How Buffet Clarinets are made

Poor clarinet embouchure

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Poor Clarinet Embouchure -- Free Online Clarinet Lesson 1B
Please read through the descriptions of poor clarinet embouchures and return to the descriptions of the good clarinet embouchure. Many people do not have any idea their embouchures are incorrect. Often, it takes a private teacher to wake them up to better principles of forming the mouth on the clarinet mouthpiece and reed.
If you do not have the luxury of a private clarinet teacher, please find a mirror and watch yourself as you blow the clarinet. After all, this is Clarinet-Now. Go get it, go get your Clarinet Now!
For experienced players wishing to improve your current clarinet embouchure, read through the descriptions of poor clarinet embouchures. Find a mirror, and compare your embouchure with with each description. This troubleshooting guide to the clarinet embouchure should help you improve your clarinet sound almost immediately.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #1
Mouthpiece floats in mouth and does not anchor mouthpiece. To test this, while you are blowing on the clarinet, try to jiggle the mouthpiece in your mouth. If it moves around, you are not biting enough and are not closing down on the mouthpiece enough. This poor clarinet embouchure will sound weak, fuzzy, harse and unfocused.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #2
Bottom teeth touch reed. You are not cushioning the reed with lower lip. The reed should lie on the lower lip. This poor clarinet embouchure will sound like a screeching cat.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #3
Puffing cheeks. The cheek puff shows that you are not using your facial muscles solidly or firmly to set-up your clarinet embouchure.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #4
You use so little muscle support in your face that spit and drool comes out of the corners of your mouth. This is pretty obvious. If you have this problem, your poor clarinet embouchure is not firm enough. If you are a beginning student and are trying really hard for a long time, give yourself proper rests. You are using new muscles and they may tire quickly. Patience is a virtue. Ask your band director or clarinet teacher what you are doing wrong.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #5
Tongue is on the reed. If the tongue is on the reed, it will not vibrate with generates the clarinet sound. We’ll touch more on the tongue with articulation.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #6
Too much mouthpiece in mouth will sound like a goose. It is commonly described that if you put too much mouthpiece in your mouth, and then pull the mouthpiece out slowly, you will find a nice, sweet spot where you get a beautiful, full clarinet sound. How do you know you have too much mouthpiece in the mouth? You will definitely squeak or squawk every time you try to make a sound. Again, go to that point and incrementally (or a little bit at a time) pull the mouthpiece out. You will find a place where you do not squeak anymore and make a big beautiful sound. Experiment with this in front of a mirror.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #7
Not enough mouthpiece in mouth. This will close off the reed not allowing many or any reed vibrations at all. Either no sound or a very thin, weak sound will come out with this poor clarinet embouchure. Your face will turn red because air has nowhere to go. Try the step above on number 6. Put what you think is too much mouthpiece in your mouth and pull out slowly. Again, read about the nice sweet spot above.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #8
Too much lower lip inside lower teeth. Looks like an old man who forgot his dentures. Even if you do not have your clarinet out right now, do this: Act like you are putting Chapstick on your lower lip. Now, look at that in a mirror. That is how the lower lip should form before you put the clarinet mouthpiece and reed on the lip. The reed should anchor the lip down in this position before or as you close the mouth down around the mouthpiece and reed.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #9
Flatten or point the chin, not strawberry or raspberry chin.
Pushing chin up onto reed. Commonly called a “strawberry or raspberry” chin. The clarinet embouchure has a correct chin and an incorrect chin. The “strawberry” chin pushes up toward the reed and presents a “mushy” embouchure. With the correct clarinet embouchure, the reed is anchoring down the lower lip (as described above like you are putting on Chapstick). With the reed anchoring the lower lip, the chin spreads in a downward position like toward the floor and firms up the skin between your lower lip and the tip of the chin. It is also commonly called the pointed chin. When I describe this to my clarinet students or in clarinet clinic, allow careful attention to the amount of pressure you are biting on the clarinet mouthpiece and reed. Students usually confuse flattening the chin with opening up the mouth. Yes, flatten the chin, but keep firm teeth pressure on the mouthpiece and reed.
