Last night, for the first time in I can't remember how long, I got the chance to sit down with some excellent musicians as a clarinet player and I am so happy to say I did not suck.
So why is this kind of a big deal to me and why do I want to write about it? Maybe because I had played for so many years as a guitarist in a lot of bands I got used to the fact that it was really easy to play with people. Or perhaps it was the fact that I spent maybe ten years in my midi studio, burying myself in electronic music, thinking I would make the next big thing and finally realizing that no, no one was that interested in my music. Want a free CD? I have about 100 left....
So I spent a lot of time by myself, with only my own self for musical inspiration, and did a lot more mouse manipulation than actually playing an instrument. I can tell you, for me, its not healthy, but it took a long time to realize that.
It was about two years ago, I began to hear, really hear, some music that I was only vaguely aware of, klezmer. And after trying to learn some Klezmer Brass All Stars trumpet parts, and pretty much killing myself and not being all that happy with the results, I began to become more and more enamored of the clarinet.
I thought I would try and learn the clarinet by myself, same as I did with the saxophone. How hard could it be?
After some months I attend a few jam sessions and never felt so embarrassed in my life. Depressing. I am supposed to just be able to pick up any instrument and learn it, right? Wrong. And wrong.
I found a great teacher and I begin to take lessons, and come to understand just what a challenge I have given myself. Most people are smart enough not to try and learn something like the clarinet in their mid-50's but not me.
I also found out about the Greek and Turkish clarinet website just after I bought my first (of three so far) horns, and found it to be an excellent place full of very knowledgeable players (and damned fine folks too!).It was thru this site that I ran across a friend of a friend, Yankel Falk, and it was my good luck to get invited to this klezmer jam.
The occasion was a party for the French Klezmer duo Les Mentsch who are touring in the states.
I was really very nervous all the way out to the party, because all I could think was that I would be so terrible that I would embarrass myself. It didn't help that for the entire week before I felt like I could barely make a single nice sounding note on my horn.
When I arrive I find an entire house full of people, a lot of them musicians. Lots of people speaking French, which of course I don't being a cloddish American.
I meet the guys in Les Mentsch, and the accordion player actually speaks pretty good English. My bad luck, the clarinet player only speaks French.
I say hello to Yankel, and find out our mutual friend, a great accordion player is unable to make it to the party. Too bad, but there is another excellent accordion player in attendance, Eric, from the local (and very popular and very good) band Vagabond Opera.
I have a plate of some quite good food, and then a fairly good dose of wine to relax as the instruments begin to come out of the cases. My god, there are four clarinet players here counting me, and one of the guys also has a stunningly beautiful taragato. This is like a wooden saxophone, and this is a real beaut, made out of cocobolo wood, and the bore is huge on the end, like a blunderbuss or something.
Did I mention there were also two good violin players? And that I was nervous?
I try to stay in the background when the other musicians start to play, and right away I could see this was a different scene than the kind of jam sessions I had participated in when I was a rock musician.
You see, I really got to hate anything that had the smell of a jam session, since it almost always turned out to be who-can-play-the-fastest-and-loudest, and that bores the crap out of me. Besides, rock is so varied, so that most of the time if I knew the song, I was heartily sick of it, not inspiring.
So here is the first big difference: people here actually know a lot of klezmer pieces, and while I don’t know all of them, at least they are all pretty tuneful.
I also realize that I can just lay back a bit, and play around the chord structure, play a few licks, without having to try and get the whole tune. Its almost like I know how to play this thing a bit.
The songs are very fluid and one flows into the other, people swapping parts, no huge egos (yeah, no rockers here) and as I play more and more I begin to actually start to loosen up and enjoy myself a bit. It helps a lot that everyone in the room is really very loose and confident on their instruments, which makes it a million times easier for little old me to play along.
More wine, more songs, some singing, some belly dancing and bit by bit I begin to feel like I am able to play and get in some good licks.
Having two good accordion players does not hurt one bit.
