Clarinet Lessons For Beginners

1. Clarinet Lessons For Beginners: Welcome to the Music Coach online clarinet program, where I'll take you through the entire process of learning how to play the clarinet from scratch. My name is Todd Quarter, and I'm a professional musician and educator from Canada, where I've been teaching and performing for the last 15 years. Theme Music Coach program has been designed to get you playing with other people as quickly as possible, because the rial joy and music is being able to express yourself with other people, listen and interact. And so the whole course curriculum has been designed around this idea of teaching you how to play the instrument, but at the same time teaching me how toe have the skills you're gonna need to play. By the end of the course, you're gonna have the confidence to grown up friends and family and other people who play and get a jam session, because the goal is to get you playing with other people as quickly as possible. Program starts by learning how to pick your first instrument. You need to rent it or buy. It helps you move through how to put it together, make your first sound and learn how to play some scales and rhythms and harmony so that you can interact with other musicians as quickly as possible. This course is designed for complete beginners who are looking for a way to get into the musical game in a fun, fast and friendly way. You've always dreamed about playing the clarinet and just not knowing where to start when you come to the right place. Thank you for your interest in the Music Coach online clarinet program, and I hope you're as excited as I am to get started. 2. 4 Essential Elements of Music: What is music? Music is the language of the planet, spoken by every society since the beginning of time. Music is a vibrational language that allows us to convey complex ideas that spoken or written language alone cannot adequately express music gives us an almost unlimited vocabulary for communicating emotional information through sound way. Are all born musicians Theo Idea. That some of us are musicians and some of us are not is so far from the truth. It's laughable. You are made of music. Your heart is beating steadily in your body, keeping the rhythm of your life flowing. Your ears and voice are constantly working together to shape your experience through the sound you make and sounds. You hear it is all music, therefore, essential elements to be able to play music on any instrument. They are rhythm, harmony, melody and your passion for music. To explain these concepts, we're going to use the analogy of a train train itself is you. And the passion that you have for music is the boiler. Inside the train, you were born with the deep passion for music, like every other person whose ever been born and come before you and everyone who will come after you now you might be saying yourself, I have no passion for music or I can't even remember a time when I did thistles just simply because it got extinguished in you. And the good news is it could be reignited and made to burn hot and passionate again. The key to starting any good fire is to start with the right amount of fuel and a little bit of air. This is the same in music. One of the biggest problems people run into is they get overwhelmed. This is like putting too much wood down and trying to light it with one match. A roaring fire always starts out small, and it's helped, along with just the right amount of fuel at the right time and a continuous flow of air fire and the boiler of your train is the single most important part of your musical journey . Now, for a train to go anywhere it needs to go along a track. You can't just have a train in the middle of nowhere, with no track and get a fire burning hot and expected to go somewhere. A railroad track has three main elements. Railroad ties, which are the wooden beams that go along the ground. And two tracks, one on either side with trains. Wheels sit on rhythm is like the railroad ties, which are evenly spaced and allow for the stability for the train to move. Once the tracks are in place, railroad ties air spaced in a way that is even and breaks up the distance between two points so that time can be felt in a consistent way. If you put your train on top of just railroad ties, you're not gonna be going anywhere, so let's have the next piece of track. Harmony is the piece of track that runs alongside the railroad ties. It's fastened securely to them, which allows the rhythm to pass freely underneath harmonies most often expressed as cords. Cords air simply a grouping of three or more notes stacked vertically. The most common use of them, his major and minor. Most people experience major chords, is sounding happy, and minor chords is sounding sad. Almost all music that you've heard on the radio or on television and in movies is made up of major and minor courts. Melody is the piece of track on the other side. Opposite the Harmony, the melody is the most recognizable and distinctive part of any song to songs can have the same rhythmic and harmonic structure, but melodies are completely unique to the song from which they come from. When you think of a famous song in your head, most likely you're thinking about the melody. A melody is just simply a pattern of notes moving up or down involving the rhythm and interacting with the harmony that is connected to once you have these three elements of track of railroad ties, which of rhythm Harmony, which is one of the tracks in the melody, which is the other track your train can now roll along. Then all you have to do is keep adding more pieces of track your train control further and further faster and onward in your musical jury. 3. Notes, and the musical alphabet: throughout the world. There are many different notation systems in music in Western Europe and North America. We use a 12 tone system with the musical alphabet toe. Understand the 12 tone system. We first need to understand how we measure the distance between two notes, their two main distances used in our system. They're tones and semi tones. The easiest way to see and understand tones and semi tones is on a piano. A piano is made up of white keys and Blackie's, and a tone is the distance between two white keys with a black in the middle or between two black keys with a white key in the middle. A semi tone is our smallest unit of distance, which is between a white key in a blackie or between two white keys where there is no black he in the middle. All scales and music are simply a pattern of tones and semi tones that repeats. The most common one is the major scale, which goes tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone on a piano. If you start this pattern on, see, there's no need to use any black keys because the pattern is built right into the keyboard of tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone. If you start the pattern on any other key, however, you need to use the Black Keys to maintain the pattern. This is why we have sharps and flats to make up the 12 different keys inside of the system . 4. Harmony: harmony like the universe itself, is all about relationships. We're alive right now on Earth because of its relationship to everything else in our solar system. Any two notes played at the same time are considered harmony. Sound travels in waves that are measured in Hertz hurts measures how maney waves per second a note is generating a string on a guitar, for example, vibrates 440 times per second. Lower notes vibrates slower and higher. Notes vibrate faster human ears can hear in a range of approximately 31 hurts. Up to 18,000 hertz dogs, for example, can hear a much larger range. They can hear from 40 hertz all the way up to 60,000 hertz when two or more notes air played. At the same time, the sound waves interact with each other, creating two states of dissonance and continents, more commonly known as tension and release. Imagine the sound waves are like dolphins jumping in and out of the water notes that Aaron dissidents or tension never line up evenly so that the pattern of the dolphins being in and out of the water is never in complete alignment. This is a physical event and why some people experience tension in music as very uncomfortable. This technique is often used in movie soundtracks to enhance the sense of unease. Continents or release is having the dolphins come into a pattern where sometimes or all of the time they're at the top or bottom of their pattern together at the same time, much like our preference for spicy or sweet tastes, we each have a sense of how much tension and release we like in our music. And like a sense of taste, it can evolve over time, depending on what were exposed to the fact that there are no wrong notes is not just a spiritual state of mind. It's a fact. All that exists is tension and release or dissonance and continents and how much you enjoy . He is entirely up to your own sense of personal taste. Cords are organized harmony. Harmony is used most commonly to make up chords that air called triads. They're just simply cords that have three notes in them, cords are built like houses. There is a foundation which we call the route the third, which is like the main floor and the fifth, which is like the second floor of the house. The route is the note that gives Accord its name. For example, in a C chord, the route is see. The third of the note is the third note in the scale, so see is one is to and is three. The fifth is the fifth note in the scale. See is one D is to his three, Fs four and G is five. There are several different types of chords. The two most common are major chords and miners. What makes a cord major or minor is the relationship of the third to the root of the court . When it is closer to the fifth than the route, it is major, which is like moving the main floor of your house up slightly when it is closer to the basement, where the root it's minor. The way you move a note, closer or further away, is with sharps and flats to change a C poured from major to minor, you change the third, which is E. T. Flat. Most people experience major and minor chords by hearing them as happy sounds for major on and sad sounds for minor. It's always good to remember that music is a language that you were built to speak. And even when you're working on something that's a challenging concept, just know that with enough time and practice you'll be able to master it. 5. Melody: melody is the part of songs that most people identify with, since there are so many harmonic and rhythmic combinations melodious the most distinct part of any song. Close your eyes and think for a moment of your favorite piece of music. Chances are you're hearing the melody in your head. A melody is both rhythmic and harmonic, and if it is well constructed, it could be sung or played on its own and be clearly understood. Simply put, a melody is a string of notes and rests that move up and down in relation to the harmony underneath it. 6. Rhythm: rhythm is a word that has many meanings in music. This could be the source of unnecessary confusion for students. When they first begin. You may have heard the words time and tempo used in the same way. Let's break this down into the essential elements. Tempo is like a river. Think of a river for a moment. It usually flows at a constant pace, but it's not rigid or mechanical. When humans make music, it is a goal to be as consistent as possible with the tempo. But in reality it's alive, and it has subtle shifts, like the flow of a river Rhythm is how we interact with flow of this river. Imagine sticking your hand in the flow of the river for one second and then pulling it back out. Then imagine doing the same thing for two seconds and half a second. This is the equivalent to playing notes of different lengths. The river is constant, but how long we play the notes for is what makes it in the music. Rhythm is the most