make zero assumptions about the notes coming up. Some time spent in this book makes the melodic and repetitious nature of works designed to be more pleasing to the ear than advance the technique his work strives to do, seem...easier. Anyway, after the last etude in the book Tom, (which he aptly named "The Roller Coaster" for its wide range in pitch of its notes) I'd like, "in version 2 of your book," to add a page gratis I'd like you to call "Pinky Swaps n Slides." In it the reader will be forced, even if in possession of a left pinky Eb/D#/Ab/G# key, to do all the sliding and mid note pinky swaps necessary to line up a right pink or left pink ! We can add user playing guideslines that say that if, say, a is taken with the left pinky in the first play of the etude, that it is taken with the right in the second go around!!!

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Re: Improving grip in keys - sticky stuff?

Author: SecondTry  Date:   2022-12-08 20:05 Tom: You reminded me. I really have to get back in the habit, when doing my (daily?) Bearmann III to not just use the pinky that makes play easiest, but to use that time to develop better motor skills with some pinky experimentation. For example, to is easier for me to do when the is taken with the right pinky. Perhaps that is exactly why I should use the left pinky now and then do work on better inter-hand coordination. A few years back I installed one of these on my R13: https://www.clarinetworks.com/product/bolt-on-alternate-e-flat-key/ ....a retrofit left pinky Eb/D#/Ab/G# lever. I'm glad I have it but mostly for things like the opening passage of Messager's Solo De Concurs Candenza, where the speed of the notes make mid not pinky swaps hard. But the key does open up the possibility to take and practice certain note patterns more varied. For example, a decent clarinetist sees the notes , , and as a group and knows to take the with the right pinky. But this pinky order need not be the case with the key. Still more with one of Stephen Fox's R1 C#/G# Touchpieces http://www.sfoxclarinets.com/Accessories.html#clar%20acc responsiblity for that C#/Db/G#/Ab note's play can also fall on either hand. Sigh..Drucker had his left pinky Eb/D#/Ab/G# lever removed. As the story goes, he would have been content with an R13, bur Francois Kloc sold him on getting a Festival because at the time the wood on the Festival was taken from billets that years ago would have been used for an R13 that given the good African Blackwood shortages, less quality wood than in year's past was now being used on R13s The Festival had that key and Drucker felt it just got in the way, having learned to live without it from years of play where such features were simply never offered on clarinets. ..the good old days where there were 3 ligatures choices....How on earth did we survive?

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