I decided to combine these two entries since i have been really busy with the rest of my life and much of what we went over wes fairly similar.
So to begin with some progress: as small an accomplishment as it might seem, I am now able to produce the long tones successfully and consistently. As as sax player I did this a lot, but I find as with much esle on the clarinet it is more difficult, as the standards are higher. I can't imagine not starting my practice in this fashion, just warms up my horn and my brain.
What we have been talkng a lot about again is fingering, not only how to strike the keys but also and perhaps of more importance, the basic hand postion.
It bears repeating: the hands should be relaxed. The left hand (or the the left hand of darkness hand as I call it) should have the fingers close together, at a 45 degree angle to the body of the horn. The gap between the thumb and the first finger should be pretty tight. Once again, I am trying to practice with having a slp of paper being held in the angle between the thumb and the index finger.Again, playing with the slip of paper forces you to keep proper position. .
This is not easy! However, if you do this, it keeps the hand to and fingers closer to the body of the horn. You still need to try and keep the fingers together, and to keep the wrist dropped. I will try and get a picture to illustrate this. It is still quite easy, for me at any rate, to thave the fingers start to move apart from each other when I play, as opposed to staying in a tight formation. Tricky. And don't forget, keep your shoulders relaxed and posture upright, always keeping the air pressure constant from the gut.
One other thing to remember, the index finger of the left hand, when properly placed, will rest on both the A and the Ab keys, and the left thumb will be in contact with register key, even when not opening the key. The pinky should rest lightly on the low E key. You can even practice left hand fingerings with the E key held down in some cases.
And unlike the other fingers, the pinky is held flat against the key, not curved. After all you just slap with the pinky, not the same motion at all as with the other fingers.
If I work this way, its slow and frustrating, since I have a tendency to open the hand when playing, casuing the paper to drop. This can be good if you are, like me, overweight especially around the stomach, as you have to bend down and pick the piece of paper up. A little extra exercise. Seriously, I find that when I can do this closed hand postion, the amount of distance that is required to open and close the holes is greatly reduced, making the entire motion much more efficent. Going back over the exercises that I have done so many times, with this compact position, makes the execution of the exercises an entirely different affiar.
Like with having correct fingering postion on the guitar, its the muscle memory that needs to be developed, and that is simply time consuming.
Kirt has suggested that I can practice the fingering even when not playing, by hold the instrument and just moving my fingers. This is a good suggestion, something I suppose you could do while watching TV, but I don't want my wife to think I am crazier than she already no doubt thinks I am.
One thing certainly, if I am persistent in my practice, I will eventually be able to play at much greater speed and not sacrifice accuracy. It should get to the point where the hands will feel naturally relaxed in the correct postions - I am longing for that day, since at that point it will be like playing the guitar - my hands will know what to do, and then its pretty much just playing with what my mind wants to do.
At least I am hoping!
A final note on reeds: as you know one of the reasons I chose to study with Kirt is that he never wants to be a slave to the reeds. I am aware that many people do lots of work on their reeds, with reed knives or whatever, but I really don't want to do that.
However, one thing that Kirt has suggested, and this makes sense to me, is to go over the bottom of the reed with #600 sandpaper. Naturally you are not going to touch the tip. but the rest of the face of the reed can be made to be as near as possible a smooth as glass surface. From my understanding, you want to seal the ends of the tiny tubes that make up the reed so they don't absorb too much moisture.
I think this goes hand in hand with a tip I read on the forum from Bass about running the face of his mouthpiece against a perfectly smooth piece of marble, again to make the surface as smooth as possible.
As always, comments on the forum are much appreciated