|
In This Issue February 6, 2013
|
- A Note From Michelle Anderson
- Free Training - How To "Blow It" On Clarinet (Successfully...)
- Clarinet Tips - Winter maintenance for wooden clarinets
- Michelle Recommends - other videos and resources to help you play more easily
- Clarinet Is Easy - detailed lessons to help you improve your clarinet playing
|
A Note from Michelle Anderson
|
Hello Everyone!
A big welcome to all of you who are reading the Clarinet Mentors newsletter for the first time. Thanks for joining the community, and I hope you find great value here for your own clarinet playing! These newsletters are sent to the Clarinet Mentors community every two weeks, usually on Wednesdays. I hope that you enjoy the clarinet tips and pointers that you will find here, and feel free to comment at the Clarinet Mentors Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/ClarinetMentors.
Have you ever had a piece put in front of you to perform that you just don't like very well? I am performing a piece soon, that frankly, I've never really liked. I've managed to avoid it for all of my years of clarinet playing. I have a colleague, who I really like and respect, who has championed this piece, and thus we will be performing it. I mentioned this to another clarinetist, whose opinion I really value. I said "I'm just not in love with this piece." She wisely said "Do you have to be in love with every piece of music that you play? Couldn't you start out as 'just friends' and see where it leads you?" Even though we were joking around, her comment struck me as quite profound. I've really been thinking about it. I think my best performances do happen when I am "in love" with the music. I appreciate and enjoy it so much, that I eagerly pour myself into all of the nuances of the music. I imagine for all of us, some music lends itself to this process more easily than in others (as in the dating world, some people capture our interest much more easily than others).
If you know me, you know that the psychology of performing is as important as the physical aspects of performing. I am curious to know how I can approach this music in the next two weeks so that I feel excited and eager to enjoy this performance. For right now, I am trying to explore the "just friends" approach. I'm not expecting the music to blow me away, but I am looking for the value within it. With this in mind, I suddenly found some beautiful phrases in a section that I had previously written off as fairly banal. Hmm - those were kind of fun to play. My hope is that I can find a lot of hidden beauty in this piece, and then feel like I can give a performance that the audience deserves to hear. I'll let you know how my journey goes, and if I find a way to make it work, I'll look forward to sharing my success with you all. I welcome any thoughts that you have on this.
Enjoy your clarinet this week, and thanks for being a part of my community!
Free Training - How To Blow It On Clarinet
|
How To Blow It On Clarinet (With Great Success)
Today's free training was inspired by my interactions this week with some of the clarinetists who have signed up for the Clarinet Is Easy course. I have had the pleasure of meeting some of them recently online through a Skype lesson. Most of them are accomplished players with some great habits already in place. However, there was a common theme - in spite of having fairly good air support, their air was not moving as efficiently as it could be to really give them their best, fullest, beautiful tone quality. Having great air support makes so many things on the clarinet easier - good tone quality, better dynamic range, easier register changes, and more responsive high notes.
Today's free training video is a long one - 15 minutes - and gives you an exercise to really get in touch with your blowing muscles to improve your air support. This exercise feels a bit awkward, but it really helps us to learn exactly how our blowing muscles work, and how we can train them to move our air faster. It is one of my favourite training technics, and I have seen it work for many people.
Enjoy this video, and be sure to comment on the video on the YouTube page if you enjoy it or have questions. I'll be checking those comments and responding to them. I have issued a challenge in the video to incorporate this exercise into your regular routine for the next two weeks, and then report on the results. You may find some noticeable differences immediately as you use it, but I find that usually this technic is most effective after a couple of weeks.
Click on the image above to view this video. I have more videos currently in production. If there are topics that you would like help with, please send me some suggestions. If you are on Facebook, you can post your comments at: http://www.facebook.com/ClarinetMentors
In northern climates at this time of year, I find that many wooden clarinets can start to dry out. With furnaces running, and the air tending to be dryer, this can lead to the potential for your instrument to crack. One way to help prevent this, is to oil your wood. Every January or February, I inspect all of the wooden clarinets that my students have, and we look for signs of a dry instrument. These include:
- a dull finish, rather than a slightly shiny one
- the wood grain becomes more visible, and in places, there is a deeper line in the grain that looks like the beginning of a crack
One way to help prevent excessive drying is to use bore oil on the wood. There are many ways to do this, and usually only a very small amount of oil is needed to help restore the wood. I find that cocobolo wood seems to dry faster than grenadilla (which is the usual black wood in clarinets). If you look online, you will find many recommendations. There are some elaborate and simple technics out there. Here is a relatively simple one that I found on YouTube that will work for most of you: http://youtu.be/VBWmyBPf9cE
Check your wooden instruments out, and if it looks dry, use an old swab and create an "oil swab" that you can reuse every winter. (If you live in Australia, or another southern region of the world, make a note to do this in July or August!)
If you are new to the Clarinet Mentors community, there may be some great videos and articles that would really help you from the past few months. Here is how you can access some of these materials:
Clarinet Mentors Newsletters - Back Issues (that you can enjoy over, and over again)
You will find articles and videos related to:
- Faster fingers - a couple of those, actually
- Faster tonguing
- Better phrasing
- High notes - from the basics to the extreme altissimo
- Simple tone improving technics
- Playing with a metronome
- An easy way to test your embouchure
- How to practise so that you really get good results
- Scales made easy
Check out this wealth of knowledge that can help you play more easily at:
|
Clarinet Is Easy - Beginner Course - Now Available!
|
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 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. 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:
Click the above link to find out more, and to see free preview videos. You can also try the first lesson with a 100% Money-Back Guarantee if it is not a good fit for you.
Michelle Anderson is a professional clarinetist and teacher who currently lives in Vancouver BC. She has been a professional performer for 30 years and 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, and conducts the Vancouver Clarinet Choir.
Thanks for reading this biweekly newsletter.
|
|
Helping you to find success on your instrument with sound teaching techniques, and useful learning systems.
|
|
|