mathematical part of music education, but fear not. There is nothing more advanced than simple addition and subtraction involved. Imagine your favorite type of pie for a moment. Now, the size of the pie is constant. No matter how we slice it, the pie represents a bar of music. If you eat the whole pie yourself, it's like playing a whole note, which takes up the entire bar. If you invite a friend over and cut the pie in two, you have to half notes. If you cut it again, you have 4/4 tones. Cut it again and you have 8/8 in music. All time has to be accounted for again. Think of the pie if you have a pie and you cut it into 4/4 and you only want to eat one of the quarters. The other 3/4 still exists because the whole pie was baked. This is the same in music. So wherever there's not a note played, there has to be arrest to take his place. So each of the note values in music of whole half quarter eighths and so on all have rests that last for the same amount of time 7. Clairnet Setup and Buyers Guide: and welcome to the set up on buyer's guide for the clarinet. When you get he started with playing the clarinet, there's a few things to consider, the first of which is usually should I rent an instrument or by it? I get this question all the time for my students. When getting into any new instruments I often recommend. Renting is a good option, especially if you live in a large urban area where there are more than one big music store to go to. Most of those music stores will have some kind of rental program, and the cost of a rental for an instrument like a student or intermediate clarinet is going to be very affordable, usually in the $30 a month range, and it often is even less expensive if you commit for six months or an entire year. What this allow you to do is really try out the instrument. You can try out more than one clarinet. You could try out one for a month and take it back in and try a different one. This will give you a chance to get comfortable with the instrument. The main difference between ah student clarinet and intermediate or advanced ones is what the instruments actually made off. The clarinet traditionally was always made of wood, even though it's very dark, it's it's usually lacquered or painted, but they're usually made of wood, and those are at the high end and are quite expensive. Professional clarinets can be quite expensive to get into, and student level clarinets are simply made of plastic, and this clarinet is made of plastic. It's a student level clarinet, and it sounds really good, Um, and his plays very consistently. But you would notice the difference between this and a professional one if they're played side by side. Professional level clarinet will have a lot more warmth to the sound, and a student level clarinet will be a little bit more, Um, not harsh sounding, but it'll have less of the dynamic sound because it's passing through plastic instead of wood. When you're getting into buying clarinets, there are three main price levels, like there are for almost every instrument. There are student level instruments and then above that are intermediate and above that or professional level. In this student level price, you're looking at a beginning price of around 4 to $500 for student level clarinet going up towards six or $700. And inside that range, there'll be some variation and quality. I like to suggest always that try never to buy the very cheapest thing, because if there is cost cutting going on from the manufacturer, you'll see it the most right at the lowest price point. So if you can afford to go up even 50 or $100 above the cheapest thing you find, usually you'll get a big jump in quality intermediate clarinets. Start in the 7 to $800 range and go up to $1000. And you'll just have MAWR durability a little bit better sound. The pads that are on the clarinet will usually be of a higher quality, and the mouthpiece will usually be a bit better as well. And professional level clarinets are almost always made of wood and start above $1000 go up into the many thousands of dollars. A clarinet is a very delicate instrument, so when you're handling it, it's really important not toe squish down on any of the rods now or any of the springs and when you're taking it apart and putting it together always be very gentle. Always like to think like I'm handling, you know, a very delicate thing, not quite as delicate as an egg, but you know around that delicate. Whenever you have any instrument, it's always good to plan for some regular maintenance. Ah, clarinet that's being played on a regular basis. You should probably plan on once a year, taking it into have it serviced. Um, there just some basic wear and tear things that happen on all the wind instruments. So the pads are going to get corroded because you're blowing air through and they're getting wet and then they're drawing. Um, they don't always all need to be replaced every year, but the ones closer to the top will need to be replaced more often, and any good repair technician will just have a quick look at it, and they'll just still know which ones need to be replaced. Also, if any of the rods or springs become bent or loose, they'll be tightened up. Having your instrument play really well is a key component to, uh, keeping going with your practicing and playing and being excited about it. If you're ever frustrated and the sound is just not really working, it's good to take your instrument in and make sure that there's nothing mechanically going wrong when you're starting out playing clarinet. Another thing to think about is what kind of reads you're gonna use so much like a saxophone. A clarinet has a read, and they're measured by the thickness. Now I happen to use Rico Royals. I'm not an endorser of their product and work for them or anything. I just that happens to be my choice of read company that I like. But there are many different re companies. Most of them use a number system for rating how thick the reeds are. And in the case of Rico, they started one and it goes up to five. And in between, there's one, and then 1.5 to 2.5, um, five being the hardest in one being the lightest. Now, I would suggest for any beginner, even though it starts at one, I wouldn't buy number one or 1.5 reads. They're so light and flimsy that one they don't last very long, and to there you don't need them to be that light, even for a beginner. So I recommend starting with the two or 2.5. And the reason for having the reeds get harder as you get more more comfortable is that it allows you to have more volume. So if the reed is really light and you blow really hard, it'll either split or you'll get a lot squeaking. So as you're breathing, muscles get stronger and you get more comfortable on the clarinet. You can handle thicker and thicker read. It also depends a little bit on what musical situation you're in. So I have different reads strength. Sometimes if I'm playing a clarinet and I'm gonna knowing to be somewhere in a loud situation where I need to really project all put on a heavier read. And if I'm in a situation where I need to be a little more quiet, I'll change my read to something else. 8. Learn how to put the clarinet together, make your first sound, and play: I welcome the week one of clarinet lessons in the Music Coach program. Today we're gonna get started on a really exciting journey of playing the clarinet. The clarinet is a really interesting instrument that is a blending of very old technology and sound and some more modern ideas. Originally, wind instruments, which the clarinet is part of that family because we make the sound with wind were simply hollowed out pieces of wood that we're usually flutes or recorder like in that they're just holes in a tube and you blow through and the clarinet started to add in some springs and metal keys that could control more things than your fingers could get to. And this makes the clarinet a really interesting bridge instrument. That sort of connects very old ideas with some more modern ideas. The first thing we have to do is to build to assemble the clarinet. The clarinet is comes in five different pieces, so it takes a little getting used to how to put it together. So first things first. Always make sure that your latches are opening up this way. You know that the clarinet is sitting properly in the bottom part of the case. If you open it upside down, it'll tumble out on you. So as you can see, the clarinet comes in many different pieces, and we're gonna look at each one and assemble it together. There are two main body pieces. There's the top part, which has a thumb hole on the back and an octave key on the back, and that's going to be played by your left hand, the bottom part of the body, which has a thumb hook and that's played by your right hand. This is the very bottom cone. It doesn't have any keys on it. The barrel which the mouthpiece connects to you, and it has, ah, larger opening and a smaller opening. It's important to notice that so that the mouthpiece goes into smaller opening and then the actual mouthpiece itself, which has a redcap, which is just to keep the read from getting damaged. A ligature, which also has a large opening and a small opening and holds the read to the mouthpiece. The read, which is a small piece of wood that we use to get the sound happening and the mouthpiece has some cork on the end, the first thing we're gonna do is assemble the bottom bell section to the bottom part of the body. And to do that, we're just gonna connect them like this and twist. Make sure not to squeeze too hard on the body when you're twisting. And if the cork is really stiff, you can use something called Court Greece, which should be in your case, it looks like a little chapstick and you can apply it any of these cork sections and it will help it go on a little smoother. Next, you're gonna assemble the barrel to the top piece and again, look for the larger opening and just sort of gently twist them together. Now we're gonna assemble the top section and bottom section together. Once they're assembled, you're looking to make sure that the whole thumb hole and some hook are lined up on the back. Once it's assembled to this point, you can rest it on the ground on the bottom piece. Now we're gonna assemble the mouthpiece to read in the ligature. We'll start by getting the read a little bit wet, and if it has a warp in the tip of it, which can happen especially in the wintertime. When it's dry, you can place it on the flat part of the bottom of the mouthpiece. Once it's wet and rub in some of the moisture. It's okay if it's warped. It's just that it's dried out and shrunk a little bit because this is made of wood. Once it's flattened out, you're just gonna try and line up the very tip of the read with the tip of the mouthpiece. And at this stage, you don't have to get a perfect just get it close and then take your ligature and make sure you have the large opening going on first and you're gonna slide it down until it's snug. Now we're gonna get it just perfect. The reed has to be right at the tip like that. Once you have it in place, just tighten screws on the ligature, and now we're ready to attach the mouthpiece to the body and just hold it by the barrel so that you don't twist the body and just twisted into place. And once you're at this stage, the mouthpiece, some hole and thumb hook should all be in alignment. Now we're ready to make your first sound Making a sound on wind instruments requires you use a lot of breath. So there's breathing exercises that are gonna happen before each practice video and really make sure to do them because it's gonna help give you the lung capacity you need to really play the instant. What I want you to do is you're gonna rest your teeth on the top of the mouthpiece about an inch or three centimeters in from the tip and you don't want to bite down. You just want to rest your teeth there so they have somewhere toe be resting. And then I want you to close your mouth around the mouthpiece, making sort of an O shape, and you're gonna tighten to the point where no air can escape when you push out. And when you take a big breath in, remember to keep your cheeks in and keep the angle of the instrument pointing down and remember to hold the thumb hook on the bottom. And right now, you don't need to hold any other fingers. Just the somebody. We're also gonna learn the 1st 3 notes for the practice video. Your first note is going to be A to play A you're gonna cover the thumb hole, cover the first hole in your left hand, the second hole in your left hand and the third hole in your left hand, and then the first hole in your right hand and the second hole This makes a Yeah. Our second note is going to be be simply, lift up your pointer finger in the right hand. Ah, and 1/3 note is C sharp. So you're gonna lift up your bottom fingers and play the C sharp key, which is controlled by your pinky in your left hand. Now, the trick is is when you go from B to C sharp, you want a lift up and pushed down at the same time? This takes a little getting used to try it slowly. So here are three notes Ah, uh ah Oh! All right. Excellent work. And we'll see in the practice video 9. Clarinet Practice 1: We're gonna play whole notes for the 1st 3 notes of our scale, which are a B and C sharp. Take a big breath in and hold and a, um Now, take a big breath in and played be Ah! Oh, Now take a big breath in and play C sharp. We're now going to do the same thing. Using the click track, You're gonna play a for four beats, take four beats, rest play, be for four beats, take four beats rest and play C sharp for four beats. 