We start as always with long tones, and thankfully my horn sounds OK this morning. I still need to have a bit more length on the long slow diminuendo, but other than that appearently I am doing OK. Kirt did mention once again that volume is determined by what he terms the valve in the back of the mouth, down in the throat. This means that volume is not regulated by anything like the shape of the mouth cavity or say the expansion of your cheeks. That only seems to apply if you are Dizzy Gillespie, and playing the trumpet.
As we get to the exersices, I tell Kirt that I can barely play these at the fast tempo. He explains that the reason that we are doing this fast playing is to find out where the "dooblies" - the mistakes - are so that I can have two note exercises to overcome these diffuculities. So in my case, looking at exercise #2, I need to work on C-E and C-D and D-E and the low A-B. Does this sound like most everything? Well, it almost is but if you break down all the exersices this way, you will realize that you are trying the beat the fingers into submission on every possible combination. Of course, perfection is impossible, but you have to shoot for that, there are always going to be some finger combinations that are more difficult than others - and there you have your practice etudes.
I was reminded during this to make sure that my fingers are only in one of two places at all times: either on the hole to block it to make a note, or pointing at the fingers assignment.
As we work thru the other exercises, some of my further challenges are on the F-G combo and the E-F# combo. I am reminded that the fingers should never touch each other, which in my case they have a tendency to do when some of the fingers are not actually playing notes.
Thinking of the right hand for a moment, Kirt corrected my thumb position on the thumb rest. I was letting the rest hit a natural postion between my thumbnail and the knuckle. What I have learned now is that the correct position is with the the rest on the middle of the thumb nail - much more difficult! I asked if this is position would change depending on the length of the players thumb, since it seems unnatural to me, but no, this is not the case: Kirt and I have almost exactly the same size fingers. This is going to be very tough to do,since in the time I have been playing the clarinet, I have developed the hapbit of where my thumb is placed......hoo boy......
One main thing from this lesson is that no matter what note I am playing, the hands should always been in the corect playing position. For instance, the middle G is of course played with no keys down, but the hands should still stay in place to play the other notes, and not just fly up and away from the horn. Thats why playing with the mirror is so important - my fingers have a tendency to fly out into space when I am lifting off the keys, like a spring being released to its natural retracted position after being streteched out.
Now lets think about the middle A note, played with the valve on top of the horn. Again to play this all the other fingers must stay in the same position, while the index finger rocks over to play the A with the side of the finger, and never by sliding the finger over to the key. As I look at my own hand while doing this, I can see the problems for me center around the ring finger, which has a tendency to fly up and out too far.
Try this by playing a low C to the middle A and leave the second and third fingers on the keys, only uncovering the A key and the register key, and again see how little you can open the register key to get a good sound. I know this seems very unnatural, but I find I can do it if I really concentrate. It doesn't even sound that much worse than doing the normal fingering when you lift these two fingers. I could see this being an option for very fast passages. Again there is hardly any movement of the index finger. As Kirt explains, this is where we start to get into positions that will vent the A key - I have a feeling I will be getting a lot more on this venting concept at a later date.
Go back to the exercises and look at #12, which is the first one to go over the break to the upper register, and practice this as I was saying above, keeping the 2nd and 3rd fingers of the left hand down when playing the A on the first group of quarter notes.
Other combos to exercise: middle E-A and middle E-Ab, and F to Bb - and just play two quarter notes, stop and play again, not going up and down, just up.
Going up the ladder, here is the first exercise for over the break: Simply high B to Bb. Notce the thumb position, it pinches rather than slides to move the register key and as always when the RK is closed, the thumb should still rest on the edge of the RK, with the middle joint of the thumb bending to provide the motion - note this is different than any other finger where the motion comes from the kunckle.
Thats it for this time, plenty for me at least to practice unitl next week. One final note: Kirt told me he had just purchased some new reeds from discountreed.com - and that he hadn't purchased any reeds in 2006! And its not from him not playing either. See why I want to learn from him?
To start, I really got off on the wrong foot. This lesson was actually scheduled for last week. I had been waiting for almost a month for another lesson, due to conflicts with Kirts schedule.
When it came due, I totally forgot, and was practicing when I should have been driving. I then went outside, and worked like a dog in the yard all day. At nine at night I saw the message on my phone, and I was really ticked off at myself, since I was mighty tired of playing the same few exercises.
