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Post by evergreen on Feb 7, 2023 19:37:08 GMT
Yesterday I got out my music stand and my first clarinet book is on it.
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Post by Zi on Feb 7, 2023 21:44:00 GMT
Yesterday I got out my music stand and my first clarinet book is on it. Yay!!
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Post by Zi on Feb 7, 2023 21:47:16 GMT
keff - How long do you allow for each piece?
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Post by keff on Feb 7, 2023 22:14:50 GMT
keff - How long do you allow for each piece? My only time constraint is with pieces being learnt for a piano group. This being either 4 or 5 weeks when we were meeting using zoom or six weeks for face to face meetings. This also limits the level of difficulty to the intermediate category. Pieces of Bach from the French suite are harder than intermediate piano and can take say six months to learn although the allemande I posted a few days ago was a little easier and I may have been trying to play it for six or seven weeks. Pieces like the Schubert Impromptu can take say a year. It has to be a bucket list piece if I am to take more than six months but generally I'm not too worried how long I should stay with a piece. People doing higher grade piano exams probably would take up to eighteen months to learn the three pieces. My piano teacher plays professionally and she likes three weeks to prepare her pieces but I can't say what grade they may be.
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Post by Zi on Feb 8, 2023 8:56:27 GMT
It's a how long is a piece of string question really, isn't it? I think you are very often dealing with much longer pieces than I'm playing. Many of the pieces I play on recorder are quite short. The longer ones are almost always divided into sections. My teacher stopped me from becoming too concentrated on one aspect and she'd move me on and I think I have to learn how to do that for myself. Working on a piece doesn't have to mean working on it all the time at the exclusion of anything else which is the trap I think I fallen into and it's not helpful for me... it might work for someone else. Realistically, too, the only person to hear me is me (and our collie!)
I do really admire your attitude to practice! I get the impression you record more as a matter of course which again is a good thing to do as it aids reflection.
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Post by keff on Feb 8, 2023 9:31:37 GMT
For the last twenty years I have been trying to develop my sight reading skills. That is put a piece of music on the stand and just play it through from beginning to end. I am not there yet but definitely getting closer. Something like As Time Goes By is in the moderately difficult category and I couldn't sight read it at the correct tempo. Something in the intermediate category would stand a chance of being sight read. Playing some of the Bach easier pieces is helping lots. Retirement has also helped improvement.
There is a trick open to pianists when sight reading and that is knowing which notes not to play without being noticed. If there are four note chords in one hand and a chord in the other it is often possible for the four note chord to be reduced to three.
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Post by Zi on Feb 14, 2023 9:13:58 GMT
Our teacher used to tell my husband that trick. I suspect you have to be quite skilled so as to know which notes to choose though!
What's everyone playing?
Today, I'm going to sort out some pieces to aim at for the treble. I've been a bit distracted over the last couple of days because I've been sorting photos for our new photo-frame which is now up and running and is very amusing! I've been playing some Playford which I really enjoy. The descant is beginning to sound a little better but I've forgotten some fingering so I really need to start playing scales. I've been playing Bach on the descant and some Van Eyck - those are always my default when I don't know what to do.
The clarinet hasn't been touched for a couple of days while I wait for a new thumb rest to arrive. The harp is still at the trying to remember 'which string is which' stage!
edit
OK - made a start. Just sight read Haydn's Serenade which is a Trinity G3 (accompanied by the singing collie) so I've decided to start both recorders on G3 and follow the Trinity syllabus for a bit. I've not been playing the treble long - I think I started just after Christmas but it's obviously catching up with the descant so they're going to both try G3 and see how they get on... I haven't played the descant much since I had a fall 18 months ago so it might struggle a bit at G3!
Treble Haydn - Serenade Mozart pere - Passepied (taken from Fun & Games with the Alto Recorder). Anon - Adagio (ditto as above)
Descant Byrd's Wolsey's Wild (I love this) Van Eyck - Tweede Rosemond Purcell Rondo from The Fairy Queen but will look at some Dieupart and Holborne.
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Post by pavane on Feb 14, 2023 14:37:59 GMT
I've just started the Schumann Fantasiestücke Op 73 on clarinet. It's quite exciting for me because it's the first piece of music I've tried for clarinet that (a) was written for clarinet, and (b) I independently know and like. There are 3 pieces but I'm only doing the first which is a Grade 5 piece. Link to a performance below if anyone interested. I think it will take me a while to get it to sound any good at all! Schumann is a composer I have grown to like more and more over recent years.
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Post by Zi on Feb 14, 2023 15:25:29 GMT
That's absolutely beautiful! Schumann is a composer that has driven me spare on the recorder! So who is a good classical clarinettist then?