12 ready. Begin a for an arrest. One, 23 Here comes B and foreign Arrest one to get ready to play c sharp and C Sure 34 Let's do the same thing again. 12 Ready? Play a what for Arrest. 1234 Nutley, Be one Arrest 1234 Napoli! See shirt one. For now, we're going to do the same thing using half notes so they will get to beats. Will rest for two beats be will get two beats, arrest for two beats and see Sharp will get two beats and rest for two beats. One to ready. Begin okay to rest, too. Rest to rest to do the same thing again. 12 Ready? Begin. They rest too. Rest to see. Sure. Rest to now we're gonna do the same thing and take the rests out. So each note will get two beats. 12 Ready. Begin. Sure. Let's try it again. 12 Ready. Begin a Let's try one more time. 12 Ready. Begin. Sure. Now we're gonna play quarter notes, so each note is gonna get one Beat 12 Ready? Go. Sure. 12 Ready? Go. Sure. 12 Ready? Cool. Sure. 12 Ready? Go. Sure. Good. Try going up and down. 12 Ready? Begin. Ah, sure. Being a same thing again. 12 Ready? Go! Sure. The same thing again. 12 Ready? Go! Sure. A straight one. Last time. One, two. Ready? Go the pain. See? Sure. 10. Learn all of the notes in the A major scale: I welcome back Thistles, Week two of clarinet lessons in the music Coach program. This week you're gonna be learning how to play the rest of the notes that make up the A major scale. Everything in this program is based around the A major scale. So all of the bass notes and harmony, as well as the melodies that you're gonna learn and the improvising is all going to be using this order of notes. So we began by having the 1st 3 notes, which were a B and C sharp. The next note we're gonna play is D, which is from the C sharp. You're gonna lift up your pinky finger and your ring finger in your left hand at the same time. So D has the thumb and the 1st 2 fingers in the left hand. It sounds like this to play E, which is our next note. You're gonna lift up the middle finger in your left hand. So now we have just the thumb and the pointer finger to Blake F sharp. You're gonna lift up your thumb. So now all we're left with is the pointer finger now balancing the instrument when you start having very few fingers involved can be a little difficult. Try and remember that the point of balance on a clarinet is between your mouth and your thumb. So you should be able to hold the instrument completely like this. Now to play G sharp, which is our next note. We're gonna lift up the pointer finger and play the side key in your left hand, which is here. Now the trick is is moving in one motion. So you're letting go and rolling like this g sharp. And then our final note is the high A, which is the top key right here and again. We want to roll. You can feel the keys around it a bit so you can roll into that position. Uh, here are new notes. Again, we have d ah mm, right f sharp, g sharp and a If you're not sure what whole notes, half notes and quarter notes mean check out the rhythm video that goes before the course. It explains all that in detail. It's very simple counting involved, and you just have to listen for the click track to know how many beads each note gets. Keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video 11. Clarinet Practice 2: now learn how to play the rest of the notes that make up the a major scale. We're going to start by playing whole tones on D E and F Sure take a big breath in and play a d. Um, Now, take a big breath in and play E. Now, take a deep breath, simply f sharp. We're gonna do the same thing using whole notes with the click track. So each note will get four beats and then the B four beats rest. 12 ready? Begin 34 No rest 234 Now e 1234 and arrest one to 34 now f sharp. 1234 and rest. Now we're gonna do the same thing again. One to ready. Begin. D 13 Rest one to 34 e 1234 Rest. One, 234 f sharp. 1234 Now we're going to do the same thing without the rest between the notes. 12 Ready? Begin. D one e 41234 Stood again. One, two. Ready? Go! We're gonna play the final three notes that make up the a major scale f sharp g sharp and a to use the same technique. Start by putting a long tone on F sharp and now long tone on G sharp. The long tone on High a E and now we're gonna play them as whole notes with four beats. Rest in between them. 12 Ready? Go F sharp. 1234 Rest one to 34 g sharp. 134 Rest 1234 A 1234 outs Tried again. 12 Ready? Go f sharp. 34 g sharp. 1234 a 1234 Now let's play them without the rest in between. One two. Ready? Go F sharp. 134 g sharp 134 a 1 3/4 Tried again. 12 Ready? Go f sharp. 1234 g sharp. One, 234 A 1234 Now let's play D E and F sharp as half notes. So two clicks for each note with to click. Break in between one to ready go d one rest to E one. Rest to F sharp. One. Teoh. Let's try it again. 12 Ready? Go D one rest to e one rest to F Sharp now has tried without the rest in between. 12 Ready go D won t shirt. Let's try it again. One to ready. Go d one e one. Effort one. Now let's play D E and F sharp as quarter notes. One click for each note. 12 Ready? Go. Thank you. Sure. 12 Ready? Go. Sure. 12 Ready? Go. Sure. 12 Ready? Go. Sure. Now we're gonna play f sharp g sharp and a as half notes with a two click break Then without the break And then his quarter notes 12 ready. Go f sharp to rest too. She sure to rest too? A to rest to Let's try sending again. 12 Ready? Begin half sharp to rest too. She sure rest you a rest to Now we try the same thing without the break in the middle. 12 Ready? Go after she shirt a same thing again. 12 ready? Go f sharp to G sharp a one more time. 12 Ready? Go after she shirt a Now we're gonna play f sharp g sharp in a as quarter Notes 12 ready? Go half shirt. Sure. A 12 Ready? Go F sure she sharp a 12 Ready? Go half Sure. Sharp. A 12 Ready? Go on Two. Ready? Go! After she sharp a 12. Learn the first melody for music coach song: Hi and welcome back. This is Week three of clarinet lessons in the Music Coach program. This week you're gonna learn the first melody that makes up the a part of our song. Our song is gonna have to different melodies and two different chord structures. And each time we play one of these sections, it's gonna happen to times. So in the backing track in the practice video, you're going to hear the melody happen always in groups of two. Here's what it sounds like. Now the notes when you're first learning them, we're going to be playing them completely out of time, which means we're not gonna worry about the rhythm first. The reason I like to go about it this way is I find that if your mind doesn't know what note it's looking for next, it can't focus on the rhythm yet. So we have to memorize the order the notes go in before we worry about how to line it up with the rhythm of the melody. So here are your notes. You gonna start on C sharp, then play C sharp again, then D then e. Then we're gonna go up to the high a she sharp f sharp f sharp a she sharp, she sharp a she sharp f sharp And then the melody begins again on C sharp. So here it is one more time C sharp c sharp being and a she sharp f sharp f sharp a she sharp she sharp a g sharp f sharp. See? Sure. So in the practice video, you're going to start by playing it with no time, meaning no click track and no backing track. And then you're gonna start to be able to try and play along with the actual backing track , which has a saxophone playing ability. As you go through it many times, try and match or mimic that. What? The Saxons playing as closely as you can. This is a lot like learning to do an imitation. If you've ever tried to pretend to do the voice of a famous person or even maybe somebody in your family is a joke, you try and match it as closely as you can. And the more you hear it, the easier it becomes to do so. I want you to try and focus on mimicking what the melody is doing. The more times that you play it. Make sure to always take a big breath in before you play and trying here, how the melody speaks sort of like in sentences. So we want to breathe and get a lot of air. So we get a whole idea out and then breathe and then start again. Keep up the great work we'll see in the practice video. 13. Clarinet Practice 3: learn how to play the first melody that makes up the a section of our song. First, let's just play the notes in order without the click track. C sharp. Uh, see? Sure, A she sure shirt f sharp And she shar She's shut a G. Sure, sure. Let's try that one more time. See? Sure, Sure, Teoh. You know a G sure f shirt. Sharp A g shar she sharp a she shar f sharp. Now let's try playing the melody along with the track. One two. Ready? Go Now let's try the same thing again. 12 ready? Go. 14. Learn how to play the A major scale ascending and descending (up and down), : I Welcome back. This is week four of clarinet lessons in the Music Coach program. This week we're gonna work on playing the A major scale ass sending, which means going up and descending, which means going down using half notes and quarter notes, which are half notes, get two clicks, quarter notes, get one. You're also gonna learn the bass note order for the a section of the song. And this is a really great thing to know that sometimes wind instrument players don't take the time to know. But it is great because it allows you to play in unusual groupings of instruments cause if I'm the clarinet player and I know the order, the bass notes go in, then a different instrument can take a solo or play the melody, and I've got something I can play that holds the song together. And then finally, this week, we're gonna get you started on improvising, which is one of the really exciting things about music. Improvising has a long history, especially in jazz music, where it began as embellishing the melody. So taking a regular melody and just playing it slightly longer or higher, lower in different ways. and then it evolved all the way into creating completely new musical ideas over top of the structure underneath. And this week, when we get into that section, I'm just gonna have you take the very beginning steps which is making your own note choices while the track is going on underneath you. So you can just literally pick any note out of the A major scale and any rhythm and just play around with it playing the a major scale ass ending. You're gonna play a being C sharp de and F sharp G sharp and A and to play a descending to play a she sharp f sharp Mm de c sharp be and a Now the bass notes for the A section are f sharp, then play low a then D and then e and here's what that sounds like. Ah ah oh! Each bass note takes up a whole bar of music, so it always has to have four beats. So for now, always make sure to hold it for the full four beats and then move to the next note. Also, this week you're gonna be playing the A section melody again, along with the track. Make sure to keep working on that because it becomes a very important part of the next things that are coming up in the program. Keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video. 