Geronimo the Clarinet

Geronimo will soon be packed up and put away for the year as music class ends in one week!! :(

Music Practice June 3rd

I played my clarinet this morning for about 15 minutes. I started with some long notes and played some high notes for warm up. Then I worked on the chromatic scales. I also switched my reeds and played with a 31/2 for the rest of the practice to make me practice using more air. When I swtich back to my three in class I will be able to play louder and longer before breathing. I played through my chromatic scales 7 or 8 times. Then I went on to my A major scale and played it through three times, and I reviewed the study #5 and the rhythm study. I still did not play them perfect, but often times a bad last rehearsal leads to a good performance!

Music Practice June 2nd.

This evening I warmed up with my chromatic scales. I sometimes still slip up on them, but overall I have it completely down. I would need to review before I play them for the exam tomorrow. I then went on to my scale and played it through about 5 times, over and over again to solidify it. I also played through the study number 5 to learn the slurs and the rhythms perfectly. It took about 5 or 6 times running through with stopping to work on the bars I messed up on to get it perfect. I also played it though one last time to make sure I have got it down for tomorrow. I ended off by playing through the line on p.30 twice or three times with a little break in the middle.
Later, I visited my friends house and helped her with her clarinet (Tamara in grade 9). I played some technique stuff there like long notes, jumping using the register key, and staccatos. I also played through my chromatic scales twice from memory, and got it absolutely perfect the second time through. I think I should run through the pieces again tomorrow morning, and practice playing them as if I was in an exam.

Music Practice June 1rst

I played my clarinet four about half an hour. I started with some long notes and my dog sang along with me. I really worked on my chromatic scales getting the notes down right and making sure I had the pattern perfect and wasn't skipping any notes. When I was finally confident that I had all the notes right, I worked on the slurs, which were very easy because I count the notes in sets of four. I finished off by reviewing the other studies. I need to learn the rhythm in the p.30 one and I need to solidify line 5. My scale is very good, but I can only play it the second time through. I always make mistakes the first time I play it through.

Answers to band questions

1. What has been your biggest improvement this year as a player?
2. What is the area you most struggle with?
3. What was your greatest musical highlight this year and why?
4. What areas do you feel the band excels at and what area do we struggle? Give specific examples

1. My biggest improvement this year as an individual player has been in playing scales and fast passages. I have become much more confident in playing fast passages, and I finally figured out how to play the passages slowly and them speed them up. I was very impatient before and tried to speed them up too quickly. Figuring this out was my best Eukeka moment this year.

2. The area I struggle with the most has been sight reading, or, more specifically, trying to learn new pieces when surrounded by other people playing other pieces. I find that I cannot learn music in a noisy environment, I need to be able to hear myself play. This also affects my sight reading ability in band, because I cannot hear myself individually, so I am not sure that I am playing the right notes. to solve this problem I need to take my instrument home and play the song through once of twice, and them I know it very well.

3. The greatest musical highlight of this year is very hard for me to pick. It was either playing Rumble on the High Plains, or in being in Honour Band. Playing Rumble that one time was awesome because we finally all came together and it turned into a real piece of music. It was amazing to be part of, and my parents told me that it was amazing to listen to. Thank you Mr. Stevenson for that moment, I will cherish it forever, and I hope you do too as you go off to Lucas. I also loved being part of Honour Band, Dr. Richardson was amazing, and it showed me what it must feel like to be in a good band or orchestra. Hopefully I will have another opportunity to play with such amazing musicians again.

4. The band is very good at playing loudly and at rhythms. An example of this is how we liked to play louder throughout Rumble, and in how well we can sight read pieces. I think that we are weak in balancing and tuning. We have problems with balance because some people like to play loudly all the time, and when the melody is moving around a lot (end of rumble) it can sometimes get lost. Tuning is also a huge problem because many people do not practice it and do not aim to be in tune. I think we could have sounded a lot better with more practice tuning, especially for some of the younger students. We are also not very good at playing more than what is written on the page, and even after we have been taught things over and over we revert to just playing it as written on the page. An example of this is 85 in Light Eternal, where we went through that part time and time again, but many people still forgot from week to week. It also happened in Rhosymedre, where we could have added much more phrasing and musicality, but we didn't. We had most of the basics down, but there was a lot more that we could have done if more people had practiced.

Music Practice May 29

I played my clarinet for about 15 minutes and worked very hard on the rhythm study on page 30. I worked out the "tune" and worked on remembering what phrase came next. (so, mostly notes) I got the articulation and dynamics down, however, there are still a few rhythms I am not confident in yet, but that will be in next practice.

Clarinet Practice May 27th

I went and bought 10 new good reeds the day before, so I had to try them out. I put one in water for about 4 hours before using it, and the other I just played after a minute of getting it wet. I didn't find that letting the reed soak in the water improved the sound or responsiveness of the clarinet. I played the other reed for about 10 minutes, reviewing the scales I learned in class. I memorise all my scales. I found I had all three of them pretty well down pat. Now I need to maybe touch up on them a bit so I won't get lost when playing them, and then I need to learn the two songs, and maybe I will even practice some sight-reading!