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

[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.