Doreen’s Clarinet Lesson (Working through difficult passages).

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Hi, y’all: it’s me the queen, Doreen me and my shine and today we’re going to fulfill a request. Uh. Thank you by the way for your request, because sometimes you don’t see me for a week, but it’s because I don’t have any ideas. Then I start reading. I’M, like oh yeah, sure thanks well anyway, this request was uh to give some tips on how to work out difficult passages, and I can’t tell you what everybody else does.

I can just tell you what I used to do and still do so today, because you know I used to cram a lot, but anyway I just pulled out my trusty close, a method book and uh found some exercises that you know to skip around the place because Uh, most of the time, if it’s a difficult passage, it’s full of 16 notes or 30-second notes and they’re skipping all over the place. You know different octaves and stuff like that up, so you find these. You know little little little passages that give you. Oh, so much trouble and you know you find yourself just working them out, working them out, working them out and then you know you’re playing your piece and you’re you’re you’re coming to that passage like oh, my goodness, here it comes here, it comes, and you know You’re sort of diminishing everything, that’s coming in front of it and everything that comes after it because you’re either going to hit it or you’re. Not because that’s what you’re thinking about well, you got to change that because a lot of times you’re having trouble with that, because you’ve built up these fears, which you have to fight through now is a way to fight through it, is to just keep doing the Thing over and over again, you know, get your metronome out and stuff like that.

But another way to fight through it is to stop your brain from concentrating on that particular section and the way to do that is to change the rhythm, not the notes, because the notes are the things you’re trying to work out. You want to change the rhythm and the way to change the rhythm say you got four 16th notes, you know all in a row. Well, you change that to like an eighth note, followed by two 16th notes, which is going to sort of off foot it, and so your brain is going to sit here. Thinking about okay, I got to do this. Eight notes followed by 216 notes and I got to do it with these notes and it doesn’t sound.

It doesn’t fit quite as well, but I’m going to do it. So that’s what you do and I’ll give you an idea and uh yeah. So I need some glasses, so oh the passage [, Music], that’s your passage, there’s 16 notes and you’ve got to play that really fast and all this other stuff, um and you’re having trouble doing it smoothly because it’s jumping from node to node all right. So you change it to that. Eight notes followed by two sixteenth notes.

It was just da da da all right and if that’s hard to remember just think, cheeseburger okay, so you go [Music, ], [Applause, ], [, Music, ], [Applause, ], all right cheeseburger! Thats it all right, so you do that. You take your metronome. You speed that up speed that up speed, that up speed that up until you can play it a little faster all right now, yay you work through it. However, you want to secure that you want to you, want to.

You, know, embed that so you’re going to switch that to 216, followed by an eight and that’s cantata or burger king yay and as clever as that sounds I’d love to take credit for it. For today mine, I learned in junior high school from Donald Richardson, okay, so anyway you change that again uh and remember we’re not changing the notes, we’re just changing the rhythm, because that’s uh, what’s going to help you just distract you from what’s giving you so much Trouble here we go all right and now you speed that up. Take your metronome. You trust your metronome. Now I would put the metronome on but why just tick?

Tick tick! While I’m talking, it makes no sense because you’re the one that have to work this out anyway after you’ve done that, and you don’t have to do it for the whole exercise like if I was trying to work out this whole exercise, I wouldn’t do it for The whole exercise, because certain things are easier to play – you know your fingers, roll really well, but other things you know you got to do all this twisting and turning and those are the things you try to work out with the changing of the rhythm after you’ve Done that for a little while, then your brain has been distracted for so long. Your fingers have to have actually worked out the problem area, and so you can play it [, Music, ], and with that, then you can just increase the speed on that and you’re rolling right case in point [, Music, ] uh. You get the idea, isn’t that cool? So there you go, remember 4, 16 notes over and over and over and over again jumping up and down and up and down don’t worry about it.

Just change the rhythm: all right, don’t change the notes, change the rhythm cheeseburger, all the way through increase the speed burger king all the way through increase the speed after you do that 16 notes: ain’t gon na be no problem. That passage is gon na, be history. So enjoy having a great one: it’s still the holiday season, y’all, which is really cool, um and uh. Oh, I said I was to play something um after each one of these things to uh that was in relation to wow. I don’t know.

I have no idea. I have no idea-play something: [Applause, ], [, Music, ], oh [, Music] anyway, I could have played the exercise huh. That would have made more sense, but that was fun so anyway have a great awesome everything all the best. Y’All stays safe,

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