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In This Issue December 29, 2013
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- A Note From Michelle Anderson - Happy New Year!
- Free Training - How you can use your practise time better to dramatically affect your results.
- Michelle Recommends - Clarinet mouthpiece patch
- Clarinet Is Easy - Complete how-to lessons for beginners and self-taught intermediate players. December Special - 2 for 1! - Gift a friend with a complete course that helps you (and your friend) to play clarinet more easily, or share this offer with a friend and you can each learn for half price
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A Note from Michelle Anderson
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Welcome to the Clarinet Mentors bi-weekly newsletter. If this is your first newsletter, I welcome you to the community and hope that you enjoy the videos and clarinet tips here. Feel free to contact me if you ever have questions along the way.
I am on holidays with family and friends and have been to Oregon, Minnesota, and will loop back up into Manitoba before heading home. I enjoyed some great X-country skiing today, and the weather forecast now has the temperature set to drop 20 -30 degrees in the next 24 hours. Time for indoor activities...
It seems like many people are pulling their clarinets out over the holidays, because I have received a record number of emails this past week. I enjoy hearing from you who are all of over the world! If you are considering signing up for my 10-lesson course, Clarinet Is Easy, I have a 2-for-1 special until the end of the year. You can gift a set of lessons to a friend, or share the cost. See details below. If you have ever signed up for the course, you can also take advantage of this by giving a gift to a clarinet playing friend. Just let me know their name and email address and I'll arrange it for you.
I want to take this opportunity to wish all of you, all over the world, a very Happy New Year as we launch into 2014. I hope you all celebrate it in a meaningful manner! I also wish you lots of fun on your clarinet in the new year.
Thanks for being in my community!
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Free Training - How to use your practise time for better results
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I see many people who love playing their clarinets and practise regularly. However, you may find that you are challenged by the same problems again and again. Most people have developed "practise habits" that actually make their playing worse, rather than better. Yikes! I plan on putting out more videos about this, since I know that all of you want your efforts to produce the best possible results. Today's free training video gives you five good habits to consider when you are practising, and might alert you to one of most common bad habits that many people have. I hope you enjoy it, and look forward to your comments.
This video is an "encore presentation" from about a year ago. I had a video prepared for this newsletter, and I was missing a key sound file when I tried to do the final edits during my travels. I will finish the new video when I return from my holidays (and have access to my full "Clarinet Mentors" studio). I gave some thought as to what would be most useful to you now, even if you may have viewed it a year ago. This time of year, many people resolve to bring better habits into their lives. Perhaps you can use this to introduce some clarinet New Year's resolutions. I recommend you review it if you have seen it before, and if you are new to it, please enjoy the video and try out some of the pointers contained within it.
As always, I enjoy hearing from you, so please add your comments in the comments box below the video on YouTube, or send me an email. Click on the video image below to watch this video lesson.
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Michelle Recommends: Mouthpiece patches
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A mouthpiece patch is a small piece of rubber or vinyl that sticks onto your mouthpiece where you rest your top teeth. I recommend using one for a couple of reasons. It is more comfortable for your teeth, and it reduces the vibrations to your teeth that come through the mouthpiece. Dampening this vibration helps you to hear your sound more from the ambient sounds of the room, rather than directly through the clarinet mouthpiece to your jawbone, to your ear. You should hear more of what you actually sound like to others. In some cases, a mouthpiece patch will affect the quality of your sound (usually in a good way). It also helps your teeth to stay more securely in place, which can really help with articulation. If your teeth are sliding around on the mouthpiece surface while you tongue, you are more likely to squeak, or lose your good tone.
Many people prefer the black rubber pads, which are softer than vinyl. If you have a latex allergy, then the vinyl are a good alternative. In my experience the vinyl is a bit more durable as well, but they both achieve what we want them to.
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Clarinet Is Easy - Your Step-by-Step Beginner Course - Now Available! (Also enjoyed by many intermediate level players)
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December Special - 10 Week Video Course - "2 for 1" Give a gift to a friend, or share the cost, and have a buddy to play with! (see details below)
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 hundreds 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).
December Special - Clarinet Is Easy 2 for 1 Have you been interested this course which gives you hours of video lessons to help you play clarinet more easily? Do you play in a band with other clarinetists who might also benefit from a series of video lessons? Here is your chance to share the learning, and support each other by reinforcing these good habits together as you make music. Anyone who signs up for Clarinet Is Easy during December can gift the course to a friend. Simply send me an email with your name and email once you have registered, and include the name and email of your clarinet-playing friend. I will enrol them in the course for free. Please let me know if this is a surprise gift to them, and if you want your name acknowledged when I send them their registration information. Likewise, you can share the cost, and have one of you enrol as a regular student, and I will set up the second person at no charge. Existing students can share this offer as well, just send me a note.
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.
Thanks for reading this biweekly newsletter.
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Helping you to find success on your instrument with sound teaching techniques, and useful learning systems.
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