15. Clarinet Practice 4: I'm not gonna play the entire major scale using half notes and then quarter notes with the click track. We're going to start by going ass ending, which is up. Starting on the low A to the high. A playing half Notes 12 Ready. Begin. Sure. Let's try that again. 12 Ready. Begin. Sure. Great. Mills tried using quarter notes. One with you. Ready? Go. Try it again. 12 Ready? Go. Sure. Now we're gonna play the A major scale descending. Starting on the high A going to the low A using half Notes 12 ready? Go. Try to get one too. Ready? Go Now let's try it. Using quarter notes. 12 ready? Go! Try again. 12 Ready? Go, Theo. Now we're gonna try playing this scale ass ending and descending First with half notes and then with quarter notes. First half notes 12 ready? Go! T shirt a now descending a Sure, and now we're gonna dio ascending and descending with quarter notes. 12 ready? Go! Try that one more time. 12 Ready? Go! You're now gonna play the notes that make up the bass part of the A section of our song The notes You're gonna play R F Sharp, A, D and E. They're gonna be played as whole notes, so each will get four beats. 12 ready? Go after 34 a 41. Let's try that again. 12 Ready? Go after 234 A for D. Let's try one more time. 12 Ready? Go four. Now you're gonna take your first steps towards improvising by playing the notes in the A major scale out of order along with the track. Simply put, just move in a non sequential order, meaning, for example, you could start on a but instead of playing be, see if you can move to a different note like E or F sharp or C sharp. 12 Ready? Go now let's play the melody along with the track 12 Ready? Go Now let's play the bass notes along with the track 12 ready? Go 16. Learn how to play the bass notes for the B section of the song, and how song sections work together: I Welcome back. This is Week five of clarinet lessons in the music Coach program. This week you're gonna be working on playing the bass notes that make up the B section of our song. Now, many forms of popular song use different sections, and sometimes they're called different things. But basically they all function the same way You may have heard the term verse and chorus or bridge and intro before these air just words we use to describe sections of songs in our song we're gonna have A and B And each time they're played they're both gonna be played twice. So our sections are going to go a a B be And we're right now gonna be working on the bass notes for the B section They are lo a mm f sharp and D And here's what they sound like. Ah, nothing we're gonna add This week is tongue ing, which is another word for articulating and on the clarinet because we're using a read your tongue is able to start and stop the vibrating of the reed, which is part of what's making the sound happen. And the way your tongue touches the read whether it's right at the tip or further back changes the way the tongue it's sounding. So if your tongue right near the tip, it's a little bit of ah, harder sound, more of a ta sound and further down on the read with more of the middle of your tongue is more of a dos sound. I like to think of it as Imagine a tap for a minute. If you turned the tap on, it's like the air you're breathing through the instrument and you can turn the tap on and off and completely stop the water and started again. And that's like more of a toss sound where the air is stopping and then starting again. And if you leave the water running and you run your hand under the water, it's more of a dog or a softer kind of sound where the water isn't fully stopping. It's sort of stopping a little bit, but not the same as the tap being turned all the way off. Here's what a top sounds like. Okay, Uh huh, uh huh. You can hear how there's a little space between each note and the longer tongue ing is just interrupting the air a little bit, but continuing the sound all the way through When you're working on playing these bass notes, try these different techniques to start the notes and keep them going and see how long you can hold your breath toe. Make them go as long as they can. You're also gonna work on playing the bass notes is whole notes, which take up the entire bar as to half notes per bar, because we need four total. So if you're gonna play the A two times, you have to hold it for two beats each time and as 4/4. So mixing up these rhythms is a great way as an accompanying NIST, because when you're playing the bass part, you're supporting either a malady or solo. It's a great way to change up what's happening and also to build up the energy by playing Mawr shorter notes, or let the energy become a little more relaxed by playing longer. Now keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video 17. Clarinet Practice 5: now notes that make up the bass notes for the B section of our tune. The notes are A E f sharp and G. Let's try them without the click track A a F Sharp and G. Let's now try them as whole notes. 12 Ready. Go a 34 f sharp. 234 Let's try it again. 12 Ready? Go three. Let's try them all as half notes. 12 Ready? Go A to A To to I m sure. After two to. Okay, let's try it again. 12 Ready? Go. Hey, you! Day two to to f Sure to you half shirt, too. To game two. Now let's try them. Is 4/4 notes 12 Ready? Go. Ah, uh uh Uh sure, Sure, sure, sure. Dan, Let's try it again. 12 Ready? Go! Mm F sharp. F sharp. F sharp, sharp. Now we're gonna mix up the rhythm by playing a is a whole note. E is to half notes. F sharp is 4/4 notes and D is 4/4 notes. 12 ready? Go. A 234 Me too, to f sharp. F sharp. Dan Dan. Now you're gonna try the bass notes section with the backing Track one. Go now Let's try it one more time, Go or or 18. Learn how to play the melody for the B section of the song: I Welcome back. This is Week six of clarinet lessons in the music Coach program. This week you're gonna learn the melody for the B section of our song. Here's what it sounds like. Thank Thank you. So just like the a section it's gonna always happen twice. So you always play the b section melody two times So we're gonna learn it the same way we did the A section one note at a time Don't worry too much about the rhythm right away To see if you can get used to the order The notes air going in So you're gonna play af sharp f sharp she sharp a a a she shar a she shar after sharp and and after our Here it is again f sharp, g sharp A a a she shar a she shar f sharp. Mm Ah, half shot. Now, one of the things that makes the b section melody different in the a section is where it begins in the form of the song In the a section the first chord and the first note of the melody are lined up together at the beginning of our one in the B section were jumping in in a pickup bar. In the practice video you're going to hear account of four and then a count of three and after the third beat is where the melody begins, so you'll hear 1234123 after a few sharp A. Now, once we get to the actual backing track, we're going to drop away the first bar and you'll just hear the three beat count in in here 123 after a P sharp a. Now at first it could take a little bit of getting used to, and it's helpful to play along with the track because of the saxophone is always gonna play it in the right place each time and eventually, later on in the program. You're going to be playing along with a track that doesn't have the saxophone in there. So you'll be the ones stepping into that space, and it feels a little bit like being on a tightrope with no net sometimes. But these practice videos air designed so that you can really go for it and take chances and make mistakes, because if you're not making mistakes when you're practicing your not practicing something challenging enough. So don't worry about it. If you're having to back up the tape and try it again and try it again, it's how I learned. It's how everybody learns. Just stick with it and you're going to do great. We'll see in the practice video. 19. Clarinet Practice 6: We're not gonna win the melody That makes up the B section of our song notes are G shar and aim a Chiche are a g shar f sharp f sharp. Let's try that again. I am sure g sharp and hey a she shar a sheesha f sharp f sharp. Now, the second melody is difficult to enter because it starts on the third beat of the bar. So, for example, we're gonna count four whole beats and then three more and begin the melody like this one, too. 34123 Okay, try that one more time. So one bar. 1234123 After T shirt. Now we're gonna play it with the backing track, and we're only gonna have the three beat count in. So it'll go. 123 after of g sharp a one. - Now , let's try it one more time. - Uh , 20. Learn how to change your role during the B section from lead to accompaniment.: I welcome back. This is Week seven of clarinet lessons in the Music Coach program. This week you're going to start working on going back and forth between having different roles in the B section of the song now, because the goal of this whole program is for you to eventually be able to play with other real musicians in real time on this song or on other songs. One of the skills that really want you to start developing is the ability to think about the arrangement of the whole song and about what's coming next. Because your role might be changing as the song progresses, for example, you might be playing the melody in the first part of the song. But then, when you go around the second time, you may be playing in a company that part or taking a solo. And as a instrumentalist, it's always good to be thinking just slightly ahead about what's the next thing that's coming so that I'm ready to begin right in the right place. So in the practice video this week, you're going to be playing the melody for the B section, and then the track will stop and Then you're gonna play the chord structure for the B section and remember, cause our sections always get repeated. It's gonna be to bees and then to bees. And finally, you're gonna have a chance to play the B section melody without the saxophone in the track , you get the feeling of having to jump into the pickup bar on your own. And the thing I would say is like anything in life, do it with as much confidence as you can muster, because it actually sounds better, even if you make a mistake. If you're playing it confidently and try it many, many times, it takes a while to get used to sort of being on your own as the instrumentalists. Keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video. 