Boring woodwindy update

[spacebug]

Got the clarinet out again tonight, and have spent more time even than I meant to with it, which is cool. I've made a goal for myself to develop the facility to play full-range scales in the next six months, which should be imminently doable, providing I keep to any kind of practice schedule. Low register single-octave scales are easy for me, though fingerings still mess me up a bit, 'cause they diverge from sax *just* enough to make it confusing. Mid-range stuff is okay, and the high stuff is yet cringe-worthy. (Clarinet is most difficult to play in its upper registers.) I can't make the last stretch (from G to two-ledger-line high C) speak, but I can manage to squeak out a high G unreliably. My intonation is okay, though, and tone quality seems pretty good, so I think my embrochure is sound. I have the very familiar slight soreness where the lower teeth start to cut into your lower lip after practicing a while. Strange how nostalgic that is.

Comments

[sarendipatree.livejournal.com]

I had an argument recently with bobtshirt about which was the more cringe-worthy instrument to hear practiced by a neophyte -- violin or clarinet. He insisted that it had to be violin. I'm pretty sure that even the ugliest string-scrape has much more inherent beauty that *the squeak*.

[spacebug.livejournal.com]

It's often more harmonically complex, for good or ill. To me, the pain of neophyte string playing is all in the crap intonation. Especially when it's a whole sixth grade orchestra. Eee.

[sarendipatree.livejournal.com]

Yeah, bad intonation is pretty painful. I hear rather a lot of it at my job at the 'splorium. =%>

But to put it in perspective, I think I'd rather hear a loop of clarinet squeaks AND violin-string scrapings for three hours straight than fifteen minutes of a Bush speech.

[dangerdhotrod.livejournal.com]

ya the squeak is bad but if you can get a note at least it's mostly the right note but with those strings there's so much that could go wrong - scrapey bad bow, finger totally not in the right spot, plus the thing could just be tuned like crap too. plus most little kid violins are super cheap pieces of crap that probably wouldn't sound all that spectacular played by someone that's good.

i can hear it now!