How to Hold the Clarinet

Video Transcript

Hi! For expertvillage.com this is Mitch Kaplan. In this clip we will be talking about how to hold the clarinet. First we put our left hand on top, and our right hand on the bottom; that is the most important thing, because we want to have our fingers utilize the leverage over here, those are very important after a while. To make it comfortable they invented the thumb rest. The thumb rest, you can buy these also at your local music store, they are little rubber pieces that fit over the metal thumb rest, and it makes it much more easier to hold. Now, to play the instrument, we will talk about the instrument we will talk about the embouchure. The embouchure is the mouth position, and that is how you would perform the sound; it is very important. Now what you do is, you put your lower lip over your teeth, like that; you’re going to put your finger on top of the mouthpiece, as a beginner, to know, how much mouthpiece you will put in your mouth. Then you are going to make an “O” with your lips, and it is going to wrap solidly around the mouthpiece, so you are going to put your mouthpiece in your mouth, your lip over your teeth, kind a like a pillow, then you rest your top teeth on top of the mouthpiece, and then tightly wrap your lips around the mouthpiece and then blow… Using your lower stomach, you will produce the sound, this way the air is going through your body and through the horn. Keeping your fingers tight, you want to make sure that you want to keep your fingers hovering above the keys, but not depressing them at the same time. Keeping them close as possible makes it faster and easier to for you to play, here is an example…

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