21. Clarinet Practice 7: we're gonna work on playing through the form, doing different things. We're going to start by playing the melody for the B section of the song followed by the bass part for the B section of song And then the melody again for the B section of the song 12 Ready? Go Now you're gonna play the bass notes for the B section of the song one, go Or now you're gonna try playing your melody on your own With the backing track Go 22. Learn how to change your role during the entire song from lead to accompaniment.: I Welcome back. This is Week eight of clarinet lessons in the Music Coach program. In this week's video, we're gonna be working on playing different things in different parts of our song like we did last week, but this time over the entire form. So a B B running in a circle. What's gonna be different this week is that when we're playing a, you're gonna be doing one thing in the first day and something else in the second day and then something in the first be something else in the second be and this is yet another example of having to think on your feet. Think a little bit ahead about what's happening, and it allows for when you're playing in a real band situation for things to change quickly , and it makes the music mawr interesting. Now, if you're in a small group setting like you and one other instrument or you and two other instruments, it may not make so much sense to have so much changing so quickly. But if you're lucky enough to be playing in a band where there's drums, bass, guitar, piano, flute, saxophone, trumpet all these things, it could be a nice wayto break up the sound and give everyone a chance to do something different. The last thing in the practice video this week is going to be taking a solo over the whole form of the song and just expand on what we've been doing before. So have the courage to move from note to note and try different rhythms and start thinking about moving in an upward direction and a downward direction and also dynamically meaning How loud your playing. So sometimes when I play solo, I like to start out really hard and loud and then pull it back when I'm in the middle or the opposite. Someone's is nice to start very quiet and really build up to something. Improvising is a form of storytelling with sound, so really as much as you can think about where you want your story to be going, and I always like to feel my way through so I can kind of feel where it is. The solo wants to go to next, and each improvisation is its own unique thing. All right, keep up the great work, and we'll see in the practice video 23. Clarinet Practice 8: you're now gonna practice playing the melody and the bass notes and taking a solo all the same time during the song. The first form you're gonna play is the a melody once than the a section cords than the B section melody Once and the B section melody courts 12 Ready? Go Now you're gonna play the A melody twice the B melody twice and then improvise over a B B 12 Ready, go! Go Way , Way over the section 24. Learn how to play your first scale pattern: I And welcome back. This is Week nine of clarinet lessons in the music Coach program. This week we're gonna work on learning a scale pattern. Now, skill patterns are a great way to work on a scale out of order which helps the information get into your hands in a different way. This really helps your improvising later on, when the vocabulary in the language of the scale is in your hands, not just in the regular order of a B c sharp d So on like that. The 1st 1 we're gonna do is called thirds. So we're going to start by being on the low A and instead of playing be we're gonna skip over it and go to see Sharp. So here's what the scale sounds like going up. Uh huh, Uh huh. And here those notes slowly. We have a C sharp being de c sharp. Ah de f sharp and she shar f sharp a she sharp g sharp A. Here's what the scale sounds like descending coming down from the high eight. Uh, now the notes are a f sharp G sharp. Mm f sharp de and C sharp Dean, be C sharp a being be a and the practice video. You're gonna start by playing the notes as half notes, so two clicks reach Note. This can take a while to get used to, so go slowly. And if you need to repeat them at the slower tempo first, then go ahead. Then you're gonna eventually be moving into playing the notes as quarter notes, both ass ending and descending. And like everything else in this program, make sure to go with the speed in terms of how faster moving through the material that works best for you and make sure it's really comfortable under your fingers before you're ready to move on. I always like to feel my way through. So if I feel like I my fingers air starting to know where the next note is in the pattern, I'm starting to get it to the level where I need to. All right, keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video 25. Clarinet Practice 9: we're now gonna play the A major scale ass ending in thirds using half notes. 12 Ready? Go. Okay. Sure. Sure, Sure. She sure? Sure. A. You sure? She Sure? Hey, now we're going to try the same thing. Using quarter notes. 12 Ready. Go. Sure. Sure. Sure, Sure, Sure, Sure. It same thing again. 12 Ready? Go. Sure. Sure, Sure, Sure, Sure, Sure. We're now gonna play the A major scale descending in thirds using half notes. 12 Ready? Go a f Sure. Sure, Sure, Sure, Sure. Uh, now, let's try it. Using quarter notes. 12 Ready? Go Right again. One, two. Ready? Go A Sure? Sure. Now let's play the scales. Ass ending and descending. Using half notes. 12 Ready? Go! Okay, Sure. Sure, Sure, Sure, sure. A Sure? Sure. Hey, a Sure? Sure, sure, Sure, Sure. Be. Now, let's try it. Ask Sending in descending using quarter notes. 12 Ready? Go. Sure, Sure. Sure. A sure? Sure, Sure, sure. 26. Learn how to play your second scale pattern: I am. Welcome back. This is Week 10 of clarinet lessons in the music Coach program. This week, we're gonna be working on a different scale pattern in the A major scale. Here's what it sounds like. Way this one goes up four steps and then back and then up and then back. It's a bit of a switchback shape and descending. It's going to do the opposite, is gonna drop down and then back up, down, up. This is just another variation that's gonna add to your ability in your vocabulary with the A major scale. So here the notes a be C sharp, dean, and then we go down to be C sharp. Okay. He then back down to see Sharp de, um after sharp Dean. Mm. After sharp, she sharp and ap sharp she sharp a f sure g sharp a She sharp a Here the notes one more time. Very be C sharp, Dean being C sharp de and C sharp the f sharp dean. Mm f sharp. She sharp. Mm f sharp, g sharp. A f sharp, g sharp. A g sharp. Okay, here's with scale. Sounds like descending. And here are the notes a g sharp AP Sharp G sharp f sharp. Mm. The I m sure. Mm. De c sharp. Um, the C sharp be being c sharp being a c sharp, be a the A. So work on it. Slowly, with the practice video, you're gonna be playing half notes and then eventually working away up to being able to play quarter notes. This is again going to help you develop some great vocabulary in the a major scale. Keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video. 27. Clarinet Practice 10: We're now gonna play second scale pattern. We're going to begin by playing the notes as half notes. One to ready. Go. Sure. Sure, Sure. F sharp. F sure. G share f sharp. G sharp. A sure G shirt. A T shirt A. Now we're gonna try the same pattern again. Using quarter notes. One to ready. Go A c Sure. Sure, Sure, Sure, Sure, sure. G sharp. A f shirt G sharp. A g sharp. A. Now we're gonna try the same scale pattern descending using half notes. Starting on the high. A one to ready go A g shar f Sure. G sharp, half sharp. C sharp being C sharp. Sure, being a scythe. Now we're gonna play the notes descending as quarter notes. 12 Ready? Go A. Sure? Sure, Sure, Sure, Sure, Sure, Sure, sure, Sure. Now we're gonna play the notes ass ending and descending as half notes. 12 Ready? Go! Uh, sure. See? Sure. Day, see? Sure. F Sure? Sure, Sure, Sure, sure. A f sure. G sharp. A g shirt? A a She sure? Sure. She sure? Sure, Sure, Sure. I mean sure, Sure, sure. Be a B Now. We're gonna play ass sending and descending as quarter notes. 12 Ready? Go A C Sure soothe your after G sharp. A F shirt, G shirt, a G shirt, A T shirt, shirt, shirt, shirt. Sure, sure, sure a scythe. 28. Learn how to play embellish the melody as part of your solo: Hi and welcome back. This is Week 11 of clarinet lessons in the Music Coach program. This week you're gonna work on embellishing the melody as part of your improvising. Like I've said in earlier videos, improvising began as soloists taking their own expression and putting it onto the melody of a famous song. And this was the first few baby steps towards improvising becoming its very own art form. And it's still a great technique. And that's why I want you to try it out with the melody from the song that we're doing So in the Practice video, you're going to be playing the melody regularly the first time. And then the second time, I want you to branch out and try and make it your own. I'm gonna give you an example of it. I'm gonna play the melody to the A section once regularly, and then I'm gonna embellish it the second time and make it a little bit different. So I've kept the basic shape and form of it and added a few extra notes or played certain things longer . And this is just one way of going about it. And each time you embellish it will become mawr of your own personal taste that will come out in doing it. Here's the same thing with the B section melody again. Each time you embellish the melody, it will be something different and unique. And this is a great technique for beginning of solo or also ending your solo toe. Let everyone else in the band know that you're coming to an end point as well as it's a great way. If the band can become a little lost sometimes inside of a solo, it will happen it and it's totally okay. It's a great way if you're the one who knows where the melody is supposed to go to be playing the melody and still soloing a bit to kind of bring the focus of the band back into where the form is to keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video 29. Clarinet Practice 11: now improvise off the main melodies to start with. Play the A melody regularly once, and then the second time through improvise around the main melody. One two. Ready? Go Now you're going to do the same thing with the B section of our melody. Play the melody once normally, and then improvise around the melody the second time. - Now try improvising freely over both sections, choosing to either use some of the melody or make up your own part completely. 12 Ready go. 30. Learn how to put all the skills together, melody, solo, and accompaniment: I Welcome back. Congratulations. This is Week 12 of clarinet lessons in the music program. You've done a really great thing by getting all the way through the program, and you've developed a skill much beyond music that's going to serve you in anything that you do, which is the skill and the ability to follow through on something all the way. Your musical journey is well on its way, and I hope that you've been getting into the jam room and trying to play along with the virtual band. And even more importantly, I really hope that you find an opportunity to play with other musicians, be it friends or family members or people around you and really make music in the moment because that's what the point of making music. It's a way for us to communicate emotional information with each other. It's really meant to be done with other people, so I encourage you to be bold and get out there and find places to play. In this last week's practice video, we're gonna work on putting all of these different elements together and being able to play the melody to the A section and B section the cords to the A section in the B section, improvising off the melodies, making up your own melodies and using your scale patterns and thinking about dynamics and starting low and finishing high and starting high and finishing low on all the different variations of it. And at the very end, you're gonna get a chance to make up your own arrangement of what you want to have happen over the form of the song. So you may want to play the melody of the first time and then take a solo and then play the melody to the B section, whatever you want. And in that section, I encourage you to try different things like back up the video and try it again and make a different arrangement. Congratulations again on coming to the end of the program, and we'll see in the practice video 31. Clarinet Practice 12: we're gonna try together all of the pieces we have playing the melodies, playing the bass note patterns and improvising To begin with. I want you to play the melody in the first day section, followed by the bass notes in the second, a section in the B section. We're going to use the same pattern. We're gonna play the melody on the first B and the cord notes On the second be 12 Ready go regular melodies based on a section ability section. Now you're gonna work on building your solo by thinking about starting low and ending high and starting with a quiet sound and ending with a loud sound. Try this out with a practice video and see if you can build your solo across the whole form . 