Tag Archive for 'tone'

Intimacy with your Instrument, part 2

Published
by
dtclarinet
on November 2, 2007
in Clarinet and Mastery
. 0 Comments

If you think of intimacy with a person, the first words that come to mind are commitment, trust and communication. Also, to be close to someone, you need to know yourself first. That in itself is a lifelong process. No matter how compatible a couple might be, there will be problems: misunderstandings, a build up of bad memories, and plain complacency and boredom. All these things can kill a relationship if left unresolved. It is the same for your long term relationship with your instrument.

After graduating from Northwestern, I knew a lot about how I wanted to play the clarinet, and how others had accomplished that goal, but I didn’t know myself very well yet, and though I played well, I didn’t know my instrument very deeply. To carry the analogy of a human relationship further, it was as if, during eight years of private study I had been told by a very wise but dominant mother in law how to best relate to my partner, the clarinet.

During my year in Greensboro, I had plenty of time to be alone with the clarinet. The job only entailed 6 or 7 concerts and a dozen or so quintet gigs. It gave me a structure and some cash, but it was far from full time. Luckily my parents still helped out financially, so I didn’t need to seek other work and could focus on mastering clarinet.

I thought a lot about what I wanted to accomplish on the instrument. I knew how to sound good on it, but only with a lot of effort. In my attempts to sound and look like Robert Marcellus I had lost flexibility and adaptability. So rather than continue along that path, I threw out the idea of sounding a particular way, and strove for physical composure and balance.

At some point I wrote a few notes summing up the ideas I employed during many of my practice sessions. These ideas can easily be translated into a set of simple guidelines for any relationship.

1- Hear, Don’t Listen. The Ideal (sound) is always in your ear. You will move toward it, so don’t struggle with it. Let it happen. When I found my notes years later, I was perplexed by what I had meant by “hear, don’t listen”. But after studying the Alexander Technique for the past few years, I rediscovered the importance of keeping judgment out of self-analysis in any relationship. When interacting with your instrument, avoid all judgment of good, bad, right and wrong. Your goal is self-evident. Your love of music, your instrument or your partner is the ideal which will promote your development. If you stumble over every little mishap and error, you’ll lose sight of that goal very quickly and will get tangled in a morass of sticky judgment.

2- The breath should feel like a two way tube going from the bottom of the gut to the end of the instrument, at all times, especially during articulation. This advice obviously applies only to wind instrument players. Even so, I puzzled at the meaning of this strange image from years ago. Here again, the Alexander Technique helped me find a more concise and relevant way to put it. Breath support is just that, nothing else. It’s not breath “force” or breath “rigidity”. When the breath is let out, it is balanced by the resistance of the instrument. When this balance of resistance is accomplished, it does in fact feel like a two way tube! In a personal relationship, this particular advice might be translated to mean: give and take. You cannot push harder than the other is able to handle. It’s counter productive.

3- Play with your whole body. This advice seems obvious, but few of us follow it. We play the instrument using a bunch of rules about how to play or not play, forgetting our direct involvement all all times. Some of us think, “once learned, that’s it.” Others approach the instrument daily with fear and anxiety. A relationship, whether with a person or an instrument, is never “finished” or “complete”. It’s a continuous process. Every time you play, it’s a new experience. Leave the baggage behind and travel light. Look forward not back.

Beyond the above advice, some other ideas came to mind while re-examining my relationship with the clarinet the past few years. Try new equipment (with caution) and techniques to keep things fresh. I’ve been dabbling with mouthpieces and have learned the hard way to be circumspect before changing equipment. I’ll soon be writing a post about that experience, but I still stand by the suggestion to try new toys. They teach you to be flexible and adaptive. I’ve also been experimenting with new techniques such as double tonguing and circular breathing, not because they will make me a better musician, but because they keep me humble about my abilities. There’s always something more to be learned.

I also improvise occasionally, very late at night when no one is around, with the windows all shut. I have never been comfortable with improvising, but I know it’s the best way to free up one’s playing, both physically and mentally.

To be intimate with your instrument you need to trust yourself and play fearlessly. You need to face your limitations with an open mind and delve into problems systematically and without judgment.