Then I had the high point of the evening for me. Jack started to play a song that I had heard on the late lamented German Goldenstein CD and to my amazement, I was able to play this song with no problem - and I had never tried to learn it. This in spite of the fact that I have only learned maybe two klezmer tunes, and this wasn't one of them. And what a struggle to learn them!
Now if I was playing the guitar, this would be no problem - but I was certainly not playing guitar. I could scarcely believe it - what a great difference from the last time I tried to play with people. Perhaps all the endless scales and finger exercises were finally paying off. I have always thought that you have to get beyond thinking about where your fingers are, but simply think and play, before you can really get into the heart of any music. I had a bit of that, right then.
I was also pleased again with how wonderful my Buffet sounds - myself I am no match, by any stretch of the imagination, with the ability of the people I was playing with, but at least I did not have horrible tone.
There were some other wonderful moments. At one point Jack started singing a niggun, and we all joined in, harmonizing this way and that. It was very Jewish, very alive and wonderful, and I felt connected to these people in a way I don't feel normally unless I am in my synagogue and feeling centered and solid in my community. Nothing like it.
One last great thing: someone started a slow, quiet tune, and the clarinets all joined in, soft now and close harmonies, and is there anything in the world that sounds as good as these woodwinds? I have played in horn sections as a sax player and as nice as that is, the feeling is just so different with a mass of clarinets. I suppose I have drunken the cool aid, but here it is: I know what I heard and I loved it.
So I am well aware that you may play out all the time, jam all the time and its just normal for you, but for me this was a great night. I felt for the first time in ages that I was again a member of the tribe of musicians, that I belonged there. I am still parsecs away from where I want to be as a clarinet player, but at least now I feel that I am not quite so out in the cold.
Quote: when I am playing left hand high notes, I notice that the back of my tongue is scraping on the back of my molars, scraping right up against them. So this channel is very small, the focus is bringing us the purity we are looking for.
Again note the angle of the thumb, should still be at an angle and touching the register key, not too far up the key.
Another exercise Bb (middle) F (higher register) keep the right hand finger down. This is almost a bit of a test for me to see how well I am lined up with the horn - if I am good, its nothing at all if I am bad its difficult.
We spoke again about how the horn is held, and now per Kirts instruction I am holding the horn one knee or the other, not between my knees. This gives me support but doesn’t muffle the tone. I must say that I am still doing some support with my thumb, there is still some weight on it so at least for now when I really want to concentrate on my fingers, I will hold the horn square between my knees to totally remove any weight off my thumb. I want the fingers to just be able to float on the keys.
As a reminder and here again, this is for me so I don’t forget I am trying to be really consistent about how I approach the instrument before I hit the first note: get the embouchure set, tighten the gut muscles, breathe in, make certain the tongue is up against the reed to close the aperture, and then finally release the tongue and then the note will come out. Of course after this if I am playing legato I will not use the tongue again until the next breath.
With long breaths, I think for me its not so much having enough wind, but keeping the air steady, steady, steady; and the longer I go, the less steady the air flow. Logically the most control you can have of the tone is when the you have control of the air then you can modify the tone with a will. If I can do this, I can create a pure tone, as opposed to a buzz tone, which has a lot of overtones. Don’t make the mistake of thinking of this pure tone as a flat, dull tone and I want to do both at will. As always, this means lining up with the physics of the clarinet. My inconsistencies become hideously clear when I listen back on the recording instead of one long note, what I hear are a series of notes some of which are louder, some softer, and with different tones. This is exactly what I don't want to hear.
Next we did an exercise that it took me a few minutes to understand: slurring three octaves. What the hell is that? Kirt took my horn, reversed the mouthpiece, and had me blow the horn while he did the fingering. Suddenly I was playing from a low F to a high F, two octaves above. Listen to this (which sounds awful on top because my embouchure was too loose): Download file
What is the point of this demonstration? The point here is that I made no changes whatsoever while doing the giant slur I just played the one breath and the clarinet responded, as Kirt said this shows flexibility and facility. One of the things that the clarinet is known for is for being inflexible and playing intervals is very hard for many people. Kirt told me that before he was using the system he is teaching me, the idea was just to bear down and grunt thru the intervals thirds, sixths, over the break.
