It has finally come to this. After some months of debating back and forth with myself, and with Barbara urging me on, I have at last started to take some clarinet lessons.
So why tell anyone about this? Mostly, its to remind me of what happens at each lesson, so I won't forget. On top of that there may be some things I glean from the lessons that could be of interest of the hundreds, or maybe tens or whoever may stumble upon these humble writings.
I had responded to an ad on Craigs list from a clarinet teacher, but didn't do this for some time since I figured, OK, for sure any teacher is going to tell me, play scales and arpeggios, so I just concentrated on that for the past several months.
Of course, there are things that are difficult for me, I can't pretend to have all the answers, so I finally call up the teacher and find he's a bit far away from my house. I ask if he can recommend any other teachers that may be closer to where I live.
Right off the top of his head he comes up with a list of six other teachers. I call them all, and each one of them seems to be a good prospect to me. Interesting, all of them say good things about each other, when I finally get return calls.
I almost decide to try this one fellow, when I get a call back from one of the remaining instructors. I ask him a question about preparing reeds, since I have lots of issues with this, in fact the instructor that I almost went with told me he knew a lot of about refacing reeds.
However, this guy said, I don't do any resurfacing of reeds, if I had to worry about that I would quit. His method, so he told me, eliminates the need to be a slave to the reed (other than what makes sense, reeds are after all natural products and they all simply can't be fantastic).
So this intrigues me, and I set up a lesson the following Saturday. After I do this, the last potential instructor calls me and I tell him, gee you sound great but I think I am going with the other guy. Once I mention my potential teachers name, the guy on the phone says, oh him! he's a world class player, you can't possibly go wrong with him, unless for some reason your personalities don't click.
Well, sounds good to me, after all the man I am talking with on the phone has no reason to praise this other teacher, right.
One thing my teacher said, the only requirement at all, was that I buy a box of Vandoren 2 1/2 reeds. I was saying, really? Thats stronger than what I have been using, and the Vandorens I tried for a bit I didn't like much at all. Still, I have to give the man the benfit of the doubt, no?
I buy a box, and damn, they don't sound all that bad. That is surprise #1.
Saturday comes around and off I go to his house. I must say, all the teachers live not so close to me, I suppose in retrospect I could have gone to the first guy I spoke with. But now I am glad I didn't.
So I meet Kurt (I don't want to give his last name, and does it make any difference?) and he seems really nice and very precise. I mean, immaculate beautiful house and yard, totally organized studio filled with wind instruments - a good sign I think.
He examines my horn and pronounces it fine to play on, although needing one slight adjustment. He of course has a really knockout old Buffet, and yeah, hes a great player, no doubt.
He takes my B45 mouthpiece, says this is good, and then takes my fabric ligature and tightens it up all the way. I have used this same type of ligature for years on my sax, and never, ever made it tight like that. I can make sound like this?
As the lesson progressed, I began to understand why Kurt said that his teaching method was different than the other instructors in town. Unlike the way I had been playing sax and clarinet for all this time, making lots of adjustments to my embrosure, he had me make the correct playing postion with my mouth, teeth and tounge, and not move my lips or jaw at all - all the work done by the tounge, including pitch bending.
I had told Kurt pitch bending was important, and man, he can pitch bend like crazy, still using his technique, so yeah, it can certainly be done.
A short story: Kurt told me that he had been playing with good, conventional technique for 20 years, and doing a lot of teaching, before he started taking lessons with the teacher that taught him this method. Once Kurt got the idea, he got rid of all his students, and told them to take lessons from the guy he was taking lessons from! That is commitment, eh?
So the rest of the lesson was about tone, tone, tone, using these ideas. Of course I had done long tones, but this was different conceptually for me. Lots of open G, making sure I had my mouth and tounge set, tounge on the reed closing it, until I had the air pressure built up, before opening the reed.
The other lesson was pitch bend, from a high C down to an A, with no movement of my lips or jaw.
This two techniques have been what I have been pounding on this week, and after several days I can actually get down to the A, just reshaping the tounge, no lip, tooth or jaw movement. Not easy, but opens up many possibilites. And I am getting better with the tone too.
As Kurt said, the idea is to get the tone I want to easily in any register, without killing my mouth.
I am as you can tell very enthusiastic about this, and can't wait for my next lesson tomorrow.