In This Issue
July 10, 2015
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- A Note From Michelle Anderson - Come join me in San Jose on July 16th!
- Free Training - Bonade Finger Warmups - Discover a technic to play your clarinet more smoothly
- My Clarinet VIP Opportunity - Join my Early Bird VIP list for some exciting new clarinet training, coming soon...
- Michelle Recommends - Steuer Reeds - I love 'em...
- Clarinet Is Easy - Complete how-to lessons for beginners and self-taught intermediate players
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A Note from Michelle Anderson
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Hello !
Welcome to the Clarinet Mentors newsletter. I enjoy sharing my best clarinet pointers with clarinetists all over the world, and I appreciate that you are part of the Clarinet Mentors Community!
For any of you who live near San Jose CA, I invite you to come hear me perform the Ticheli clarinet concerto with the Pacific Symphonic Wind Ensemble on Thursday, July 16th at 1:30 pm at the California Theater. I'd love to meet you. Here's a photo of our Vancouver performance.
Since I last wrote to you, my woodwind quintet, the Vancouver Wind Quintet played our debut concert last week as part of a summer music festival here. It was so much fun. I feel very privileged to perform with the outstanding musicians in this group. Even better, a friend of mine, Chris Haas, one of Vancouver's best school band directors, offered to record us with his outstanding recording gear. He captured some great sounds. I will send a link to a video of some of our pieces in a future newsletter. Some of the music may interest you if you play in a woodwind quintet. I really enjoyed the repertoire that we chose, and I think you might enjoy listening to it.
I'm also looking forward to doing some recordings with the Vancouver Film Orchestra at the end of July. This is a group that records movie soundtracks here in "Hollywood North". I played my first set of recordings with them 2 weeks ago, and I loved it. It was my first experience with a click track. I can see how it helps to coordinate things. It must have been much trickier before they had software to coordinate the clicks with the video!
I hope you are all enjoying your clarinet. Today's video is actually an excerpt from my new course How To Play Clarinet More Easily. (Yes - I am STILL working on it. If I didn't have so much fun performing and a pretty full concert schedule, that course would be done sooner. Please stay patient those of you that are looking forward to previewing it!) I hope you enjoy today's preview, if you try it this technic for a couple of weeks, you will play more smoothly, especially in slow lyrical pieces.
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Thanks so much for being part of my Clarinet Community.
Free Training: Play More Smoothly in Legato Sections - A very useful warm-up exercise based upon the teachings of Daniel Bonade
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As I was editing and uploading materials from my new course, How To Play Clarinet More Easily, I came across this video that introduces a finger exercise developed by Daniel Bonade. He was a very influential teacher from around the 1920's to the 1960's. Many clarinetists have used this exercise to help train their fingers to move more gently on the clarinet. This is essential to creating smooth playing, and ultimately, the gentleness that we can train in our fingers with this kind of warm-up will also greatly improve finger speed. There is nothing like smacking the clarinet as hard as possible (which we instinctively do when the music is challenging) to slow us down.
This is worth sharing with all of you now, because this is a very effective exercise, and I think it can help you.
You can click on the picture below to play the video, or using this link.
Clarinet List VIP Opportunity
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I am very exciting to be finally nearing the end of a two year project to create a clarinet course for you that uses ALL of my favourite clarinet pointers and combines them with a very organized set of lesson plans to help you master them.
This course will be designed for players with an intermediate level of clarinet skills. (If you are newer to the instrument, or basically self-taught, the Clarinet Is Easy course, below, is a great starting point to prepare you for this upcoming course.)
There are still lots of video edits to do, and worksheets to finalize, and the huge task of loading it all up to a website where you can access all of the great lessons. I am not announcing the exact release date yet, but I am hoping for the next month or two. It is currently about 80% recorded, and the rest should be recorded soon if all goes well.