Keep your love of music in sight. If you lose that, you lose direction. That’s the hardest one for me as a long time player. It’s easy to become jaded and resentful of the repetition involved in maintaining high playing standards. It’s difficult to keep attitude and playing fresh. Writing about it or talking about it helps. Playing voluntary (unpaid) recitals is a great way to stay fresh.

Don’t ever just play. Make music.

Intimacy With Your Instrument

Published
by
dtclarinet
on October 29, 2007
in Clarinet and Mastery
. 4 Comments

One of the biggest hurdles of longtime professional musicians is maintaining a good relationship with their instrument. Most of us start learning our instruments in Elementary School. How many people are married to their 5th grade sweethearts?

For many of us the beginning starts before we meet our life-long instrument. My relationship with classical music started when I was a few years old. I’d sit in the first row and wiggle and twitch while my mother performed Schubert and Schumann songs. I don’t know how she concentrated. My father played tapes of classical music, mostly Beethoven symphonies and various opera arias. He wasn’t a musician, but appreciated the art.

I began piano lessons at age 6 or 7. Though I don’t remember much, I recall being fascinated by the happy/sad distinction of major and minor keys. My teacher would play a chord and ask me to identify the mood. What intrigued me was that the mood could be changed with only one note shifting down a half step.

When unable to study privately, I remember diligently but laboriously reading a simple Bach gavotte. I also improvised childish tunes and, like any other young pianist, played chop sticks and the boogie woogie. I was not a talented pianist and struggled with every piece. But my passion was undeniable. I enjoyed music, its moods, its shapes and textures.

In sixth grade I was introduced to the clarinet through a demonstration of numerous wind instruments by one man, a music teacher who went from school to school enticing kids with his alacrity on flute, trumpet, oboe, clarinet, trombone and saxophone. He was the pied piper to me, and really enjoyed each instrument.

I picked clarinet because it went the highest and the lowest. Sounds like a kid’s kind of thinking! I had never thought of the clarinet before, or heard it as far as I remember. So that first impression was deep. My choice wasn’t necessarily because of its sound, but I would later realize how its tone also drew me in.

Though years later I would fall in love with the floaty lightness of flute and the dark brooding quality of English Horn, there’s an open, ringing clarity to the tone of the clarinet which has obsessed me since I began playing.

After I’d played my new rented plastic instrument a few months (and had thrown it on the ground in frustration, breaking it), I stumbled upon a recording which would solidify the clarinet as the love of my life. My parents often took me shopping at the Giant Superstore, something like a Wal-Mart. While they shopped for food, I browsed the LPs. One found its way fatefully into my hand: the Mozart Clarinet concerto with Robert Marcellus and the Cleveland Orchestra.

I was 12 years old. I hadn’t formed any opinion of Mozart, and had never heard of Robert Marcellus. But when I heard that recording for the first time, I knew I wanted to be the one playing that piece someday. His tone was what hooked me. Marcellus had a haunting clarity, a round, dark ring to every note. I couldn’t get that sound out of my ear, and I still strive for it.

The struggle begins. I had this sound in my ear, along with a style. Marcellus’ legato was powerful. The connection between notes made you listen to the line. I wanted to get there but didn’t know how.

I started private lessons with the best teacher in town, Sidney Forrest. Through Middle and High School, he hammered technique into me. He quickly saw that I could be complacent (a word Marcellus used years later to describe me to my face) and scheduled lessons at 8 AM Saturday mornings. No Friday night parties for me.

Mr. Forrest didn’t play in my lessons, so I didn’t have a close up model to imitate. I struggled to make the instrument mine. My technique was quite good, except for tonguing. My sight reading was terrible. Musically I had the right intuitions. Mr. Forrest disciplined all those to improve. I became a much better player, but felt no personal style developing yet.

I realize now I still hadn’t respected the instrument deeply. Instead I was infatuated, addicted, like a young lover. I wanted to posses the clarintet, make it mine. I fought to conquer it, and inadvertently allowed a lot of tension into my playing in the process. My successes mounted despite the tension. I won numerous competitions in High School. But I had a lot to learn.

