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.