Knowing What Not To Teach Clarinet Students Can Be As Important As What You Do Teach Them.

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Forbidden Lessons By Julie DeRoche

Knowing what not to teach clarinet students can be as important as what you do teach them

Good teachers pursue learning throughout their careers and constantly update techniques. They have an important role, setting a firm foundation for future success. Having listened to many fine young clarinet players in auditions and master classes, I am highly aware of their indebtedness to former teachers.

At the same time, I have noticed there is some conventional but, in my opinion, mistaken instruction young players often receive that can later cause trouble. What not to teach can be as important as what you do teach. You can help your students succeed simply by avoiding the pitfalls of incorrect information. Here are the top four things I wish teachers would not tell young clarinetists.

"Open your throat and blow" Do not tell clarinet students to open their throats and blow. To achieve good clarinet sound that is well focused and centered without being hollow in the middle, it is essential that the tongue stay relaxed and high in the mouth — as if the player is saying "shhhh."

When we instruct students to open the throat, we are really telling them to push the tongue down. (Picture saying "ahhh" for the doctor.) The throat itself never opens. The tongue opens the area in the throat. This can be highly detrimental to good clarinet sound.

Clearly, if you indicate that a student should play with a high tongue position (which is correct), but also tell the student to open the throat (which is incorrect), you are creating a dilemma. Students cannot do both at the same time.

Opening the throat only opens tongue position, slows the air, and causes all of the tone problems that teachers should strive to avoid.

"Blow with your stomach muscles" Do not tell your students to blow with their stomach muscles. Stomach muscles are not lungs. They cannot blow. This causes great confusion and has a detrimental effect on the quality of sound.

As clarinetists, we should inhale a deep and satisfying breath, trying to fill the lungs fully but in a relaxed way. The important thing is to practice inhaling deeply. With the lungs full, breathing out is only a matter of "sighing." The air will want to come out; the player will not have to force it.

Try taking a full and relaxed breath through your nose. I know, you don't breathe through your nose when you play, but try it as an experiment. The lungs will fill naturally from top to bottom. Hold it for a few moments. What do you want to do? Exhale, of course. Now simply relax the muscles that are holding the air in. Your air will come out in a natural way.

This is the way we want to breathe when we play, but through the mouth. Stomach muscles will never need to squeeze, and the diaphragm, an involuntary muscle, works as it always does (even while you are asleep), without force or stress.

"Form a C with your thumb and fingers" Do not tell your students to form a C-shape with the thumb and fingers. This throws the hand position off in both the top and bottom hands, causing the fingers to move farther away from the keys.

Rather, the top hand should have the shape of a V between the thumb and first finger (as if you are handing someone a piece of paper, but not so closed), and the bottom hand should be shaped more like a U. To do this, the wrists must be relaxed and slightly bent in, and the elbows must not be lifted away from the body.

The top hand (left) thumb is required to play the thumb tube and register key, so it must angle up and toward the right. The first finger needs to rest near the Ab and A keys, so it should not be forced away from them, as happens with the C position. The rest of the fingers should angle slightly toward the top of the clarinet, with the pinky finger over the long keys.

For correct position of the lower (right) hand, relax the wrist, place the thumb rest just forward of the middle knuckle of the thumb, close the position of the thumb relative to the first finger slightly so the shape is our desired U, and keep the wrist down so the middle knuckle of the first finger is near the Eb/Bb key. The rest of the fingers remain parallel to the first.

Now move the fingers up and down in a firm, muscular way, using the set of knuckles nearest the palm. You will readily discover why the clarinet keys are placed in the positions in which they are placed.

"Stop tapping your feet!" Do not make your students stop tapping their feet. It is true that tapping feet can be both noisy and awkward looking, especially at concert time. But rhythm is probably more important than any other aspect of playing, and rhythm is based on pulse.

Pulse is something that must be felt, and students feel it best when they can create it physically. Normally they do this by tapping their feet. (I have played many times in the Chicago Symphony, and trust me, I have seen many feet tapping the stage during concerts.) Taking this away often gives students a very undefined sense of pulse and interferes with their understanding of basic rhythm.

Allow students to feel the pulse of their music and express it naturally with their bodies. Teach the relationship between pulse in its most basic form — one tap at a time — and its more complicated subdivisions. They will begin to understand that rhythm is a way to measure and organize time in music. When allowed to tap their feet, students better understand the relationship between the intellectual aspects of rhythm and their physical sense of beat.

There are practices that develop in the course of time that can seem correct at first, but with further examination, tend not to work. Even so, these conventions become part of clarinet lore. No one ever intends to teach things that are confusing or incorrect. By giving full consideration to what not to teach, we can ensure that we will always be teaching our best.