I continued my studies with Mr. Forrest at Interlochen Summer camp (where Robert Marcellus, conducting a rehearsal of Mahler 1, said my head was screwed on wrong) and then at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. After two years at Peabody, I became restless and wanted a change. I applied to study with Guy de Plus in Paris and was accepted by him. At the same time I had one lesson with the legend Robert Marcellus, who was at Northwestern in Chicago.

My lesson with Marcellus changed me. Though he was unable play much due to his failing health, his simple C scale demonstration showed me the closeup version of the sound I had had in my ear since age 12. He gave me his famous crash course in clarinet technique: basic legato, staccato, phrasing and tone. Though he wasn’t masterful at the how to, he got across the what to. The rest was up to me.

I transferred to Northwestern for my third and fourth undergrad years. I ended up studying with Clark Brody, whose gentle, focused approach to the instrument wouldn’t sink in to my soul for many years. I was still obsessed with Marcellus, with whom I had maintenance lessons several times a year, perhaps a fortuitous stroke of fate for me. I had heard about players he had ruined with his caustic and bitter teaching style. His tragically shortened career had left him justifiably angry.

I continued to imitate Marcellus, his tone, and now his embouchure, which looked like an alien had taken over his top lip and was trying to eat the mouthpiece and his lower lip. He once said me to in a moment of compassion, ‘don’t try to imitate the way I look, just use your ear’. I still had little to go on from my own soul. I could think of nothing but being him, rather that being my own, high quality player.

The best part of the Northwestern experience was mock auditions held twice a year. They helped focus me to the task of getting a job. Conservatory musicians tend to get lost in all the esoteric and aesthetic details of playing and lose the big picture (at least for orchestral players): winning an audition.

But my playing would not be independent until I was on my own. After graduating from Northwestern, I won the first audition I took, for the small Greensboro Symphony in NC. It was there that I would become truly intimate with my instrument for the first time.

I’ll start from there in my next post.

Trying out new equipment

Published
by
dtclarinet
on December 12, 2006
in Equipment and Mastery
. 2 Comments

Musicians are as reliant on their equipment as they are their arms and legs. Great equipment is half the battle to playing well. But the search is not so easy.

I’ve been trying out new mouthpieces for months now. Actually, I’ve been searching ever since I started playing clarinet. The perfect mouthpiece is an extension of your body, your musical soul. The more it matches you, the easier it is to make music with it. The less it matches, the more fighting you do just to get past its limitations.

The old mouthpieces from the 40’s and 50’s are still unmatched. Like the Stradivarius violins, there is something mystical about those old mouthpieces. Some say it’s the hard rubber they were made of, and how it’s aged and tempered over the decades of aging.

But the material only accounts for some of the qualities in a good mouthpiece. There are the interactions acoustically between the facing, where the reed vibrates, and the baffle, where the vibrations expand, and the chamber, where the sound is sent into the bore of the instrument.

The facing is the flat table where the reed is held by a ligature, a device to fix the reed in place. (Even the ligature has multiple designs to help with tone and response, but that’s another post) The facing consists mainly of the tip opening, which is the space between the tip of the reed and the mouthpiece. It’s where the vibrations (flapping of the reed) begin. The length of the facing is how far down the flat table the facing begins to curve away from the reed. The length of the facing gives depth to the sound, since the reed is vibrating further down. The shorter the facing, the more flexible it is at the expense of depth, and the longer it is, the less flexible but deeper it sounds.

The baffle is the inside, curved “beak”, where the sound expands into the bore. The swoop of the baffle, how deep or flat it is, affects the speed and expansion of the tone. It also affects response in articulation.

The chamber is the transition from the beak to the round bore of the clarinet. The size and shape of this transition further affects how the sound forms as it enters the instrument.

Each of these areas interacts with another, and so is dependent on the others. One type of baffle may work with one facing, but not another. One chamber may hinder a deep baffle, but not if the facing is very open.

Then there is the interaction between the player and the mouthpiece. Each mouthpiece has a certain character. The craftsman does his best to make each “blank” into the best mouthpiece it can be. The player then chooses between these various “works” and finds the one which best matches his playing.

