I have a clarinet pupil who has just started coming to me at the beginning of January. She is doing grade 6 and played the clarinet at school many years ago but is playing again, (she is an English teacher in a local academy and has been asked to join in with the orchestra) anyway, one of the first things I noticed with her playing is that she plays with incredibly flat fingers in the right hand and I just can not sort it. She does know that she does it nd can feel it, she even admits that she finds it painfull because her fingers seem to 'lock'. Short of sellotaping bends in her fingers I'm not sure what to do. We are working on Introduction, theme and variations for clarinet and Piano by Rossini and at the moment she is playing the theme very well and we have tried the first variation but it is all triplets at one crotchet = c.126 and she can't play it up to speed because of this finger problem. I have tried scales, and studies, then I thought maybe she was finding her clarinet was getting heavy for her, so we tried a sling and she felt that helped a bit, but quickly went back to her old ways. We then thought that perhaps the thumb rest on her clarinet was too high on her B12 but it wasnt that as now she plays an old equivalent of the R13 and it has a higher thumbrest and no diffirence. I really dont know what to do next. She really wants to do her grade 6 and get on with the pieces, but I want to sort out this problem before it gets worse (if it can) than it already is. She has quite small fingers and thinks that her fingers will get stuck in the ring keys, but they just go completely flat as though she were playing the bagpipes if she puts her fingers even slightly more over the keys.....What can I do?!?!

*Gets clarinet to see*

Would it not be possible to temporarily attach something to the linkage that connects the bottom half to the top, so that she was forced to curve her fingers over it? I guess even a pen lid would do it, with a bit of thread to hold it in place. You'd have to be careful not to damage it though!

Hmmm...I see where you are coming from, something bulky in the way which would make her have to bend her fingers over the top of it...

She really needs to make a sudden change if at all possible, not change it gradually. It's very difficult not to go back to old habits when the new things you are doing are very similar - much better to make a drastic change.

Does/can she practise in front of a mirror? Can you give her some very simple music so she can forget about the notes and concentrate on her fingers? I agree with the idea of forcing the fingers to do what you want them to do...

I'm not a clarinetist but... having had to do some serious work to try and iron out a vaguely similar issue on the flute, I agree with cellocase that simple music (even just scales) and playing very deliberately the right way does help a lot (I used to raise my fingers way too high off the keys - still not cured but much better, by doing slow scales and playing with tissue paper balanced on my knuckles!) The habit needs to be broken and better habits adopted, and it's really hard to do that when you're concentrating on loads of notes and dynamics!

I have a couple of beginner clarinets that raise their fingers to far off the keys and when they bring them down again they go on the wrong keys. Its easy to sort because they are beginners...

Yup, harder when it's an ingrained habit of many years... I'll beat it one day.................

Sounds like she may have hyperextended joints (double jointedness). Some players with this really can't keep their fingers curved, and have to do the best they can with straight fingers.

I suppose so, its a huge disadvantage on her part if this is the case! Have you ever tried playing with flat fingers?! They arent just flat, they are so stiff that they look they are turning upwards when she plays.

it sounds like how i used to play ... aparently - i never realised...
so my teacher used to put an elastic band around my fingers - like one big one. so that id have to bend my fingers in to play all the notes.

worked lovely...
im not sure if its quite the same problem though.. but its worth a shot!