Teaching is not easy, no matter how long you have been doing it. I have the privilege of teaching middle school-aged clarinetists who are a couple of weeks or years into their clarinet journey. For these students, the clarinet feels mystical, overly complicated, with too many keys, and it requires much more concentration than they anticipated. For those of us teaching, it is an instrument with so many moving parts that it is often hard to pinpoint just one problem in a young student’s playing.
When we meet a new clarinetist, we may focus on tongue position, embouchure shape, and posture. All of these matter, and each could have its own blog post. Still, I believe the physical reaction to the countless squeaks that students, families, and we professionals hear subconsciously tells young clarinetists to back off on air support and breathing. This post discusses breathing and the importance of encouraging young clarinetists to use lots of air.
Too often, early in my clarinet playing, I heard band directors tell the clarinets, oboes, and saxophones to “play less.” As an adult musician with a degree, I now understand that message as being about dynamic level. Still, as a young musician just learning how to put the instrument together and not slice my reed in half with the ligature, I easily interpreted that seemingly straightforward message as “use less air.”
As a young student, using less air feels like the most comfortable option, but as you progress, you never remember to turn the full stream back on in a productive, supportive way. Using less air tends to lead to a slew of other problems: biting, intonation, articulation, and so on. It may seem straightforward to us educators, and like a simple solution for parents addressing a squeaking problem, but phrases like “play less” or “be quieter” can greatly affect our students’ playing development without them or us realizing it.
To prevent squeaking, I suggest using more intentional air. Start with the basics of air production and assess our students’ breathing: “Is the instrument in front of their mouth or in their mouth?” “Are their shoulders moving when they breathe?” “Can I hear their breath?” Ask yourself these questions, and encourage students to do the same when practicing. It is okay to sneak a breath with the instrument half in your mouth, but when you are starting a piece, it should never be in your mouth.
After all, the doctor doesn’t ask you to take a deep breath with their hand covering your mouth, so why should your musician? Keeping your shoulders still while breathing and inhaling into your diaphragm reduces tension, allowing you to play the clarinet more comfortably and maximize your breath. The same goes for the sound of our breathing: if we can hear our breath and it is high-pitched, chances are we are not breathing into our diaphragm and are holding tension somewhere, which doesn't set us up for success.
My clarinet teacher at Interlochen taught me to focus on my breathing and support because they're immensely influential on the rest of our playing. Breathing exercises like in for four, out for four and in for four, out for eight; incentive spirometer tubes like those at hospitals; and blowing through coffee straws taught me how to deepen and improve my breaths, and what it should feel like to blow air through the clarinet. A quick air check looks like holding a hand in front of your face and blowing with good embouchure and tongue position.
First, does the air feel spread across your hand, touching all your knuckles (unfocused), or can you use a marker to confidently guess a pinpoint location on your palm where the air hits (focused air)? Second, if we have a good embouchure and tongue position, place our thumb in our mouth like the mouthpiece of the clarinet, blow, and randomly release our thumb; does the air come out like a pressurized leak, or like a sigh? Both are good checks for where your air is. We can also put one hand on our stomach in front of a mirror and breathe in and out. This lets us see our stomach “inflating” and check that our shoulders stay still.
Young clarinetists have many things to check and work on, but they often overlook air. Next time a student squeaks, remind them to support their air better instead of turning it off.
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– Peyton