Reeds are another maddening variable. One mouthpiece may work well with one reed, but may be fussy about reeds in general. So when trying mouthpieces, I have to try many different reeds on them over a period of time to test its consistency. I also need to test mouthpieces in the context of the orchestra to see how the pitch settles and how the response and tone work under pressure.

The process of trying mouthpieces can take years. At some point, a sane person needs to just put away all but one and work with it, get reeds to match it, and give it time to become and extension of the body which plays the music.

Tone

Published
by
dtclarinet
on January 4, 2006
in Clarinet
. 5 Comments

I spent a few hours last week with a long time colleague. She played in the Kennedy Center Opera House orchestra with me while I was there from 1983-89. I’ve always respected and liked her, both as a person and a clarinetist. It’s been at least ten years since we’ve seen each other. I was in the DC area for a few days. So we got together.

I’m not much for shop talk. I’ve always believed in striving for my own ideals and finding my own way. I chose to spend more of my life and time doing other things such as gardening, writing, traveling, reading. Music is only a piece of the whole picture for me.

Lora is one of the few clarinetists I like to talk “shop” with. She had recently gotten a new “Vintage” mouthpiece from Brad Behn, who claims to have recreated the old hard rubber of the famous “Chedeville” mouthpieces from the 50’s. I wanted to compare it to my Lelandais Chedeville, which I love, but which is also getting old and worn. Over the years I’ve tried many new mouthpieces, some of which I’ve used for months and which are excellent. But I always come back to the Lelandais. There’s something in its sound, a color and resonance missing in all the others.

So we started warming up. We have very different tones. Hers is more round than mine, but more fuzzy. Mine is perhaps more pointed and clearer, but less deep than hers. We tried the new mouthpiece with different reeds and ligatures. Some combinations worked better than others. That’s another post. But it was fairly clear this new brand of mouthpiece would be a strong contender against the inimitable old Chedevilles.

Why is tone so important to us? Of course, it’s crucial to have good tone along with the other skills of a musician, technique and musicality. But tone is not as easily measured. It’s subjective. Each listener will have a preference. So will each player. And there are different schools of tone. The French were famous for their focus and clarity, using lighter, flexible tone to express themselves. The German school stove for a heavier and darker, more earthy sound. Karl Leister is one of the great German clarinetists, whose sound is rich and dark. I use the past tense with those schools, because the lines have been blurred by easy access to recordings and foreign equipment. Most players can now pick and choose who they wish to emulate, rather than subscribe to a particular school.

Tone becomes a personal stamp, the most basic way to appeal to a listener. I have always emulated Robert Marcellus, whose tone is unforgettable. But even he once said to me, “Don’t try to sound like me, just follow your inner ear.” And Loren Kitt once advised me, “No matter what mouthpiece you play on, you’ll eventually sound like yourself. So play what’s comfortable.” …sound like yourself…inner ear. So what is the ideal sound I wish to produce?

Marcellus described the clarinet sound as “pear” shaped, deeper and wider at the bottom, more pointed at the top. I like that image. I strive to produce a “diamond” dense clarity from my sound. I want a sound which will ring in the back of the hall, even if I’m playing pianissimo. I often lament that I desire such a “clear” sound, because clarity is hair’s breath from “edgy” or “bright”, two qualities I abhor. Harold Wright had an incredibly dense, pure sound, with no edge. (he played a Lelandais) And his tone was flexible and light, like a flute. Though I respect and love his sound, I still have my own ideal, not quite like his. I want deep, resonante, clear tone, the way my inner ear guides me.

Tone is the Holy Grail. When I’m in the sweet spot, with the right reed, and the stars are aligned, I never want to leave. I just want to feel that perfect sound vibrating, emanating from me. It’s like chocolate. Once you taste the good stuff, there’s no turning back. I’ve been addicted for 34 years. And I don’t plan to quit.

At one point Lora said I needed more “body” in my sound. She was right. I was focused on “focus” to the exclusion of “body”. That’s why I like her. She can criticize me gently and effectively. I think she also came away with some new ideas about sound. She preferred the ligature I was playing, which helped focus her sound. I enjoyed and benefited from talking shop over coffee with a good friend. It doesn’t get much better than that.