 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2026-03-15 03:40
In my daily routine of practicing clarinet there occasionally come bad days. Those are days when things don't work right. Nothing practiced improves. Things that have been reliable mess up. Fingers don't go the right places. Tongue feels sluggish. Mental control is weak. If I focus on one thing, something else falters.
This has happened my whole life, and not just in clarinet playing. It's infrequent but repeating. It doesn't seem to be tied to diet or sleep or lunar cycles or even stress. Probably it's a normal human thing.
It seems as though a day or two following a bad day comes a good day, or better than good. That often seems to mark an advance or a sustainable improvement in skill, maybe small but real. My theory is that the brain takes a day or so to move furniture, so to speak, reacting to persistent practice demands to reorganize into some better arrangement.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2026-03-15 11:15
I would rather the bad day weren't when I have to play in public! I don't play in public all that often, but I imagine that somebody that does this 50 times year has his or her "off days" and just hopes that they aren't too off.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2026-03-15 19:53
At one point, biorhythms were all the rage. This notion seems to have gone out of fashion.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2026-03-15 21:04
I have found, just of late, that humidity has an affect on our reed strength choices whether our reeds are made of cane or plastic. In the last few months my area (as many of yours as well in the US) has had some pretty wild swings in temperature and humidity from week to week. During these swings, as I play plastic reeds (Legere), it became clearer that humidity over 55% encourages/enables a harder reed, while lower humidity encourages/enables the use of softer strength reeds.
I bring this up HERE because approaching play on a day where the air has suddenly turned dry (and HEAVY...due to more nitrogen and oxygen molecules which are heavier than water molecules) for example, we could mistakenly blame this on the reed turning bad or blame it on our own fickle talent. Whereas if we were more aware of the role humidity plays, we could simply switch to a softer reed before going into a funk.
I never categorized my batches of cane reeds by strength per se. But I'd highly recommend that to everyone else from this point forward (if you don't). What I would do with cane would be to continue to mark each reed of a box of ten with a numeric designation for best to worst BUT I would add a color difference for that number which indicates whether that number is there because it is HARDER or SOFTER than I prefer. That way it would be easier to switch to an appropriate strength indicated by the prevailing humidity.
Of course with Legere I can just move down a quarter strength when the weather is dry.
In short, buy a hygrometer (ya know one of those basic thermometer thingies at the hardware store with two dials) and see if you find sanity for yourself :-)
.................Paul Aviles
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2026-03-16 02:42
Hi ruben. On a coincidental whim I checked my biorhythms chart online on the "bad" day when I started this thread. Years ago, I was interested in biorhythms, but eventually they seemed neither very predictive nor particularly useful. Anyway, my chart for the day showed physical and intellectual readings about at par with emotional down and falling, which shed only dim, phantom light.
Paul, that is interesting. Maybe I'll start monitoring local humidity. Though, my reed didn't strike me as my particular problem on that day; it seemed to be working well, sounding full and consistent across most of the range. But it's still interesting.
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2026-03-16 02:59
I know for myself, any little thing that goes wrong playing-wise can affect my mood for the whole day. So I try really hard to get that first few moments of play at the highest level so that I look forward to the rest of the day.
.............Paul Aviles
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Author: ruben
Date: 2026-03-16 14:14
On the days when I have perfect pitch, I play better. When I don't have it, I play less less well. -but I can still play.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Luuk
Date: 2026-03-16 19:53
I have observed that a bad practicing day may feel bad, but actually often appears later as having a positive effect, nevertheless. One or two days later the practiced parts appear to have improved, apparently due to the time and energy spent in the session that felt worthless.
Regards,
Luuk
Philharmonie Brainport
The Netherlands
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