Things are not going so well, either with my gliss exercise or with my tone. Actually, the tone is worse, it just sucked all week. It seemed as if the only notes I could squeeze out where horrible, fuzzy wooden things, that slowly emerged and floated weakly in the air, to quicky lose their way and fall lifeless to the floor. Not good.
Things are not exactly helped by the practice regime - its not like I am playing songs or anything remotely fun. I have to keep in mind what I know is the truth: that the only way to progress correctly is to get the fundamentals down to the point where I do not have to conciously think about them. It all has to get below the level on thought, and into my fingers and mouth.
This highlights one of the problems I have that Kurt pointed out to me: I have years of habits from playing the saxophone, and this is not helping with the clarinet. What happens is that I know without thinking how to make at least a passable tone - but in the way that I learned on the sax, and it is very different.
We speak at some lenght about the embrosure, and about how I am having trouble making myself make and hold the correct form, while trying to breathe as I have been instructed. What happens is that I can make the right shape and position of my tounge when I don't have the mouthpice in, but as soon as I do contact the horn, my embrosure just changes completely.
So here is the challenge: how do I possibly accomplish this, the non-changing of the lip and mouth position? One way is of course to play in front of the mirror, and really concentrate on what I am doing with my mouth. And the real challenge: according to Kurt, the keys to it are these two contrasting : have the smallest amount of lip covering my lower lips (very much unlike the sax, where you want a good cushion), and at the same time, you have to pinch in the cheeks to seal the sides of the mouth.
What this means is that you are doing two diametrically opposite motions with the muscles in your face - and doing this for any amount of time is really painful. I am told that at some point it will become easier - I just wish I knew when!
We didn't spend the entire time on the embrosure, thankfully. As like week, we spoke a bit about the gliss and I explained to Kurt the problems I am having with it. To be brief about it, I still need to work on it, since I seem to be stuck just where I was like week. Kurt did show me again that I should be chewing in an upward motion, not just biting straight across the reed toward the rails of the mouthpiece.
Here is an exercise we did: make the correct embrosure, now place the mouthpiece in your mouth. Drop your jaw as far as possible on the mouthpiece. Now, move your jaw upward to the point where you would make your normal note. The trick here is to not change the stretch of you lip across your lower teeth, or the pressure on the side of your mouth. The point again is to achive control over the muscles of your mouth, and to find the precise point of how much of he mouthpiece you actually have in your mouth, in order to make a clear tone. In my case, I was a bit too far up the mouthpice. I wish I could give you a more precise description of the exact point, but you have to experiment. And of course, your chin should be flat for this entire time, as it should be for all the playing that you do.
Kurt has me play some long tones, as I described in the last blog, and I pulled off some really good ones first try. Much better than any other tries, I might add. Also, I had spent 45 minutes practicing before I took my lesson, and this may have helped. I did have about the same amount of time before the lesson as I drove to Kurt's house, but I am still not sure if practicing just before the lesson is such a good idea.
Getting back to the long tones: As Kurt explained, its not just the notes themselves, but the transition between the notes so that you have a tone that starts at a low volume but starts cleanly. And of course, the quiet volume that you drop down to for the end of the long tone is the most important, and by far the most difficult.
Next I played throught some of the finger exercises that I was assigned. Here is another important use for the mirror: watching the exact position of your hands on the keys, and how your fingers move when fingering the notes. I am to think of the fingers as always being in some sort of combination, so that I am aware of what the other fingers are doing even if they are not being used at this particular time. The third finger of the left hand, I was told, is the most difficult, and it is most important to keep the curve on this finger. So a simple C-D consists of: keep the curve on the finger, then snap the finger up and down as needed, making certain that you are in complete control of the movement. The fourth finger of the left hand is also hard to keep curved, so one exercise to do is the C-C# with the fourth finger moving up and down. Small movements, precise.
And surprising to me, at this point, finally, I am getting some decent tone. Maybe I am playing better from trying harder from being at the lesson, but man, it felt good, I can tell you.
I had been given the first eight finger exercises, but now I am supposed to only concentrate on the first three, with the last of the three a simple C scale, one octive. Easy of course, but not easy to do with the precison that Kurt wants me to attain. Again,the fingers should snap up and down, with no excess motion.
He told me that during high school, he could easily whip through all the scales and that was that. Later, when Kurt found the teacher that taught him the method he is teaching me, he had to learn the scales all over again. Yeah, not my favorite idea of fun either - but if you could hear the results as he plays them - well, its worth it.
A last note on the finger exercises, the metornome should be set at 88/quarter note, or double when you get to that point - no faster. Like most exercises I have done on all the instruments I have studied, slow is better.
One last exercise, which is designed to strenghten the tounge: finger a high C, get as much breath as you can but don't play the note! Keep the reed closed with the tounge, and at long slow intervals slightly open and then instantly close the reed again - you with hear a choked "dut". The tounge should only move off the reed about 2 mm, no more and again, close up the reed right away. Do this several times with as much force as you possibly can.
Yes, you can give yourself a nasty headache doing this, but I am told it will very much strenghten the tounge, and the lungs.
That was it for this lesson, and its too bad you could not be there, because of course I cannot give all the detail, or perhaps give you all the information that I was give. Still, I hope this helps you in your own practice, and of course please feel free to ask questions on the GT website.