Is your clarinet out of adjustment and causing you TROUBLE?

Sent Thursday, March 20, 2014

CLARINET MENTORS

For clarinetists who want to perform more easily and beautifully

In This Issue

• A Note From Michelle Anderson - I am enjoying chamber music rehearsals
• Free Training - Check Your Clarinet!- How to identify one of the most common problems that your clarinet (not YOU) may have
• Michelle Recommends - Concert and Concert Collection - A great collection of bass clarinet music with the awesome new recordings by Michael Lowenstern
• Clarinet Is Easy - Complete how-to lessons for beginners and self-taught intermediate players

A Note from Michelle Anderson

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to the Clarinet Mentors bi-weekly newsletter. I welcome new readers to the Clarinet Mentors community, and I hope that you enjoy the clarinet-related knowledge that is shared here. My goal is to continue to make life easier for clarinetists all around the world!

Happy Equinox! I hope you are all having fun with your clarinet these days. I am preparing for a chamber music concert in two weeks that features some old favourites for me, and some challenging new repertoire. I'll be performing the Brahms Trio, op. 114 for clarinet, cello and piano. What a beautiful piece! However, I am reminded that Brahms always sounds easier than it is to perform. I am also playing the Ireland Fantasy-Sonata for clarinet and piano. This is a new one for me, and it is very interesting and expressive. Lots of super soft altissimo notes, so I am definitely working on my best air support these days. It is a rarely performed piece, so perhaps I will record this one and post in on Youtube for you all later. We are also performing the Ries Clarinet Trio. If you are near Vancouver, come watch on April 6th.

http://westcoastchambermusic.com/program_2014.html

Thanks to everyone who sent me suggestions as I undertake my Great Ligature Hunt. I am currently trying out several different ones, and I'll share my findings with you later. I received some great suggestions from may of you in the Clarinet Mentors community. I wish all of you are great couple of weeks. Please watch the video below to discover if your clarinet is out of adjustment in the most common way (and how it is causing you trouble...)

Thanks for being a part of my community!

Michelle

Free Training

Check your clarinet for the most common out-of-adjustment key trouble!

Today's free training shows you one of the most common challenges your clarinet may have. In this case, I am not talking about a problem that YOU, the clarinetist, may have, but your instrument itself.I have received many emails lately from people who have trouble playing the high B (middle of the staff). I acknowledge that slurring smoothly to a B from an A below it (the classic "crossing the break") is challenging for fingers, and I have some videos designed to help you improve this. (For more info on your own finger positions in crossing the break more easily, go to: http://youtu.be/ZPtr_S04pGg or http://youtu.be/-bItdikinm4

Often, the problem is not with your fingers, but with bent keys on your clarinet that make the B more challenging to play. Today's video is less than 10 minutes long, and shows you how you can check your own clarinet keys. If they are out of adjustment, I recommend you have them repaired by a qualified repair person. It will definitely make a difference! For those of you that live far from repair facilities, or are fairly handy, I do show you how you can readjust things to work better on your own. I feel the invisible ghost of my repairman looking over my shoulder reminding me that sometimes home made repairs are not a good idea.... In this case, I'll leave it up to you if you want to try it yourself (and be haunted by a repair ghost if you mess up...). Learning how to fix this on your own is very handy if you are at a concert, or somewhere with no easy repair options.

Free Training Video:  [ https://youtu.be/0aT2EmRCseo ]

I hope you enjoy this video, and please add your own comments and click the "like" button on the YouTube page if you appreciate it. Doing that makes the video more "findable" by new clarinetists who may appreciate knowing this as well.

As always, I enjoy hearing from you, so please add your comments in the comments box below the video on YouTube.

Michelle Recommends

Bass Clarinet Recordings: Concert and Contest Collection with Michael Lowenstern

In fall, I wrote about a great educational project that bass clarinetist Michael Lowenstern was producing. This was a set of easily accessible recordings of the repertoire in the famous Rubank Concert and Contest Collection. This book has for many years been the standard intermediate repertoire book for bass clarinetists wanting a variety of interesting classical music. There have been very few recordings of these pieces. Michael has created a wonderful recording of both the bass clarinet part, and the piano part by itself. The best news is, it is absolutely free!

This project was funded through Kickstarter by clarinetists and music backers all over the world to create a resource that could be enjoyed by students everywhere. I know that many Clarinet Mentors members contributed to this, and now you can hear the results.

You can follow this link for the recordings:

http://www.earspasm.com/omega/rubank-bass-clarinet/

Clarinet Is Easy - Your Step-by-Step Beginner Course - Now Available! (Also enjoyed by many intermediate level players)

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

Click here to order 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).

About Michelle Anderson

Michelle Anderson, the founder of Clarinet Mentors, is a professional clarinetist and teacher who currently lives in Vancouver BC. Her professional career spans 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.

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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.