When this is complete, I will be ready to celebrate! I want to invite you to the celebrations. I will be hosting a series of special events, including some live online trainings that will allow members of the Clarinet Mentors community to have some live mini lessons, and ask me your clarinet questions. I'll also be sharing some great sample lessons from the course with you. If you are interested in taking part in any of these events, the best way to get the advance notice is to sign up for my VIP Clarinet List. It only takes a minute, and then I will know that you are interested in some great new training (and during my celebration week, it is all at no charge to you) to help you play clarinet more easily. I have a quick (less than one minute) video with directions on how you can sign up. VIP Clarinet members will receive special discounts and exclusive offers, so please sign up now by clicking here!
Michelle Recommends: Steuer Reeds - Exclusive Cut
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Reeds!!!! How many times have I loved them only to be let down by them in a heartbreaking manner? There are many good reeds out there for us to use as clarinetists. In my experience, most boxes of cane reeds have a few excellent reeds, a few pretty good reeds, and some good kindling. As with all gear, I recommend that you experiment to discover what works best on your setup.
If I were to recommend the reeds that have worked best for me and my students, good ones to try include: Vandoren V12, Vandoren Rue 56, D'Addario Reserve Classic and Reserve. Many of my students also like Mitchell Lurie and Gonzales reeds. Lots of people are enjoying the Legere Signature synthetic reeds. They last for a very long time, and don't warp. I find that they are like a "pretty good" cane reed, but are no-muss, no-fuss. I look forward to Legere continuing to improve the technology until they are like a "really good" cane reed!
A colleague of mine recently recommended the Steuer reeds, and I love them! I have also recently changed my mouthpiece set up so the reeds that used to work for me don't respond as well on my current setup. It may be that the Steer reeds work very well on my Backun mouthpiece in particular, although they sounded good even before I changed my setup. For those of you who simply like to try new things, they are worth trying. As always, I recommend you get a box and find out for yourself how they work with your setup.
Clarinet Is Easy - Your Step-by-Step Beginner Course - Now Available! (Also enjoyed by many intermediate level players)
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How To Solve Your Common Clarinet Frustrations and Play Clarinet More Easily
I firmly believe that if anyone has the "recipe" for how to play clarinet, things are really relatively easy to do. Most of our frustrations come from inadvertently learning bad habits along the way. With that in mind, I have created for you a 10-lesson comprehensive course for beginners (and self-taught intermediate players) that gives you the tools to truly learn the clarinet easily, while avoiding all of the most common frustrations that can plague us. I believe that these lessons can save you hours of grief by giving you the best practise systems that have worked for thousands of clarinetists. The lessons have great content, and are presented in a video format so that you can watch them again and again. If you would like to play with more ease and have a clear understanding of the fundamentals of clarinet playing, you can get more information on the Clarinet Is Easy course here (including some free preview videos):
Click here for the free preview videos to Clarinet Is Easy
If you are curious about this, you can try these lessons with a 100% 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee. (That means that you can try a full 5 lessons before you decide if you have received great value from the course.) If it is not the right style for you, you get your tuition refunded, no problem. I invite you to try it now! Many students have received amazing results so far from this course (and you can read their comments on the order page).
Michelle Anderson, the founder of Clarinet Mentors, is a professional clarinetist and teacher who currently lives in Vancouver BC. Her professional career spans over 30 years and she currently plays regularly with the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, the Pacific Symphonic Wind Ensemble and the West Coast Chamber Music series. She has performed with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet Touring Orchestra and many other groups. Michelle currently specializes in teaching adults to play clarinet more easily and quickly through online resources, and conducts the Vancouver Clarinet Choir. Michelle is a Backun Musical Services Artist and plays on Backun clarinets and mouthpieces.
Thanks for reading this biweekly newsletter. If you think a friend would enjoy this, please feel free to forward it. If they want to enrol in the Clarinet Mentors Community, they can go to www.learnclarinetnow.com.
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Helping you to find success on your instrument with proven, easy-to-follow systems that are designed to help you sound good, and feel better about your playing.
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