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?