Author: Elkwoman46
Date: 2007-02-25 16:58
Dear Oboeidaho,
Thank you so kindly for your very kind message. I wish that you were my teacher! I can tell from what you wrote that you are an encourager, which I think make for the very best teachers. I hope that I can find a teacher in my area.
Yes, I had and am playing clarinet again. Many years ago when I did have a clarinet teacher (we lived at that time in another state), I think I had the best music teacher ever! He was great in every way. He was also a studio musician, but from what I gathered later he also taught in a high school.
I am positive he helped people along the way tremendously.
For example, he was the one who exlained to me that music was much like math as far as sheet music, and that helped me a lot to see things a lot clearer.
May I ask you...what do you mean in your message about "don't try to play too high"? Are you saying don't work on the high notes? Or is it to do with the placement of the reed? Could you kindly clarify?
No biting the reed, yes? All lips, yes?
I have learned a couple of things in recent times about musical instruments. One is just toot for awhile on instruments when one gets it to just listen to it.
Second, once one is learning on it, never play an instrument out of tune. This kind of wrecked me for a long time when I was a teenager that played on a guitar that absolutely would and could not stay in tune. I didn't know any better; had no teacher, but I definitely know that I was listening wrong and that took a long long time to undo hearing wise. It is like the ears are confused.
So, when I say just listen to the instrument, I mean just listening to it and getting to know the different sounds it makes, nothing more.
I think it is also, if at all possible, to have a LCD type tuner or other that will show one exactly what note is playing so they can see what it is doing.
Getting started the right way, knowing that this, for example, C note is truly a C note is important. Some instruments, that are not in the key of C are very confusing because we are taught that a certain note sound is actually not that sound...when tested on a tuner. That too I have found to be very confusing, yet, I do know why it is done, it just makes the "hearing" of music so much more confusing in my opinion.
I am planning to do much more "music theory" learning as well.
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