Well, my staccato is naff. Are there any excercises I can do to improve this? I have an exam with a bouncy piece coming up, and it's really staccato-y.....and I'm really stuck with it!!

Thanks,

Me

Hey~
I had this problem - badly!
My teacher and I, after trying endless excersices, embouchure changes, mouthpieces even (!), boiled it down to my breathing - it's taken me about a year to perfect but now I have actually started breathing properly, I have found that not only can I staccato tongue, but also have vastly improved tone and general technique. I'm sure you've heard this a million times but it really is all about breathing and support!

For exersices, I find the Uhl studies are good for stacc and other aspects. Also, Poco a Poco, although on the surface very simple, extremely uninspiring snippets, can be used at all levels, from learning the basics for a beginner, to using them as simple excersices to practice finding a beautiful tone, changing the articulation (stacc? ) and tranposition, as you improve.

Well, this is stuff I do with my teacher at RCM Junior Dept and it's worked wonders for me - got me a place for RCM in september!

Hope this helps

beth~~

Beth,

I've never heard of the Uhl books or Poco a poco. Is that Alfred Uhl, the austrian composer?

Any chance of a link or a bit more info?

Thanks,

Steve

That's the one - Alfred
Uhl: 48 Etuden
I have Book 1 - I'm sure Book 2 is good too... hmm maybe I should order that.. *distracted*

Ahhem

Poco is written by a Jan van Beekum
Beekum: POCO A POCO 113 short technical studies

The Uhl apperas to be avaliable most places
Both are here - http://www.juneemerson.co.uk/ which is where I usually buy music from but I expect you also have a 'usual'
~beth

I used a study that I downloaded from the leslie craven website which helped me as well as practise of course.

My clarinet teacher has helped me improve my tonguing and staccato, just because I was doing it wrong! My idea of staccato was that I'd tongue the staccato note and that would be it. Instead, you're supposed to tongue the note, then stop the sound with your tongue against the reed, not just by stopping the breath.

The other thing he told me to do was to tongue a note that I found hard to staccato. Do it really sloppily in crotchets, quavers, triplets and semiquavers, then do it over exaggerated and aim for somewhere in the middle the third time. After that increase the speed.

Play staccato scales which ascend, then you get the staccato going up. It's harder to staccato over the break B, C,D,E so don't worry too much bout those. So, like:

F,G,A,Bb,C,D,E,F,F,E,D,C,Bb,A,G, then start the same notes but on G this time

If you play double lipped, it's absolutely solid, and it was at that point that I realised I'd have to change to single lipped!

Ah yes, I remember, there was a double-lipped club or something, hehe. Yes, I now have changed to single.

OK, will try what you have said!

Good good, now we can have a "previously double lipped but recently converted to single lipped" club

Well we could, but that'd be taking things a bit too far lol