THE SMILE FALACY Sometimes, I have to use the smile to get a student to flatten their chin the way I want it. However, the “smile” description is not the best idea in teaching the clarinet embouchure. When you smile, the corners of the mouth move backward as if toward your ears. If you insert a clarinet mouthpiece while smiling, you will have interminable air leaks. However, the “look” of the chin is correct.
I use the “smile” description as a last resort to students who could not understand the concept of flattening the chin. Look at a mirror. Give is a good smile. Your chin will flatten the way a correct embouchure can use it. However, notice the corners of your mouth climbing back towards your ears. This is an improper use or description for the clarinet embouchure. Again, the lips should form a closed-off seal around the mouthpiece and reed like a drawstring. The chin, again, is flat or pointed but the corners of the lips are not smiling.
TRY THIS LITTLE EXERCISE RIGHT NOW! Some people just do not get it. Flattening that chin is just a hard concept to grasp. Now, try this little exercise. Do this: Place your thumb and index finger on the back of your hand. Press down and pull the fingers apart as if you are stretching the skin of the back of your hand from between those two fingers. Now, put the clarinet mouthpiece in your mouth, anchor your lower lip with the reed, close the mouth off around the mouthpiece and flatten or point the chin. If you are flattening correctly, the skin between your lower lip and chin should stretch or “firm-up” like the skin on the back of your hand stretched by the fingers.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #10
Clarinet is held too high. This angle of clarinet affects embouchure poorly. Between a 30 and 40 degree angle is often accepted as correct. You can test this by listening to your sound as you move the clarinet around. Try this: set your embouchure, move the bell of the clarinet too high. Blow. As you are blowing, slowly bring the clarinet bell down toward your body. You will hear your sound open up and will find a “sweet spot” here that maximizes your sound. The bell of the clarinet will often end up right between your knees. Try this, but do not look down at the bell as you move it. Keep the head in an up position.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #11
You duck your head way down as if you are looking at the floor and/or at clarinet fingerings. This angle of clarinet also affects the embouchure poorly. Act like someone is putting their thumb on your forehead and pushing it back. Another way to test this is to stand up against a flat wall. Put your head against the wall and bring the clarinet up to your face. Don’t let the clarinet control you, you control the clarinet. Bring it to you, do not go to it.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #12
Chin moves while you are articulating with the tongue. Many young students coordinate the chin with the tongue. First of all, if your chin is moving to articulate, your tongue is moving too much. The chin should stay steady while the tongue lightly strokes the clarinet reed. Do not move the chin with the tongue.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #13
Chin moves with each change to different notes, or playing large intervals, or when moving over the clarinet break (up or down). I’ve seen young clarinet students move the chin with every single change of note; even when rearticulating the same pitched note. Many amateurs conquer that bad habit, but still do a violent chin movement with large intervals. The most common chin movement among all clarinet players, is crossing the break. Blowing a good, solid stream of air as you cross the break ascending or descending is required. Keeping the embouchure steady and having the finger technique work perfectly is best for a good smooth crossing of the clarinet break. Why is it called “the break?” Because it a common “break,” “bump,” “gap,” “grunt,” “hitch,” in the clarinet sound among a majority of clarinetists. Even the greatest clarinetists in the world have had to deal with the “break” and have spent hours and hours of practice mastering the interval between the lower registers to the clarion register to sound smoothly.
POOR CLARINET EMBOUCHURE #14
Mouth completely opens each time you take a breath. Why lose your entire embouchure each time you take a breath? Once your embouchure is set, get used to taking air in from the corners of your mouth (the complete left and right corners of the lips). Allow the anchored reed on the bottom and the anchored teeth on top to hold steady and keep the same biting pressure on the mouthpiece. When breathing, only allow the corners of the lips to inhale. Yet, again, this is another point of musical efficiency.