OK fast forward a week. I was a bit anxious about this lesson, since I had done so poorly the last time.
Now I am bringing my mini-cassette recorder with me to tape the sessions. What I didn’t do is rewind and fast forward the tape all the way. I mean, it sounds bad anyway, since it is only designed to be a voice recorder, but with the tape wobble my long tones sound like some sort of weird police siren. Still I can hear what went on, and next time I hope if will be better, since I may be able to provide some audio samples for illustrations of the lessons.
We start out with long tones, and at least now I am in the ballpark. What I was doing wrong that Kirt corrected was to make certain that I came up to volume rather quickly, and the a nice slow even fade to as low as I could make the volume. What I had been doing was not getting as loud as possible, since I think the tone suffers, and doing a very rapid decrescendo and holding the very quite note until I ran out of breath.
Again, the idea is: start at low volume, crescendo quickly to maximum loudness and then slowly and gradually and evenly fade down the volume.
The next thing I realized is that I was not playing the exercises fast enough - now that is a new one for me, normally I have to stop myself from rushing, even with the metronome.
Basically the fast speed I was doing should have been the slow speed, and consequently the fast speed should have been double of what I was playing.
Now these simple exercises take on a whole different level of complexity, since at the fast tempo I need to play at 176 BPM! Not easy and almost not possible....yet. I am well aware that playing fast and sloppy is simply playing sloppy and that will not do, but I have to admit I love the challenge. As a note, the correct way to play these exercises is to play through it once at the 88 BPM speed, and then the next time at the doubled speed. This makes it much more interesting and challenging.
As we were running through the exercises, whenever I would trip up on any particular fingering, Kirt would have me make an exercise out of just that fingering. Kirt called these mistakes dooblies.
For instance, from B to D can be a problem, so I would simply practice going between those two notes. Kirt gave me a second level to this, so that instead of simply playing to even notes, to play long note, short note and then in reverse. Its like playing an eight note and then a whole and vice versa. This does seem to help, if for no other reason that you can now tell exactly where the problem lies.
He also said that the left hand is more difficult and that the ring finger on the left hand is the weakest. Certainly now that I think about this, this is what I experience myself. Maybe because I am right handed? I now have something else to get past, getting the left hand ring finger to respond as quickly as the other fingers. Quite strange I never had this issue before, or never noticed it, on the guitar or the sax. The pain stick is most unforgiving!
Kirt had spoken to me before about how he wants the fingers to hit the rings on the clarinet during these exercises, with a distinct snap when the key ring closes. What he meant by that it that you hit the key with enough force to actually hear it snap into place on the horn. I wondered how this would apply to playing music, since I could not imagine that anyone would use this extreme force when actually playing a passage.
Kirt explained to me that when we are doing exercises, we are not playing a piece of music - this is strictly a mechanical technique like calethenics to build up the strength speed and stamina of the fingers. It makes more sense to me now, almost like playing a guitar with a thick neck and extra heavy strings: once you can do your playing on a more difficult task, the normal playing becomes much easier. I have read about concert pianists practicing on heavy, slow keyboards to make their technique and hands stronger.
I thought at first that this would make these exercises even more difficult. What I am finding out now that its actually a bit easier, since it forces your to really drive your fingers, and make it hit accurately, otherwise you simply flair. Its a discipline, and I have always thought that discipline can only make you stronger.
One more note on the fingers: I was corrected several times by having either my fingers too flat always remain curved is the rule or having my fingers fly out towards space when lifting them. Kirt also stressed that with proper technique, there should not be a lot of flexing with the finger joints, but the fingers should pivot back at the knuckles. That is why practice with the mirror is so important, otherwise you will not be able to see what it going on with your hands and be able to correct it. Its all about getting the proper habits I think.
Of course we went over the gliss-of-death. I can now do this reliably down to Bb and occassionaly to A, but its a struggle. I am not so stressed about it as I was a month ago. Kirt tells me that getting this down is one of the keys to play well in the upper register, so I am inclined to believe him and keep working on it.
This week I will continue on as I have, but now I am able to play through exercise number nine. Its plenty you can trust me on that.
Will write again after next weeks lesson.