The challenge with this system, where you are not just clamping down with a lot of force on the embouchure, is that its very live there is not as much resistance in the reed. As he said, we have a reed (#3 in my case) that has plenty of resilience, but its not like we are talking about using #4s or even #5s, as classical players are want to.
Kirt played my horn and pronounced that the reed I am using is not that good. For me this is a mysterious process, since what he hears and what I hear seem to be different things. Unlike Kirt, I can't just say things like, this reed doesn't have enough resistance. At this point, Kirt pointed out to me how short a period of time I am have been playing (1 ½ years) and lessons with him (1 year, not quite). He pointed out that with time, I will be able to adjust to any horn with much more facility than I can now; the idea is that I cannot line up as quickly and easily as I will be able to at some point in the future. I have to remember that I am a beginner, damn!
For facility up high on the horn, since I can't play as well up high as I can in the chalumeau, is something I need to work on. Kirt points out that when you are playing in the lower stack, the clarinet does a lot more work for you; more wood = less work. Kirt was reminded of what his teacher told him about play not only high notes but also soft notes: you have to play with a lot more breath support (push harder from the gut, not blowing into the horn harder) to play these soft or high notes, and playing soft high notes are the most difficult of all. If you are playing softly, there is not much margin for error, since you can hear everything so easily. To maintain these soft notes, you have to make sure that the everything remains constant, or you will hear it. Again, this is not about velocity, but keeping that constant pressure.
On right hand notes, Kirt says that you don't have to do as much shaping of the sound with your mouth, since you have so much more of the tube of the horn to work with. Of course you still have to work to make the tone pure, but its easier than when you have less keys held down. As you may have noticed the sweet spots on the horn are right about in the middle of the horn, thus why I was shown to play the E, F and G notes (right around the top of the staff) as the long tones.
Kirt also reminded me that I should remember that the clarinet has two basic systems you have to work on: the fingers and the breath. Its OK to concentrate on either part of these two systems, but of course never one to the exclusion of the other.
A bit about transposition: if you are playing a piece that is written in concert pitch, and you want to transpose it, you must also transpose the key signature too. For instance, a piece written in concert F, which has one Bb, if transposed up a major second to make it correct for the Bb clarinet, the key signature would be transposed up also. Thus from F you would go to G, with the single F#.
Another way to think about this: you are adding two sharps to get the major second when you are transposing so for instance if the piece was in the concert key of Bb, then you would add two sharps and then you would end up with the sharps and the flats cancelling each other out, and you would end up in the key of C. Again if you have a concert key with 4 flats, when you transpose it up a major second, using two sharps, you cancel out two of the flats and end up with only two flats. In concert C, you add two sharps and end up in D. Makes sense now that I think about it. Its still easier for me to learn it off the record, but Kirt is a big fan of reading music, he says even music you know is better to read off the music, but eventually it will be better to transpose on the fly. I will still do transposing for some time until I feel a lot better about sight reading, which I am not at all good at now.
The double embrosure function is to get me to tap into the acoustical chamber of the mouth to make a tone, not concentrating on the form of the embrosure as much think of it as going back into the mouth, away from the lips. If you look at a diagram of the throat, remember that the glottis is where the volume comes from, the tone from the rest of the mouth chamber. In fact check out this article, fascinating: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-human-instrument
One last note, the gliss of deaths real function is the gliss is so that when you do descending scales so that you have enough control of the airstream to line up correctly with the horn for descending notes on the horn. For Kirt, this is fundamental to playing the horn; while you play it without this, it makes all the work at lot easier. It is the feel, the tangible sensation, that I have not gotten to yet, to produce the gliss.
