Clarinet Master Class

David Gresham
Music for AII Summer Symposium presented by Yamaha www.musicforaII.org
Clarinet Master Classes, June 2006 1
Master class #1: Warming up

A. Importance of warming up
B. Breathing
1. Deep breathing from diaphragm
2. Filling up the lungs
3. Rhythmical/musical breathing
C. Air support
1. Fast, intense, spinning airalways!
2. Solves 80% of student issues
3. Quality and projection of tone
C. Long tone exercises
D. Even fingers in scales
1. Play slowly enough to feel every note
2. Dont rush to 2
nd
16
th

3. Dont let the easy parts rush
4. Group the notes
5. Use a metronome
E. Coordinating fingers and tongue
1. Which is too fast usually?
2. Practice slowly and dont settle for imperfections

WARMING UP

It is very important to warm up on the clarinet each day when you first begin to play. It
is the one time that you can focus only on the mechanics of playing, isolated from
worries about the rhythm or notes or phrasing of whatever pieces you are preparing. If
you warm up carefully and thoughtfully, it can help you vastly improve your playing over
time. Your warm-up session should last between 20 minutes and 1 hour, depending on
how much time you practice each day. The warm up should be divided into basically two
equal parts: tonal warm ups and finger/tongue warm ups.

TONAL WARM UPS:

The goals here are to develop an even tone quality over the entire range of the instrument,
to develop strong breath support and endurance, to develop smooth connections between
registers, to expand your dynamic range on both ends (soft and loud), and so on. I have
many exercises that I give to students, but attached are a couple very good ones to get you
started. Two things are most important when doing long tone/tonal warm ups: practice
them SLOWLY and always LISTEN CAREFULLY to yourself, trying always to
improve your sound. We will cover how best to use these warm ups in our master
classes.




Clarinet Master Classes, June 2006 2
FINGER/TONGUE WARM UPS:

Scales! Scales! Scales! It is unbelievably important to practice your scales! Always
include the arpeggios with them. Playing them the same way constantly can get boring,
so I mix things up by slurring sometimes, tonguing other times, using different rhythms
and ranges, practicing scales in thirds, and so on. Attached are some examples of
different ways to practice the F major scale. It is not exhaustive. There are many other
things you can do to keep it fresh!

Most of your tonguing warm up can be combined with the scales, as mentioned in the last
paragraph. But, sometimes it is useful to isolate tonguing for some focused work.
Basically, if you can articulate well in the upper register, then you are probably doing
things right. I spent a lot of time in high school just making up exercises to work on
tonguing in the upper register. Attached are a couple of examples. You can make up
your own exercises as well.

SIGHT READING WARM UP:

Lastly, it is a great idea to end your warm up time with some sight reading. Sight reading
is a very valuable skill for any musician. Get yourself some etude books that you have
never read before and just read through one page or etude each day. Read straight
through, without stopping. Then, go back and look at the places where you made
mistakes, fix them, but dont practice the piece a bunch, since it is only sight reading. If
you run out of clarinet etudes and pieces, you can borrow books for oboe, trumpet,
saxophone, or even flute.


Master class #2: Articulation.

Tonguing is probably the area that students feel most unsure of themselves. There
are really two secrets to good tonguing.

Secret #1: If you can slur a passage well, you can tongue it. Just keep the tongue and
embouchure in the same position as when you slur and lightly flick the reed with the
tongue. So many students cause themselves lots of problems by suddenly changing how
they play when it comes time to articulate. We will work in the master class on keeping a
good embouchure/tongue set up between slurring and tonguing.

Secret #2: Relaxation is the key! Keep that tongue relaxed when articulating! Tonguing
should not be hard work. The more relaxed you are, the more ease you will have
articulating, the more variety of articulations you can produce, and the faster you can
tongue!




Clarinet Master Classes, June 2006 3


Master class #3: How to practice
A. Practice regularly
1. Daily, shorter practice better than rare, long practice
2. Have a goal, but work up gradually (1.5-3 hours/day?)
B. Plan your time
1. Warm up first
2. 20-40 minutes per movement
3. Cover all pieces every few days
C. Practicing a movement
1. Play through large section
2. Focus on difficult sections
3. Isolate the problems, which will often mean zeroing in on two notes
4. Experiment with ways to fix the problemmake up your own
exercises!
5. Once the problem is solved, put it back in the larger context
D. Goals in practicing
1. Is the movement perfectly clean, accurate, and up to tempo?
2. Am I playing with a good tone and clear articulation throughout?
3. Do I have a clear idea of the musical shapes and emotional characters
in the piece?
4. Am I projecting the musical ideas and characters to the audience?



Master class #4: How to phrase
Playing good music without good phrasing is like reading Shakespeare in a
monotone: BORING! But how do you make musical sense of a phrase? Well, every
composer writes music differently, which calls for a different way of playing from you,
but there are some general ideas that will help you get into phrasing.

A. Listen to music! The best way to learn musicality is the same way you learned how
to speak. Because you have been around language your entire life, you dont need to
think about how to be emphatic when you are angry or how to time telling a good joke.
Similarly, if you like playing music, you will probably enjoy listening to it as well, and
listening a lot will make musical phrasing a natural part of your life.

B. Listen to music! I know I am repeating myself, but it is that important.

C. Sing the phrase. You know how to sing Happy Birthday and Jingle Bells musically.
Sing your phrase and see if it is clear to you how it should sound musically. Then play it
on the clarinet and LISTEN to see if you played it the way you sang it.

Clarinet Master Classes, June 2006 4
D. Find the key note. Many phrases have one note that is the key notethe note that
feels like the goal or that has the most weight. Sometimes it is the highest note or the
longest, but sometimes not. Singing the phrase will help you figure out which note it is.
Sometimes there are multiple choices for key notes.

E. Feel the direction! Each note in a phrase is doing one of three things: moving
forward to the goal note; or pulling back from a goal note; or it is the goal note and is
blossoming. Once you find the key note of the phrase or phraslet, figure out how the
other notes relate to it and shape them accordingly.

F. Dont ignore the phraselet! A phraselet is a part of a phrase that kind of makes a
shape by itself (much like a prepositional phrase in a sentence). It is important that every
phraselet be clear. Practice them separately to make sure they make sense musically,
then, put the whole phrase back together again.