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Post by pavane on Feb 14, 2023 16:10:26 GMT
I always feel bad giving lists because I will inevitably miss someone off that I would have included had I thought of them. So with apologies to all of them, a brief (ish) list could be:
Sabine Meyer - she's been around for a long time, has played all the major repertoire, and lots of other things besides. She is absolutely brilliant! Here she is waving what I take to be a modern basset around playing the Mozart concerto. It looks very long and heavy and she deserves some brownie points for sheer energy. Following on from the tempo discussion elsewhere, she doesn't hang about either!
I think Julian Bliss is quite inspirational - as I know I've said several times, he got started on a kid's plastic clarinet (now basically the Nuvo) and has gone on to great things. He plays mostly classical, but his Tribute to Benny Goodman in great fun. He also has a degree of sartorial spleandour that comes close to my own, and stays fairly still (not quite as still as me, slumped in a chair) where a lot of clarinetists seem to combine playing with a major exercise routine.
Martin Fröst's name often gets bandied about in sentences also containing the phrase "best in the world". He's another person who plays a huge range of styles, eg
That's just showing off really!
Andreas Ottensamer is another of the "amongst the best in the world" types:
But, things don't have to be "the best in the world". There is a whole series of CDs by Michael Collins on clarinet with Michael McHale on piano, huge variety of music, and I really like them. I'm actually going to see them later this year. Yippee!
And also not super famous but I love this:
Piano and clarinet work really well together. Mrs P and I are going to try - I think you and Mr Z should do likewise!
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Post by Zi on Feb 14, 2023 16:51:04 GMT
Ah ha... a list man. I married a list man... I know all about list men. So, I'm now overwhelmed by all those clarinettists. How about: What's a good recording of the Schumann? Misty suggested Mr Z and I played flute and clarinet together but we've already tried recorder and piano. His sense of rhythm doesn't coincide with mine... that's a tactful way of saying he can play in time and I can't. However, I play on - whatever - remember I've learned to play despite the singing collie and he is easily distracted. One wrong note and he's over the same bar until it's perfect... I have no patience for anything that isn't a dog so I get bored and wander off...
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Post by pavane on Feb 14, 2023 17:03:47 GMT
Ah ha... a list man. I married a list man... I know all about list men. The best sort!
I don't know, it's popular so there are probably loads of recordings, and I wouldn't want to start a list!
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Post by Zi on Feb 14, 2023 17:30:52 GMT
Mr Z would make a list of all the lists he needs to make and he has been known to write them out afresh when they get too tatty looking... I'll just choose something and get it while I'm all enthusiastic and before I realise that the clarinet is never going to sound like that for me!
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Post by pavane on Feb 14, 2023 19:26:13 GMT
I don't do a lot of pencil and paper lists. I do do a lot of lists, and even lists of lists, but I do them all on computer. Funny how things work out - I had to write with a dip pen and an inkwell at school, but can barely write with an actual pen any more, it makes my hand hurt - I mostly type. Yet I occupy a sort of techno limbo - I'm one of those people who likes X windows and multiple screens because I can have absolutely loads of xterms running at the same time! I'm rubbish with mobile phones, don't like touch screens, can't do two-thumbs typing at all, know absolutely nothing about social media. I have no idea how to use a graphical file manager - ain't nothing ls and grep can't do between them! But some things fade, I'd struggle to use awk any more. Do you find that? - some stuff stays with you, other stuff seems to drift away.
I don't think the clarinet is ever going to sound great for me. It's all subjective, but I think that, as instruments go, it can sound fantastic - much better than, say, a sax, or pretty much anything brass (luckily no brass players likely to read this). But, it does not sound fantastic when I play it. I don't know which notes you have sorted on it yet, but I find bottom G sounds good. E-F# get progressively worse, though that is apparently a "feature" of German system clarinets because of the bore shape. You can get super duper models that have extra pads on the bell to correct that, but I don't have one, and it would just be more complicated to play anyway. G to F are fine, then everything gets worse as you get into the throat notes - B♭ is often dire. Again, that is a thing with clarinets - saxophones don't use one hole to double up as register vent and a note, and you can get clarinets with a B♭ mechanism, but good players make the note sound ok anyway. From B to, say, top B♭ are ok, then it all gets increasingly shrill. I can just about manage the basic altissimo range (ie up to G) but you wouldn't listen to it for pleasure.
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Post by keff on Feb 14, 2023 20:17:01 GMT
When I logged into this forum for the very first time there were two things that I found attractive; firstly it was to be all about music and music making and secondly there was a performance space. It seemed to me that it was all about having a go and having fun no matter what the skill levels were. When it comes to instruments that we take up in later life we are all in the same boat.
On my piano music desk this evening I have been looking at a couple of Chopin preludes, the one in C minor I posted to Critique Corner the other day and one in E minor known as the tragic. A friend is suggesting we attend a piano group on Saturday (it is not the Morecambe Bay group which next meets in March) and therefore I am considering playing one of these. The trouble is both pieces need a lot of pedal and changing of the pedal and each time that is done on the very old piano available to this group there is a loud clunk. I know I will end up just listening to those clunks.
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