12 ready? Go finally. See if you can make up your own arrangement of how to play along with the track. 12 Ready go 32. Jam Room 60bpm: 33. Jam Room 80bpm: 34. Jam Room 100bpm: 35. Welcome to the Music Coach Duo Series: either. It's taught the music coach, and I'm so excited to invite in my good friend and colleague Kenny Kirkwood to come into the music coach studio to help with the special duo Siri's. Now. You may not know this. Makeni was one of my first music teachers, and he's been a mentor and I've taught at his music school. He played gigs and recordings together, and I'm so excited to have thanks a lot for having me. And that's Boston to be here. And, you know, I'm really proud of everything you've done. I think music coaches a great program, so so many of the lessons that I've worked on a year over the years. You've already got done here. So, you know, thanks for having me for the duo sessions, especially because for me, I remember starting out practicing solo for a long time. But there's nothing like getting to the duo century, actually making other people. So enjoy the program. Call up a friend, and no matter what levels your you'll be able to work it out 36. Clarinet Piano 1: - Theo . So when you're starting out with improvising with the clarinet and the piano together, it's a really beautiful combination. It's nice and soft. There's tons of space in this example. We're playing just in the key of G major, so using the scale now when I say G major, I'm talking about G major on the piano. The clarinet and the piano are not in the same key. So one of the important things you have to know is that for G major on the piano, I'm gonna be playing a major on the clarinet. So we have different sharps and flats and different notes. In a very simple sense, this gets us started with very basic idea off during the scale by numbers. So if I'm playing my A, which is the first note of my scale and Kenny's playing G, which is the first note of his scale, then we're talking about the same notes. I can say, Let's play the one which would be G E and sound like the same. And in this sort of beginner set up and going, we're not really thinking about how fast it's going at. It is just making sounds and reacting and listening. So even if you haven't been playing for very long, you can still just get started and have the confidence to get started playing. What are some of things you like to think about when you're playing with Internet? Well, in the clarinet, I noticed the sound of it has a really beautiful soft tone and and you can really hear I feel like I'm in the forest often when, uh whether here clarinet because traditionally they all made of wood and the readers made of wood. So So I thought of a very gentle sound to start. And just in the moments before I was playing, I decided to just lean into a rhythm, which was eso. But we didn't necessarily count that one in. So sometimes you might find your jamming with someone, and rhythm starts and you go with it. But, you know, we could dio if you feel like that's too challenging spur for many of us when we start to have rhythms going is saying, Well, that's like the trains going on the tracks already, and we get panicked and you want to jump off the trainer or feel like you can't you bring? Can't think fast enough to come up with notes or what? If you make a mistake, you get you get pressured so we could actually do another version off on improv. A lot of the times it will just play without rhythm. And we started as you mentioned, you know, in our beginner Siri's, you know, working with long tones is something that's really, really, really important. So when I playing with a clarinet player or any wind player, you have to breathe. And so I try to breathe as well when I'm playing my instrument. So when we begin use these things, do just let your hands fall and listen to the sound and you don't have to have a rhythm right away. There's no rule saying that. Then I'm going to switch to my next course. I get my fingers time to find it. Take another breath on and you'll see if we do this that it gives taught all the freedom he needs to just explore his scale in his nose. So that's a couple of things. I think we're gonna try a quick example of that now where I'm gonna play a little idea, and then Kenny is going to react, and then he's gonna play something, and we're just gonna It's like having a conversation like we're having right now. So we're gonna start. I'm just gonna go first. All gonna be key of a major on the clarinet and keep G major on the piano. And really simple. You want rid them to started. You want to do just totally free, Just totally free. Call this soundscape. Sometimes I'm painting a landscape which is painting a sounds long toes way. 37. Clarinet Piano 2: in this example, we're gonna be doing a few intermediate techniques between the clarinet and piano. So we're gonna create ah, harmonic structure, which the simplest one we can make is using only two courts. So anyone you talk about, what courts were in play in for home? All right, so what I'm thinking about is G major chord and it's simple structure, closed forms, Dio and I'm gonna play that for two bars and then we're going to switch to the C chord. Use inversion there for C chord. You don't know that when you could just t g but it is. That's going to be two bars as well. So we'll have to bars of G and two bars of C. And this gives the music a feeling of moving somewhere, you know, and I like to think of it, you know, a Ziff were on a train and we're at G station is going on between those entity and will end on the G chord now for the clarinet players. You're gonna be playing a enough your income Penis role. I will play the low low a and we're going to playing D. So that's gonna be when we go to the other courts gonna be D as a soloist so you can just move around that a major scale and they all the notes will work on both courts. But if you want to be accompanying, those are our notes What you Countess in? All right. So first I see if my players were ready, I feel to be a field of policy, and then I can have my numbers do it. One. Do you want to do? Ah thing? 38. Clarinet Piano 3: it's example, we're gonna use some more advanced techniques and play a core structure that has four chords in it and a little bit faster rhythm. So can you want you tell us what the core progression is gonna be? We're gonna be doing the 1415 chord or in the key of G, that would be G major to see majors the majors deem age. You might also have heard of this as the the tonic sub dominant tonic and dominant. You're classically trained. And for the clarinet players were gonna be playing a de a E. That's gonna be our route motion. The other thing we're gonna add into this is trading. So we're going to start off where I'm gonna be improvising using the A major scale and then when I'm sort of done doing my solo, I'm gonna give Kenny a Q, and he's going to start taking a little soul of himself, and I'm gonna switch to playing the court tones and then he's gonna throw it back to me, and we're gonna end it. That's gonna be reformed or you counts in a bit of a fun crew. So here we go 121230 Theo. Short ending the short ending Little not of the chin says. You can see we're hewing each other with just very basic, simple things. It doesn't have to be big, massive gestures if you're looking and also feeling you can. As you get more experience in music, you'll feel where there are moments where things will tend to change its a lot. Lately, we use the train analogy all the time. There are places where you know the tracks can split off and going to different places, and in those moments that you want to be really paying attention and kind of keeping your eyes up and looking at what's happening and also knowing what's coming next. So we had talked about I was gonna play solo and then I was gonna pass it over. It's like passing a ball. So Kenny knows when I'm soloing, keep an eye out because it's coming over his way, and then I'm when I'm playing a company man. I know what's coming back my way, and I know we're ending or some of things that you were thinking about. The piano player. Well, I was thinking a lot about about how scared I waas about making mistakes, and it was kind of my inner inner 10 year old, I think, because when I started taking piano lessons, I you know, there was a lot of voice in my head saying, Oh, you got to play all the notes right? And it's music's got to sound perfect. You don't break it, you know. But I've spent years to learn how to just relax and stay in the moment and breathe. You know, if I'm getting nervous or scared about something, anything in life. Actually, it's just coming back to that breath that helps you realize, hates. It's not the end of the world if I make a mistake. So I'm not the world's best piano player. But I love to explore, and I love to learn, and I don't mind making mistakes. So that's why I was, you know, willing Teoh to try this experiment. Todd and I hadn't practiced any of this stuff before today. We're just bringing it up on the fly, and that's that's something that's one of the great things about the universal language of music is you can make up the structures It's kind of like meeting people and say, Hey, we got some building blocks here instead of just making our own thing. What? Why don't we decide on a plan together? You know, you want to build something, how big is gonna be and what is the pattern of colors you want to use and and learning to talk with other people about the music you're gonna make? It is one of the best, you know, skills. I think that music brings out in us is they listen to other people, you know, and music is really something that happens in the moment. Music isn't happening right now. It was happening like a couple of minutes ago when we're taking chances and listening and responding to each other. And one of my favorite quotes is from Miles Davis, the famous jazz from a player talks boat. There aren't any mistakes. A mistake is just an opportunity. And if you think about your life already so far, I'm sure taking the wrong turn off the road and ended up somewhere interesting and met some new people. And life is just like that, and music is is a big part of life. And so when you think you've made a mistake, you're just you just presented with another opportunity for sure. You know, it's a lot like just telling a story. I remember a teacher told me me that not to think about the notes or worry about the notes too much because I was getting a little too studied in, well, what no goes with which cord and at the advanced level. There's a lot of teachers out there that show us how to do that, and it's a useful tool, for sure. But sometimes you need to just think of your beginning middle end. You're going to start the solely when it started with a confident, whatever you do, make it confident or make it clear and then do something. Whatever happens in the middle. While you might take sidetracks, you might get lost from from the group or whatever. But as long as you come in at the ending and it's clear that the ending, that's ah, that's what people remember, just like if you're giving a speech in class or doing any kind of public speaking they say , or writing an essay, they say it's the first and the last thing that people really make an impression on them. So So just focus on that. Uh so make a confident ending. Exactly. And use timing as your best friend. 