Things That Bug Me: Playing Loud

Playing loud....ahhhhhh, the glory days. There was a time when I viewed the Bass Clarinet purely as a volume machine. "How loud can I play this?" was the question settling on me every time I got to rehearsal. Yeah, I could play sensitively, but really, I wanted to just blast somebody out of their chair. That's fun stuff. For the longest time I never considered exactly how I could produce as much tone as I did. I was NEVER once brought down to size for playing with a bad sound, and only occasionally called on the carpet for playing out of balance.

That's the beauty of playing a low instrument, no matter how loud you play (if you sound good) you are bound to blend in. Now, I'm in no way saying that you shouldn't be sensitive to the ensemble or that you should totally abandon musical taste, but what I am saying is you have alot more leeway with volume than you think. The band is built from the bottom and a weakling will never be heard over an orchestra. It's a wonderful position to be in, to be at a seat where you can hear everything and support it at the same time. Honestly, I don't know how you can sit in the Flute section and not be able to drive the group. I'd get bored so quickly my little head would spin around. Besides, those instruments naturally carry. You could sneeze into a Flute and get a sound that will carry to the back of the hall. Put any kind of air into a Trumpet and someone will hear you. Sneeze into a Bass Clarinet and what do you get? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

That's why this is so important. You're going to be overcoming natural tendencies of the instrument. If you're playing Bass Clarinet and you find yourself not being heard. Not able to bring yourself, as Grainger would say "To The Fore", not able to really carry a group, being kept in the background, then you have a world of obstacles to overcome. How do I produce more sound? Am I using the right reeds? Am I using the right mouthpiece? Am I using the wrong embouchure? How do I get more air out of me and into my horn? Read on, this is not about produing a unique tone, this about making sure people hear your unique tone.

Let's start with air. This is always the easiest thing to fix. I'd say most people breathe too shallowly and allow for too little expansion of their lungs. When you sit to play, be sure that your back is straight, and this requires that you lean slightly forward in your chair and over the instrument. (This is also the point at which I recommend you use a floor peg AND a neck strap. No exceptions.) Placing the peg slightly under your chair allows you to lean slightly over the instrument and get your face up over the mouthpiece. This is a much more desirable angle for playing. Doing this also allows your neck to be straight which gives you a clean line from your lungs and through your mouth to blow air. If you're standing you can easily mimic this posture as long as you have a neckstrap that tightens well and doesn't slip (I prefer DeJacques, they can't be beat.)

As far as getting air into your lungs, well, you just have to suck all the air out of the room with every breath. Your lungs have an amazing capacity to expand and to learn to function better than they do now. Even if you have a respiratory disorder (personally, I have asthma) then controlled and methodical use of your lungs will increase your lung capacity and potentially lower your need for medication (it did in my case.) As you continually work your lungs you'll find yourself becoming stronger and stronger. Over time you'll find that you may not be able to hold your breath longer, but you'll be able to broaden your tone because there will be SOME improvement in the amount of air you can take in. I've seen Freddy Martin (a DCI Hall of Famer) do very cool exercises that involve breathing and simple stretching (as I could see, it was to stretch the ribcage.) It's, by far, the best exercise regimen I've seen for wind players. Try combining those things sometime. My wife does Pilates (really well) and there's "Pilates Breathing" involved. But what if, just what if, you could do hard core wind breathing while doing something like Pilates? Nice combo I think. I'm not a fitness professional, but I'll say...anything that stretches your ribcage would be mighty helpful(Heather says a good mermaid should do ya.) The expanse in your ribcage helps an awful lot. Doing this to simple patterns (breathe in 4 and out 4, in 4 out 8, in 4 out 12, etc.) will greatly improve your lung strength.

Forcing the air out of your lungs requires sheer force of will. There's no substitute for desire here. You either want to get the air out or you don't. If it were me and I were trying to come about this on my own I'd play leaning over and squatting (causing me to contract my abdomen.) I knew a girl who was a Flute Performance major as an undergrad and she came back from her first semester of school telling us how her teacher told her to practice like that. I tried it for a while....it works (actually, it forces you to work like a dog to get something out of your instrument. Plus, I probably didn't do it enough.) I've also heard from someone who studied at the same school I went to that her/our teacher had her practice laying on her back. The idea is that you MUST be "wasting your air", moving it as fast as possible. Just remember this, in all of these exercises you should be training your body to push air up from the base of each lung, from your diaphragm (as if you've never heard that before.) People say it all the time, but they leave out the part where you exhale with your diaphragm. Yep, those details will get you every time.

Only one more topic to cover before you go and apply this stuff. Your setup. It really doesn't matter what mouthpiece you're using, and reeds are only slightly more important. I played on a Yamaha 4C and 2.5's all the way through my Sophomore year of college (now, that's NOT a volume-friendly setup.) You can produce a very broad, quality sound as long as your reeds are not too hard for you. The only thing stopping you now is repetition. If you're in an ensemble on a regular basis then you have ample opportunity to learn how to move air into your instrument. You have ample opportunity to experiment with your tone without ruining it for the group. If you only have the outlet of individual practice then you must LIVE with long tones. Stay in the middle of the instrument for as long as possible until you feel you're getting somewhere. It's at this point that you might want to try moving progressively up and down the instrument, being very careful to play as full on the bottom and top of the horn as you do in the middle. You'll discover that it is (obviously) more difficult to maintain a CONSISTENT volume the higher and lower you get on the instrument.

Imagine your sound as a box.  

(Go ahead, I'll wait...........)

Now imagine that box in various sizes depending on the volume you're playing. If you're playing, as my Assistant Director in H.S. would say "Prit-ty Darn Loud" then that box is "Prit-ty Darn Big." Now, as you move up and down the horn you have to keep the box the same size, no matter what note you're playing. As an individual this is considered "uniformity of tone." I know, it sounds fancy, but it means just what we talked about.... you tone doesn't make this drastic change with every change in pitch.

This is something that LOTS of people have problems with, but never really know it (Kind of like in Romans 7:7 when Paul says '...For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." 8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire.') If I had never heard of Tony Kniffen from my buddy and his whole thing about uniformity of tone I would have no idea I had a HUGE problem with that. This is a two way street people. If you figure something out, share it because you never know who may NOT know what's up unless you tell them. The moral of this story is simple. You don't have to play a volume friendly setup to produce volume. The setup doesn't produce volume, you do. Your instrument doesn't produce volume, you do. Go forth, be merry, and produce......sound that is.