How to the Best Way to Hold a Clarinet to Play

How to the Best Way to Hold a Clarinet to Play
Hi! I’m Leslie Burnick and I’m speaking on behalf of expertvillage.com. Today I’m going to talk about proper hand and finger placement with the clarinet. The main thing is to keep your hands as relaxed as possible. The left hand goes on top, the right hand goes on the bottom, just to look at the back of the clarinet, you have a hole in the back, your thumb, again your left thumb is going to go on the hole, then you are going to cover the holes in the front, 1, 2, 3, the pinkie will eventually operate these keys here. With your right hand again over the holes, 1, 2, 3 and this pinkie will operate all of those keys. Now the important thing is to keep as relaxed as possible. Often as a beginner you will tend to be more tense however believe it or not when you are tense, your fingers become smaller and therefore they are not going to cover the holes as well. The biggest hole, and again I am not sure if you are able to see are the ones at the bottom and this is where the students especially children will have the most trouble covering these holes. These holes at the top are fairly small. So again you want to keep your fingers relaxed and just very… a little bit of a curve in your fingers is going to help cover them the most. What I often tell my students, if you take your hand and just drop it to your side, you see how relaxed that is. You take that very relaxed hand and just slide it right under the clarinet. It is exactly the way it should be. Same thing with the other hand, just dropping your hand, just relaxed and bring it right over the holes. Because again if you are all tense you are just not going to be able to cover the holes correctly. So again you will be learning different finger combinations which will then make the different notes, but this is how you will cover the holes on the clarinet and have the correct hand placement.