39. Sax Clarinet: way, - Theo Way, way thing, Theo way. Ah, that was a while. This is we played an improv like that. What were you thinking about doing that? Well, we've been kind of doing all these dual videos here today and moving through these different levels of beginner and intermediate in advance. And I was thinking about kind of starting in a very gentle, open place and then allowing the structure to kind of present itself. It's sort of I find it's like a great story. A great story reveals itself like the right moment. The characters walk into the frame or onto the stage for sir and, uh, W Well, yeah, I think about that story analogy a lot. It's like sometimes I'll say to a student, Ah, young student, You know, they might be able to reach Allah story that they know well, Goldilocks and the three Bears or something. But I'll say to them, sometimes make tell me the story about a giraffe and a mouse and an elephant, and I'll just make there is no real story. I'm referring Teoh and older people tend to say Well, which story is that? But a young child often will just start making it up. So in my experience of playing sax, woman learning how to improvise, letting things unfold, it's a little bit like just having the faith that that something's gonna happen. Whatever happens, it happened, you know, and sort of taking away my fear of whether it's good or bad or not taking away that voice of judgment, you know, and remembering in the process of learning to do this, I can remember what it feels like to be a pretty young child and just have an imagination that can just turn on and improvise. So that's what that's what I was thinking about it in that piece. There was so many things I would say we were playing in, probably in an advanced level for the most of that. And I think that a lot of the skill, the technique that we had in our fingers comes just from hours of practicing. But but still, the breath was the thing that really impressed me the most. You know how how are breasts? If you could actually have a have a draw, a picture of how our breathing patterns, not instead of the notes and the rhythm would just show a phrase market you took. But I think we both took a big, long breath of first and then meeting another long breath. We often have done that because it's a great way toe build a feeling trust with with your partner and then on then sometimes he would start the breath. And then I remember doing a few shorter breaths pattern to build up, some to build up Teoh Ah, Peake So he would go on and play along note and I would come in with the, uh uh the, uh uh and that's a trick. I use a lot when I want to build to a climax on. And I feel like I have something to say in this story and I want to take it to, ah, more dramatic level. So building up with a few short breaths like that, get your lungs really full so that you can then whale on a high note or get louder or get lower whatever you want to do. So breathing is always to even up to the advanced levels. You always want to have a sense of varying your breath so that the story will be very to 40. 7 key steps to starting a band: I'm Todd, the music coach. And right now we're going to talk about how to start a band with either your friends or family. Playing music with other people is truly the richest experience you can have in music. So it's a great goal when you're just starting to learn an instrument to try and bring more people in. It's the same. If you play a sport you're gonna wanna do with your friends, you're gonna wanna do with your family and social time, a way to really express yourself. So unfortunately, for a lot of people they have no experience with how to put a band together, how to make it function properly. In a way, a bands no matter who's in it, is like a little mini tribe. And there are dynamics between people and how people communicate to each other that are important. There's also some accountability which is great to learn in terms of if you're deciding on some goals, like we're gonna learn the songs, everybody has to go out on their own and learn their own thing and come back and be accountable to the group that they're in. The first step is to choose what instruments and what kind of banded is you'd like to have. Some big decisions that you're going to want to make right away is, what do you want to have a drum kit, for example, depending on the style you want to play. Now, a drum kit is an amazing instrument, but you may not have the physical space or the ability in terms of volume to play music that loud. And a full drum kit also influences. For example, if you're gonna play an acoustic guitar with a drum kit, it's very limited how loud you can play on the drum kit without having to have the guitar amp through a guitar, through an amplifier. So that's sort of 1 first big decision you have to make. Then beyond that, you might want to think about what kind of style of music you're moved by and what kind of instruments maybe are already in that style of music. So if your favorite band is made up of, you know, electric guitars and bass and drums. And it's big and it's allowed us raucous, and that's what you wanna do. Then you probably want to organize yourself in a way where those instruments are part of the picture. But if on the other hand, you're like, I really like, you know, classical woodwind instruments. You know, I like flute and clarinet and oboe. And so those are things to think about and finding friends and family who can share a common vision of what kind of music you want to do is your first step. Once you're into choosing instruments, it's important to make sure that they're divided up in a way that will allow you to make good music and have everybody's voice be clearly heard. So you may find out that you've got two people who really want to play guitar and you might be able to make that work. What has to happen then is you have to adjust what parts everybody's playing so you can hear each other properly. But you may decide that, you know, somebody else really wants to play the guitar and I kinda wanna play the guitar, but I've always thought about playing the bass or I've always thought about playing the saxophone. And it's a chance to challenge yourself and move into new instruments. The great thing about learning second, third instruments, if you already know one, is that all of the musical knowledge that you've gained on the first instrument comes with you to the second one. So it's never really like starting over. And the more instruments you learn, the easier they get to learn, because you're just taking more and more information with you to the next experience. Just like with your own personal practice habits. Having goals as a band is really important. And every band has different goals, even professional ones. So if you may have a goal where you say, I really want to be able to play at a talent show at my school in a year. Like we, that's our, that's our goal, that's what we wanna do. Or I want to be able to play at this fundraiser or maybe the goal is I just want us to be able to once a month get together and perform just for ourselves and the songs that we really, really like. Or we want to be able to play together on holidays. Or there's certain colony music we really want to be able to play whatever those goals are. It's important to just have them be clear and have everyone understand what they are so that everyone can draw their focus and attention towards getting yourself to those goals. It's also important to make time to reset your goals when you get to where you wanna go, don't just stop. Go. Well, now that we're here, where do we wanna go next? Whether you're in an amateur band or professional band, it doesn't really matter. Scheduling time for your own practice is equally important as scheduling time for the bands practice. One of my teachers has a great saying that I love. He always told me, said, a rehearsal is not where you go to learn your part. It's where you go to learn everyone else's part. So in that sense, when you come into a rehearsal, you should already know the parts that you're going to play, at least to a general level so that you can see how they plug in and go together. And for that to happen, you'll need to schedule time on your own to practice. And generally speaking, the ratio of rehearsal time to practice time is somewhere around two to one. So if you're planning on having a half an hour rehearsal, you're probably going to need a half an hour to an hour of total practice time to make yourself ready for that rehearsal. And change a little bit depending on, you know, you might choose a song that you actually really know. So you don't really need to do too much to get ready. But as a general rule, you want to keep that in mind. Scheduling time for the band to rehearse, and also picking a place for that to happen is the next key step. The location is really important because you're going to want to be in a place where you can make the amount of noise that your band is going to be making comfortably so that you're not disturbing your neighbors or other people who aren't involved in your musical project. So a couple options are, you've heard of the classic ones. You know, garages can be great if you have one because it's usually a separate from the house enough that you can make a little more noise of the bothering people. Basements tend to be pretty good for the same reason because most of it is underground. If you are in an urban area, it can be very challenging because so many apartments and buildings are close together. But there are rehearsal rooms that you can rent by the hour, and they often have everything you need in them to play. They'll have a full drum kit. They'll have guitar amps, base amps, they'll have keyboards, even they'll have a sound system with microphones if you want to sing. And you pay by the hour. So you sometimes pay about $15 an hour and you just walk in and you play as loud as you want. They're usually soundproofed and made in a way that you can play as loud as you want. So it's a good option. And if you have three or four people together, if everybody chips in a little bit of money and you're doing it once a week or once every two weeks. It's not that expensive and it's a nice option. Scheduling the time for rehearsal is similar to scheduling your own practice time. You're going to want to check in with everybody about what their schedules are and when ideal times r. And depending on what stage of life you're in, this is going to have a huge difference if you're planning on starting a band with a bunch of 16 year-olds like year 16 and all your friends are that age. You have different schedules than somebody who's in their forties or fifties. So you want to think about when it's going to make the most sense for everybody and when it can be convenient, where everybody can be present and focused and enjoy the process and not be waking up too early, going to bed too late, trying to rush there in a real hurry. Inevitably, in any kind of tribal situation or band situation, there are gonna be conflicts. People have strong opinions about music and about their own parts, and about how the music should go and should fit together. So it's good to have a plan in place for how to resolve those conflicts. And when he combined this plan with a general sense of an agreement between people about how to communicate in conflict, this can alleviate a lot of unnecessary tension. A really simple example I'll give you is, if you're playing a part that I don't like and I communicate to you in a way that implies that I'm also not liking you at the same