Here is the definition of blowing on the clarinet:"pushing air steadily" - thats the foundation if that is not working nothing else is working. When you have this down, it makes it easier to play the clarinet, effeciently, lining up the acoustics of the instrument so you are working with as opposed to against the physics of the instrument.
I was having a lot of trouble with the Eb fingering using the key between the D/E key - the middle finger must be right on the money, and Kirt was using the third finger on this key back a bit from the end of the key. This moved the third finger a bit out of the way. Kirt also did a slight adjustment of this key, which he says you can do fairly easily on these old horns since the keys are German silver and are soft and not brittle like silver plated keys. I honestly am not brave enough to do this myself. Interesting that a minute adjustment can change the tone significantly - Kirt also did a minor adjustment to the other C# key which had sounded horrible and viola! - it sounded great.
Again we spoke at some lenght about keeping the fingers at a 45 degree angle - this is especially difficult between the first and second finger, which have a tendency to splay apart - but when you don't do this, it really is much, much more efficent. As Kirt pointed out, when we are playing slowly, we have the luxury of not playing in the most compact, efficent manor, but when we want to play fast, there isn't any wiggle room, since there isn't enough time to play the fast passages.
I am now able to get over the break pretty consistently well, but my fingering is not always ideal. The concept is to teach myself to get over the break with as close as possilbe correct finger placement: as always, its best not to learn a bad habit in the first place, where it will get ingrained and even harder to un-learn after the inevitiable endless repitition.
Again listening to myself, I am disturbed to see how much I am rushing the metronome, even from the first beat. Knowing the problem, and keeping myself aware of it, will hopefully make it easier to correct the problem. If you have any way to record yourself with a metronome, do it - even if the results hurt!
Here is an interesting exercise we did: Kirt whistled one of the exercises, and I just held a G# for the 16 count of the exercise. It was harder than it should have been, and the point was: we are only ever blowing one note for each of these exercises, and for anything at all when playing legato. It is good to always keep this in the back of your mind: one note, many fingerings. Kind of zen, isn't it?
We also worked on using the right hand hand postion for the B (in the center of the staff) which can be quite difficult. One thing that came out of this discusson is that you want, in general, to avoid sliding between any two side keys. This is not the case for a similar situation when playing the saxophone, where there are roller keys for some of the side keys. So for the clarinet instead of sliding between those two side keys, find the alternate fingering for the second note - except in those cases where you don't have a choice. This does not say that you should if at all possible play al the notes with one hand, not switching..
Finally here we come back to the thing I still can't do - the gliss of death from high C down to E. I have struggeld and written about this, and still can not seem to get it myself. However, thru the magic of recording, I can let you hear how it sounds when Kirt does it. Now, remember, this is not supposed to be a beautiful set of tones, the idea is that you can do this at will, and recall that we are just fingering a high C, no fingering changes at all, with a couple of different glisses for you to hear: Download file
And of course that is Kirt - I still can't do this, but maybe it will be easy for you!
So - its now new years eve, so I am quitting the blog for this year. Party on Garth, pary on Wayne!