I have had some great difficulties with pain in my right hand, much pain ending in tendonitis, and went thru a period when I used a neck strap. This was OK but still felt clumsy. I even tried a Ton Kooiman extended thumb rest, but it was really akward and huge on the horn - I hated it instantly. As I tired to attach my normal thumb rest back on the horn, I lost one of the screws! To make matters worse, the music shop did not have a repairman there on Saturday so I had to wait till Monday before I could get it fixed. I had to work all day Sunday but had lots of sitting around time, so I practiced but ended up having to balance the horn on my knees. To my utter surprise, this had the effect of relaxing my right hand almost completely. Of course there was no weight on it, but more than that, I wasn’t trying to do the death grip on the bottom of the horn.
So now I am doing what Kirt often does, playing with the horn balanced over to the side, and sometimes playing with the horn in the middle, between my knees. I have to remember to move the knees apart for the low notes; esp. if you play standing up, you can hit some choked notes. This position also gives you good upright posture. I also am holding the horn at a bit of a greater angle, slightly more away from my body, using this technique, which Kirt said is a good thing.
Note this first little exercise;
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all this is is what Kirts teacher always used to play when he first picked up the horn. Some things to remember - get the pure Bb to match with the side Bb - also note that the F above staff is the purest tone on the clarinet, which is why we play it for long tones. The transition should be seamless.
Venting of notes - where you hold down keys in the lower stack even though you don't have to. Recall that for Bb you can hold the whole lower stack down to make going over the break easier. Its not quite the same sound as unvented, but you can make it pretty close. For instance in the little warm up piece, going from Bb to F you can hold the F key down as soon as you hit A. I find that if I do this incorrectly, my entire left arm can tense up, something to look out for.
A note on the anchor points: I am trying to make more of an effort to rely more on feeling the anchor points of both fingers (on the left hand, always being in contact with the A and Ab keys and on the right, finger resting on the bottom two side keys. This doesn’t mean that I don't still use the mirror, but you can't correct mistakes if you can't see them.
And a quick thought on the thumb: just make sure that the knuckle is just to the right of the thumb rest -its bad to have the thumb any farther to the left than this. Please note: this is slightly different than what I wrote in a previous lesson, sorry if there is any confusion on this.
On the D minor scale, as well as on going over the break exercise #5 from Not Quite Lesson 12 , we are using the straight right hand finger for the B natural directly above the break, as opposed to the left hand B natural for this. On the D minor, I had figured out the fingering incorrectly: the classical technique in this case is to use the Right hand B natural (make sure that your right finger is straight, slapping the key) and use the Left hand for the C#. This is part of the principal of using R-L or L-R for fingering combinations to avoid moving between two left hand keys or two right hand keys for two adjacent notes. You can see why this makes more sense, and you can use this in almost all situations. Kirt showed me a couple of exceptions to this, but its a good way to conserve motion in your fingering. Note: a bonus with fingering the D minor scale this way is that you can leave the right hand B down as you play the C#, its not an issue.
I must admit however using the right hand for the B natural is for me, a bit tougher, it has a tendency to pull my right ring finger off the hole. However, if I have my right hand flattened against the horn, especially if I have the index finger laying across the side keys, as I should always, it makes this position much easier to play. Just something else to train your hands to do, eh?
As I continue trying to keep my hands closer and closer to the horn, what Kirt often says comes to mind: the simple way is the easy way. So when I pick up the horn, I make the position for the G but consider this: all the fingers are directly above, floating, just the slightest amount, the correct keys. It looks from the outside as if you were fingering a low E.
Something to be mad at myself for! I have a instruction video to learn some Klezmer tunes, and in looking at the basic sheet music I managed to transpose in the wrong direction, and learned the tune that way! I took the music in to my lesson, Kirt looked at it and said, oh for music written in concert (C) you must transpose up a major 2nd, not down a maj 2nd. So I took the time to write it out, and then listened to the original recording and sure enough, that’s it. Damn! Now I get to learn it all over again, but maybe at some point practice will make it perfect. Should I live that long!