Top 10 Reasons To Practise Clarinet

1. Facial exercise - well defined jaw and get rid of double chin!
2. Practise qigong
3. Exercise for fingers and arms (clarinet quite heavy ok!)
4. Mental discipline (exercise your concentration)
5. Be good in a portable instrument!

The Role of the Embouchure - Tom Ridenour

The Role of the Embouchure in Characteristic Clarinet Tone Production
by Tom Ridenour

Introduction
Form and function in clarinet embouchure
Most approaches to teaching clarinet embouchure concentrate almost exclusively on embouchure cosmetics. Certainly embouchure cosmetics are important, but they are an effect of correct embouchure, not the cause. Pedagogies which disregard the matter of embouchure function aresuperficial, "cart-before-the-horse" approaches.
First, we must always keep in mind that embouchure is the means to an end, the "end" being the production of musical sound (distinct from simply "sound" or "noise"). Therefore, if we are to understand the role of embouchure or speak of its proper development, we must first understandwhat fine musical tone is in an ontological, objective rather than a subjective sense.
Fine musical tone is a kind of auricular paradox. That is to say, fine musical tone strikes the ear as being at once truly free, and yet well controlled. It is at once variable and consistent; sinuous yet precise, liquid yet substantial, dark yet clear, concentrated yet vibrant.
Now, the vibration of the reed is the concrete means by which this enigma or paradox of freedom and control is realized in clarinet tone. And the embouchure is the sole agent that directly and constantly acts upon the reed. Therefore, we can conclude the following about the role of the embouchure in tone production:
The embouchure's job is to apply stress to the reed in such a way that the paradoxical qualities of control and freedom are fully optimized in the reed's vibrations, and these qualities are in turn made present in the sound itself.
On the face of it, this may sound like so much self-contradiction; a kindof double talk. (On perfunctory examination, most paradoxes do.) But as we proceed to analyze embouchure and understand reed vibration the logical solution to this puzzlement will be made perfectly clear.
But before we proceed to discuss the specifics of embouchure function, let's speak briefly about the form of the embouchure, or as it is commonly known: embouchure cosmetics.
Consistent with the concepts just presented, the approach used here to teach and develop embouchure seeks to create the form of the embouchure indirectly by means of understanding and executing the reed control stresses or function as perfectly as possible.
Analogous to steel girders which, though unseen, never the less dictate the outward form of a building, such invisible stresses are what actually determines the ultimate outward, cosmetic appearance of the embouchure. The logic then is simple: get the function (reed control stresses) correct and the form (cosmetic appearance) will simply happen. Ignore function and the form will be gained only at the cost of many hours of tedious labor-with no assurance of a satisfactory musical result.

Parts of the Embouchure
The embouchure is made up of the lip muscles and chin muscles, supported by the jaw and teeth. Let's examine each of these in some detail with regard to their individual roles in creating the proper reed stress functions.

Proper Stress Functions of the Parts of the Embouchure

The Jaw (and lower teeth)
The correct role of the jaw in clarinet embouchure ought to be simply that of a structural support. That is, the jaw should not be used to directly control the reed by biting or clamping down on the reed. Rather, it should simply be a support for those elements that really ought to control the reed. The jaw does this by dropping open and moving slightly forward into a fixed position and remaining there in "neutral."
When the jaw works this way it creates a fixed slot or window, into which the reed and mouthpiece are snugged or wedged. The fixed opening of the jaw prevents the embouchure from controlling the reed by vertically squeezing or closing on the reed (commonly known as "biting.")
Because of this, we can say that the embouchure is fundamentally passive in regard to controlling the reed. It only presents an opening or windway through which the mouthpiece and reed may enter the mouth.
To be of maximum effectiveness in controlling the reed, the jaw needs do no more than remain stationary in a set or fixed aperture, neither opening nor closing. In fact, to do otherwise is to do harm in one way or the other.

The Lips
While the embouchure aperture remains fixed due to the stable "neutral" position of the dropped jaw, the lip muscles must remain firm to resist and cushion the upward, inward snugging movement of the mouthpiece/reed wedge.
The lower lip should not "give in" to the inward force of the mouthpiece and allow itself to be pushed into the mouth and over the lower teeth. (As we shall soon see, the chin muscles will be of great assistance to the lower lip in resisting the action of the mouthpiece.)
The upper lip should also be firm and in contact with the surface of the mouthpiece beak to aid in the effort of resisting the inward movement of the mouthpiece. Most players who play the clarinet with the teeth on the mouthpiece (single lip) find a textured mouthpiece patch to be helpful to the upper lip in resisting the mouthpiece. There are various mouthpiece patches on the market, made in a variety of textures and thicknesses. A little experimentation on the part of the individual will suffice to find just the right patch. The author prefers the Runyon black patches, both for practicality and texture.

