“You picked it, you play it.”
That was the common mantra I heard in my undergrad years from the performance-hardened, veteran applied faculty. They would say this any time I complained about the difficulty of playing the clarinet. This left me with the impression that I had to do whatever it took to make performance. It was all so obvious. All I needed to do was toughen up. When the going gets tough, the tough get going––so quit whining. That was the spirit.
As I recall little or nothing was said about working smarter.
This attitude went unchallenged in my thinking for years. Grad school and years of teaching did little to change it. Only after many hours of thought and analysis was I able to see that the statement was not only misleading, it was the very reverse of the truth. Let me explain.
How we understand the relationship between playing techniques and equipment depends upon how we answer one question, “Should we, as clarinetists, conform our playing techniques to our equipment, or should we seek equipment that conforms to our playing mechanics?”
The correct answer is illustrated by the fact that we clarinetists are always looking for better equipment. How do we define “better”? We define “better”, either formally or informally, explicitly or implicitly, as equipment that enables us to achieve our technical and musical goals with greater ease, security and consistency.
We judge a reed to be better when it is easier to control and plays with a good sound. A mouthpiece judged as better does the same. This applies to any piece of equipment; better equipment makes the best results attainable with less effort. The same can be said of better playing techniques. Thus, both fine equipment and fine playing mechanics make the process of music making on the clarinet simpler, easier and more efficient.
Those who have read “The Educator’s Guide to the Clarinet” will recall that close analysis reveals optimum playing mechanics are objective and absolute, possessing integrity in and of themselves, and not contingent upon externals.
Once the clarinetist understands and learns to apply correct tone production habits with consistency, he is in possession of the valid criterion by which equipment may be securely and objectively judged. This is critical, because it is always the playing mechanics that judge the validity and worth of equipment, not vise versa. In other words, equipment is always perceived through the “filter” of one’s playing-habits. The more perfect your playing mechanics become the clearer and more objective your perception of the equipment will be. The more playing faults you have the more distorted your perception of equipment will be. The less integrity your playing mechanics have the less able you will be to effectively judge equipment. In fact, the more flaws there are in your tone production techniques the more likely you will be to pick poor equipment––equipment that actually forces you to continue playing with those faults. The worse the habits, in both degree and number, the more impossible it becomes to recognize truly good equipment. Conversely, the more good playing mechanics become habitual, the more objectively and readily good equipment can be discerned from bad.
The term "efficiency" provides the conceptual cement that binds playing mechanics and equipment together, making it possible to judge the relationship of each to the other with objectivity. The formula may be expressed axiomatically as follows:
To the degree a piece of equipment requires unnecessary adjustments, whether in number or degree, to
1. Produce acceptable levels of tonal freedom and control and
2. Achieve dependable and secure response throughout the full pitch and dynamic range of the instrument––the piece of equipment may be judged as inadequate and defective.
To the degree the piece of equipment produces the full range of desired technical and musical effects while maintaining the integrity of playing mechanics and requiring minimal adjustments––the piece of equipment may be judged as adequate and acceptable.
There are several different pieces of clarinet equipment––but there is only one criterion for judging them, whether individually or as a whole: efficiency. No matter what a particular piece of equipment may offer as an isolated, attractive feature, if it forces inefficiency and decreases dependable response, it is best eliminated.
This may sound unnecessarily complicated, but the point to take away from all this can be expressed very simply: The best results are achieved with the greatest degree of ease when equipment facilitates rather than inhibits the use of correct playing mechanics.
One cannot repeat this truth enough: The clarinet ought not be difficult to play. Struggle should not be necessary. If you are struggling or working hard, having endurance problems, or are frustrated with tone quality, tuning or control issues, then there are serious flaws in your tone-production habits, your equipment or both.
Struggle should not be necessary to achieve extraordinary results. There is no need to get tough if you get smart and actually learn something about what you are trying to do. Just watch great players and you get the impression they are playing effortlessly. They, in fact, are, because they have taken the time to master the disciplines of correct playing mechanics and have chosen equipment that facilitates those optimum mechanics.
The astute reader will observe that there is a catch 22 in all this––Bad mechanics and bad acoustics create a vicious circle of inefficiency from which escape seems virtually impossible. Escape is admittedly difficult–– but it is not impossible. The modern-day Deus ex Machina comes to the student’s rescue in the form of a properly educated and skilled Master Teacher (these are few and far between, by the way, and position and reputation are in no way helpful in finding such a person). A master teacher is not just someone who can play comparatively well, but one who thoroughly understands how playing mechanics and clarinet acoustics work together. Such a one can not only teach correct playing techniques, but can help select equipment that will best facilitate development of those techniques, thereby giving the student the whole package needed for success. If either element is missing the student may, through a combination of innate talent and determined work, still achieve comparatively impressive results. But uncorrected faults will inhibit the full flowering of the student’s gifts and playing will always be, to some degree, a struggle and frustration. In addition––and this is perhaps worse––the gifted student who is playing incorrectly or poor equipment is actually ingraining bad habits more and more deeply with each effort: diligently practiced imperfections makes playing more imperfect––only perfect practice of correct techniques makes perfect. The dilligent and perpetual use of serious tone production faults in practice is tantamount to energetically digging a hole deeper and deeper that will eventually have to be filled in––a task that usually demands even more strenuous efforts.
In summary we can say today too many players work much harder than they should. They may play well, but they do not play happily for one simple reason: there are defects in their mechanical/acoustical formula that make playing a constant struggle. The elimination of these difficulties usually begins with choosing a fine instrument that is properly balanced in resistance throughout its range. Such an instrument makes an amazing difference in the ease of tone production and control of the musical phrase. The instrument is foundational, because if it is uneven in resistance, that unevenness negatively affects and complicates not only correct playing mechanics, but other equipment as well. To take just one of many examples, the more uneven the clarinet the more difficult reed adjustment will be. I once saw a bumper sticker that said, "Mean People Suck." Well, the dedicated clarinetist might strategically place analogous sticker on the bumper of his or her car that reads, "Lousy equipment sucks."As obvious as that is, all too many players have surrendered to bad equipment, convinced that playing must be a struggle and an act of will and mind over matter.
One thing is for sure: if playing is a persistent struggle, something somewhere in the performance formula is substandard, and no amount of hard work, in and of itself, will effectively correct it––hard work might even make it worse. The solution lies in getting smart and developing the tone production skills that will help you choose an efficient clarinet and other equipment that will enable you to work smart––then, and only then, is there ease. In a certain sense it is true: you must play what you've chosen. The trick is to choose wisely, grasshopper.