Clarinet Zone

Fingerworks and Tongueing Coordination Exercise

2008-02-06T08:40:00.000-08:00

For this exercise, you will be practising on many aspects of Clarinet playing.

This exercise consists of 3 parts in each scale:

1) Hold a long note to ensure that the note sounds good and is stable
       - This is the foundation of Clarinet playing which is the sound / tone without needing to bother about fingerworks or tongueing

2) Tongue the note 10 times
       - This is to add in the tongue without affecting the tone quality of the note

3) Play the entire scale, articulating each note once
      - This is to train the coordination between the fingers and the tongue

For this exercise, you start from the lowest E note of the clarinet all the way till you hit the high C. After that you would start from high C and play down the scale.

Here is how the exercise should be:

E~~~~EEEE EEEE EEFG ABCD E~ (hold for one beat)
F~~~~FFFF FFFF FFGA BCDE F~
G~~~~GGGG GGGG GGAB CDEF G~
...
.....
.......
C~~~~CCCC CCCC CCDE FGAB C~ (high C)
C~~~~CCCC CCCC CCBA GFED C~ (down the scale)
B~~~~BBBB BBBB BBAG FEDC B~
.......
.....
...
E~~~~EEEE EEEE EEFG ABCD E~~~~~~

Stages in Clarinet Playing for Beginners

2008-01-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

We all know that foundations are extremely important when we want to play a wind instrument. Actually, foundations are important for most of the things we want to do in life. For Clarinet playing, it is important to get our foundations right so that we can have as little hindrances as possible when we move on to more advanced stuff.

Body - includes breathing, blowing, posture, embouchure and body tension
Add Mouthpiece - produces one note (should be a big and stable sound)
Add Clarinet - open G note
Add Fingers
Add Tongue

This is extremely useful when you are teaching a person new to the Clarinet. You should always make sure they breathe correctly before they even try the Clarinet. This is because they do not have any perception of how it feels to blow a Clarinet. This allows their minds to be un-biased and take in the information which you present to them. They must understand that air is the most important thing to produce a good sound and not biting or other factors.

After they understand the basic breathing concepts, they SHOULD NOT be given the entire Clarinet. They should just be given the mouthpiece which is attached to the barrel. They should hold the barrel while you ensure that they do not cover or block the bottom of the barrel. At this point, they do not have a perception of how the Clarinet would feel like so they would listen to instructions and just try to attain a big sound even if it sounds totally awful. If they start off with the whole Clarinet, they might have a tendency to hold back because they want to achieve what they have heard before (Professional Players, your playing or just a plain nice sound). They should try to hold a note that is big and stable for as long as they can. Once they are able to do that, they will be able to progress much faster when they play on the entire Clarinet.

After they are able to achieve a decent sound on open G, you can start to impart the fingerings to them. A beginner should not play any notes that requires the register key for the initial stages of training as their embouchures are not developed enough. Going to the higher register too soon will result in biting as they will compensate by biting harder to pitch higher. They should just aim to get a big sound on the lower register. Good habits should also be imparted with them from this stage (e.g. fingers not too far away from the keys, correct finger positioning, no flat-fingers, etc...).

Once they clear the Fingers stage, tongueing can be taught. Make sure that they understand the concept of tongueing - it is a release and not an attack. Start by tongueing a single note (I would recomment open G or just the mouthpiece attached to the barrel). Ensure that they are not stopping the air or reducing the air when they are tongueing. Co-ordination between fingers and tongue can be trained after they understand the basic concepts of tongueing.

The reason why i recommend this is simple. If you just throw a Clarinet to a beginner, he may be able to play a song in a day if he is a fast learner. However, he will pick up many bad habits because of this. Each foundational concept should be isolated and taught while others have already been cleared. When you are doing a later stage, the Student must still perform 100% of the previous stages. For example, if you are teaching tongueing, there is a tendency for the Beginner to reduce or stop the air when he/she is tongueing. You should not move on unless he is able to blow air just like a long note while he is tongueing. By taking the learning process a step at a time, the Beginner will be able to grasp the concepts much easier and the possibility of having bad habits is greatly reduced. The Teacher must monitors each stage closely, setting a high standard for the passing criterias of each stage.

-William

Possible Aspects To Work On

2008-01-07T00:37:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the aspects of playing that you can work on. This can be used as a reference material but by no means as a standard. There are many many aspects that are not covered inside this article. Feel free to email me at williamlim.spd@gmail.com if you feel that there are important aspects that i did not cover.