The Chin Muscles
The lips are aided in their resistance of the mouthpiece by pulling the chin muscles down and flat against the jaw bone. (This muscular action of the chin happens virtually automatically when the tongue goes into its high/back position.)
Therefore, the lower lip and chin work together. The chin stretching down in turn pulls the lower lip out and helps it oppose the up and in thrust of the mouthpiece and reed. It is this opposition to the "unstoppable force" (the mouthpiece/reed wedge) by the "immovable, immutable object" (the muscles of the lips and embouchure aperture) that creates the needed friction or resistance that controls the reed.

The Upper Teeth
The upper teeth should not "bite" down on the mouthpiece surface. Doing so would ruin the whole equation. The upper teeth should only be a structural support for the upper lip, just as the lower teeth are for the lower lip. A concept that is helpful in learning to do this is to think of "pulling the teeth apart while the lips remain in contact with the mouthpiece and reed." In any case, neither upper nor lower teeth should be closing or biting on the reed and mouthpiece. Vertical closure in the embouchure always destroys the sound!
Some players prefer to use both lips and put no teeth on the mouthpiece at all. This, of course, is called French Embouchure or "double lip", and many, many great players have either played this way all the time or used the technique extensively, especially in lyrical, legato playing.

The Right Hand Thumb
The right hand thumb is obviously not a part of the embouchure. Yet it is critical to the whole equation of reed control in that it is the sole energy source for the snugging action of the mouthpiece and reed. While this lifting of the thumb is gentle it must be both firm and constant. The more experienced player will perhaps find that the snugging becomes firmer when he must play high or softly, and the snugging may relax somewhat if the player has to play at higher dynamic levels. For those students who get lazy and lapse into simply "hanging the clarinet on the thumb" the command "Thumbs up!" can be a quick and effective remedy.

The Tongue
The tongue is obviously no more a part of the embouchure than the right hand thumb, but we must mention it here because of the strong interrelationship it has with the chin muscles. As we have alreadymentioned briefly and emphasize here, the tongue can greatly facilitate the proper functioning of the chin muscles.
The clarinet is unique in that it requires the tongue position to be quite high and back in the roof of the mouth. To demonstrate, try saying "wheeee," or create a hissing sound by bringing the tongue to the roof of the mouth. Notice that the sides of the tongue are touching the inside of the upper-back molars on either side of the mouth.
Without this high tongue position, the clarinet tone will be hollow--wanting of the focus and tonal concentration which causes the tone to carry in a hall. The upper register will also be flat in tuning.Many students who are playing flat in the high register and with an uncentered sound are playing with a tongue position that is low and forward in the mouth--as if they were saying goooo.
If the middle of the tongue achieves and maintains its high/back (wheeee) position properly, the chin will tend to automatically pull down flat against the facial bones into the cosmetically classic "point."

The Reed and Embouchure Stress
Finally, one might ask how this approach actually affects the reed's vibrations and why it is superior to other approaches to reed control.
First, as the reed/mouthpiece wedge is snugged into the mouth, increasing pressure is created on the reed surface by the firmness of the lips and the fixed embouchure opening. It is this pressure that creates the needed control over the shape and response of the tone. However, this pressure is oblique and does not clamp or close the reed directly on to the mouthpiece by direct, vertical pressure. This enables the reed to vibrate more completely along the full curve of the mouthpiece.
Secondly, at the same time control pressure is being increased on the reed surface by the snugging of the reed/mouthpiece wedge, the tip of the reedis being snugged past the pressure point, remaining open and free to vibrate and respond instantly to the energy of the air column. Thus, control (on the reed surface) and freedom (at the tip of the reed and along the mouthpiece curve) are both maximized in the single action of snugging.
The snugging or friction method of reed control creates control without compromising freedom and allows freedom without compromising control. It is this optimizing (not compromising) of both control and freedom in a single action that makes this method superior, and doing so in turn realizes our stated goal of making the enigmatic elements of music more vividly present in the tone itself.
Once the player master's this method of reed control he or she will not only find a qualitative improvement in tone quality and tone production, but also a new dimension of expressive freedom and joy in making music.

Biblio

• The Clarinet and Clarinet Playing, David Pino [788.6219 PIN]- Central Lending Library

WWWs

http://www.john-robert-brown.com/breathing.htm