Possible Aspects:

Breathing

Taking in full air each time you play
Using the correct way of breathing (diaphragmatic breathing)
Ensuring that the body is relaxed when you are breathing
Make sure the shoulders do not "rise up" when you breathe
The speed of breathing in (according to tempo and subsequently the subdivisions)
Body should move foward slightly when breathing
From the mouth, through the windpipe, into the stomache

Blowing

Air speed should be fast
Body should be relaxed
The entire waist should push outwards
Able to maintain a constant output of air
Increasing the time you can hold a note
Increasing dynamic range
Stamina

Tongueing

Clarity

Placement of tongue

before starting a note (on the reed)
after starting a note (holding the tongue at the minimum distance which does not affect the sound)

Speed
Stamina - the ability to tongue a note at a consistent tempo
The syllable used (e.g. Ti, Ta, Da, La)
Co-ordination with fingers
Staccato / Legato / Marcato / etc...

Fingerworks

Precision
Co-ordination with fingers
Speed
Distance from keys (should be minimal)
Position
Training the weaker fingers (the pinky)

Posture

No slouching
Elbows should be relaxed at the side
Shoulders should be dropped and relaxed
Both legs should be on the ground
Look straight

Score-reading

Sight-reading
Rhythm
Accidentals
Dynamic markings
Analysis
Theory

Scales / Arpeggios

Major / Minor / Diminished /etc...
Exercises / Studies
Eveness and Ease
Chromatic

Embouchure

No leaking of air at the sides
Firm grip of the mouthpiece but no biting
Grip using more of the side muscles and not so much of the lower lip
Syllable used (e.g. oo, yu, ee)
Stamina

-William

Focused Practice

2008-01-06T23:11:00.000-08:00

Before we go about talking about all the various things that can be done during our individual daily practice, let's first get our definitions right. "Practice" is defined as "the act of rehearsing a behavior over and over, or engaging in an activity again and again, for the purpose of improving or mastering it" as defined by Wikipedia. You might be thinking, this guy is nuts! I'm supposed to be read about Clarinet Practice! I'm not here for some English vocabulary lesson! But seriously, many of us do not really understand the term practice. Many of us actually "play" the Clarinet with no objective and goal in mind other than the fact that we are having fun (Disclaimer: I'm not saying that having fun is a bad thing). You might argue that you have been steadily improving by just playing and enjoying yourself every single day. Yes, you will definitely improve, but at a much slower pace. From the definition above, we can see that there is a need to rehearse a behavior over and over again for the purpose of improving or mastering it. Putting that into the context of Clarinet Practice, we need to first identify a problem or aspect to be improved, think of the solution or tools that can help us improve and really drill on it with the aim and intention of improving on that aspect. This is not your daily practice routine of long notes, scales, etc... This is a time allocated to improve a specific aspect of your playing everyday.

Possible areas you might want to tackle:

Breathing
Blowing
Embouchure
Posture
Fingerworks
Tongueing
Stamina
Score-reading
Scales / Arpeggios
and the list goes on....

Take note that this are very general areas. For example, Tongueing alone can be split into tongue stamina, speed, position, clarity, speed of tongue action, etc... When you are finding an aspect to improve on, always be as specific as possible. You can probably allocate half an hour a day just to improve on a certain aspect. An example would be to break the habit of keeping your tongue too far back in the mouth and just work on tongueing a single note while being conscious of the tongue's position. The possible aspects that can be practiced are endless! You'll never ever run out of things to improve on! For a starter, you might want to read the article on "Possible Aspects To Work On". If you have already indentified a possible aspect, you can see if there are any articles that talk about the aspect you are concerned with. If you are unable to find any article, drop me an email at williamlim.spd@gmail.com and I'll get back to you.

-William

For All Clarinet Lovers!

2008-01-06T22:48:00.000-08:00

This site is dedicated to ALL Clarinet Lovers out there! It does not matter if you have played the Clarinet for 5 minutes or 5 decades. As long as you are interested in anything that has to do with the Clarinet, you are at the right place! If you have any interesting concepts or articles to share, do email the webmaster at williamlim.spd@gmail.com. We welcome all articles! It can even be about the feeling you get when you play the Clarinet! As long as its original, its good! Hope you find this site useful =)

-William