time. You're going to feel defensive as soon as I talk, even if my eyes, even if you agree with the idea, you're probably going to defend yourself because you're like, Hey, you're telling me you don't like me. And this is just primal human to human stuff. So learning how to talk about the music without talking about the person is a really important skill. And if you think about the language you're using, you can really become skilled at this and say, I'm feeling like the part that you're playing isn't fitting together with this other part over here. As opposed to, I don't like what you're playing because it's not working with this. So I'm talking about the same thing, but you can probably feel even through the video, there's a different energy to it. And how everyone communicates has to be carefully negotiated so that everyone feels safe and they can really express themselves clearly. Because ultimately you got to remember that making music together as a very vulnerable experience. And people need to feel like they can take chances and that it's safe. And one last thing, also, remember to take the time to really cheer each other on, makes a huge difference if somebody speaks up about something that you're doing in a positive way, this doesn't have to be manufactured or phony. But if you hear someone playing something and you're really digging in and it's like you're feeling it may start to tell them like that's a great, you're like you're playing that amazing and like what you came up with his sounds great. And I'm really digging in. This kind of positive real reinforcement just creates this sense of everybody is rowing the boat together in the same direction, which is part of what makes playing in a band feel so amazing. You feel like you're part of a team and everybody's working together towards the same goal. So learning how to do that is also important. You may come from a cultural background or a family background where there just wasn't a lot of encouragement. So I know you have to use something that sometimes you have to cultivate and learn how to do. But it's really important and it makes a huge difference in the sense of togetherness that you have in a band. 41. General gear guide: Music coach. And this is a bonus feature where I'm going to talk about some general tools that every instrumentalist should have with them. They're not very expensive, but they're gonna make a huge difference to the quality of your practice. And also if you're rehearsing with other musicians, the things I got in front of me are two different music stands and a tuner and a metronome. So first, let's talk about the music stands. There are two basic types. This one is a solid music stand. It does fold up. They're a little bit more expensive, but there are a lot more practical to use, especially if they're just going to live at your house. I'd recommend spending a little more money getting something that's a little more durable. Because the other option are these wire foldable stands, which are great for traveling with. But because they're not solid, things can fall through the screws and everything on them are usually a little bit cheap and it'll sometimes bend easily. So the difference in price, these wire ones are going to be sort of 20 to $30. These are going to be closer to a $100. But in the long run, I recommend getting a good solid music stand. If you're going to be in one location. A chromatic tuner. If you're playing an instrument where pitch is going to be an issue, which is almost every single instrument, with the exception of the drum kit and the piano. You're gonna need to know whether you're playing sharp or flat and how to make adjustments. And the only real way to do that is with a chromatic tuner. These will cost you around $30 and they have basic functionality. They take a AAA battery. One nice thing that's happened in the last few years is most apps stores for smart phones have some kind of a free tuner. And even for like a dollar or two, you can buy a more advanced version. So if you don't feel like having a physical one, I have owned these for a long time, so I've got them. You can download something to your smart phone and make sure to use it to be constantly checking in to see where you're at or you playing sharp or flat and certain registers. And a note for guitar players, you might think that a guitar tuner, which is something that's sold in stores, would be the right thing for a guitar or bass. And in fact, the guitar tuner isn't really useful at all because it's always checking to see what string you're on. It's trying to figure out, are you on the sixth string, on the fourth string. And we actually want us to be able to know is that string I'm playing, playing the right note. The other reason this is important is if your guitar gets really at a tune, a guitar tuner won't really give you a relative sense of where you are. You'll have to get a close before it's even usable. So I don't even recommend ever even buying a guitar tuner. Metronomes track time. And this one looks like the same as the chromatic tuner, but it basically is set, you can set it to how many beats per minute. Which a simple way to think of it as 60 beats per minute is like the second hand on a clock, because it's 60 clicks in a minute. And if you had a 120 beats per minute, you'd have two clicks for every second. A good metronome, we'll have a couple of important features. You want to make sure you get one that has the ability to plug headphones into it. Especially if you're a drummer, because the speaker on this is never going to be loud enough for you to hear it while you're playing drums or even to be honest, playing most instruments. So you want something with a headphone adapter and you also wanna make sure that you have something where you can easily change the tempo. So they all have the ability to change the tempo, but some of them will go up in increments of three or four. Just make sure it's something that you can adjust the tempo evenly. And last but not least, it's important to have one that you can clearly, visually see as well, that it's easy to see the display because sometimes when you're playing, you're going to want to just check and check on visually where you're at in terms of the time. And much like the tuner, you can download these off of most apps stores, there's almost always a free one. Sometimes they're not great. But for a dollar or two, you can upgrade and get a more advanced metronome, which will work great. And this is going to cost you about $30. So a dollar or two on an app store to upgrade the free version is often what I recommend for my students. 42. How to create a furtile musical home: I'm Todd, the music coach, and welcome to this video where we're going to talk about how to create a fertile ground for a musical home to grow. I'm sure that you've had the experience of walking into someone else's house for a party or a holiday. And it seems like everyone is musical, like people picking up guitars and sitting at pianos and singing along. And it just seems like it's all natural and it's happening and it's really beautiful. And you may have wondered like, how does that happen? How do those homes happen? And unfortunately, you might think, well, those people are, that's a musical family. And their, their musical, and I'm not, and that's the reason why we don't have that. And that's a complete and total lie. The truth behind it is that those people found a way to create a fertile ground for people to feel safe and express themselves and challenge themselves and set goals so that they could play music together. And they probably did all of this without even really knowing that that's what they were doing. So I'm going to lay it out free, explain how this actually happens. So in my family home, there were no musicians. My parents loved music, but they didn't play. I didn't grow up watching people play. And both my brother and I ended up being professional musicians. So you might go, How did that happen? And there were a lot of things that my parents did that I think they didn't even realize that they were doing. One really simple thing is we listened to music and we talked about what we liked about it. And hearing them share that with me was really invaluable. And we took long car rides. We would listen to, I know that my parents, there was an oldies stations that they really liked, which was like fifties and sixties rock. And we had dialogues about like who is that artists and when did you first hear that? And they would share stories with me about where they were when they heard that song or what kind of meaning it had to them. So a great way to set this up for yourself is in your own home, you can initiate it. And a great way to do it is to allow everyone a chance, even if you've got little people in your life to share a piece of music that they feel moved by. And feeling moved by music can be all sorts of different feelings. It doesn't have to just make B the song makes me feel happy. It can be this song makes me feel sad or the song makes me feel like agitated, or it's just what you're looking for, something that makes you feel something. And a good forum for that is to go to the living room and decide that we're going to we're going to spend a half an hour doing this and everybody gets to pick one song. You might wanna set some ground rules where, you know there's not gonna be any songs with any swearing editor inappropriate, whatever for your family, you feel as appropriate. And then while you put your song on, everybody agrees to be in silence and really listening. And this just developed so much good ability, not just for music, but just the ability to sit for three to five minutes at a time and really listen to what's going on around you is such an important life skill that will really have a huge impact on everyone. And you might want to set some other very simple ground rules, which is, it's like the everything I learned, I learned in kindergarten, which is if you don't have anything nice to say, you don't have to say anything. It's better not to say something really negative. Because. People are sharing something that means something to them. And learning how to have that dialogue is important to be able to say, it's not to my taste, instead of it's socks or I don't like that song or it's the same way that we teach each other how someone prepares a beautiful meal for you and it's something you don't like to eat. You can talk to them about that in a way that's not going to hurt their feelings in music is the same way. You can then expand on this game by adding in some other artistic elements. One really fun one that I like to do is do the same thing, put on a piece of music. Everyone gets to bring something that they feel moved by. And everybody just takes a piece of paper and during that time, they just draw or sketch something that they feel is connected to their experience of that music. And then everybody can share that with each other and talk about, well, I shaded this thing this way because it made me feel good to think of a cloud, or it made me think of a tree, or it made me think of this or that. And again, it's, it's an exercise in not being critical. It's just expressing yourself through art while listening at the same time. And another variation of it can be to do the same thing of having a listening circle and have everyone write down an idea for a short story. Something that they either through the lyrics, if it has that kind of thing in it or if it's instrumental, just talk about ice. You know, I'm seeing a story about somebody walking their dog in the woods when I hear this. And again, as long as no one is being harsh with each other about it, it's a really neat window into how we all experience music differently. Making time to watch movies that are about famous musicians are famous music is also another great way to help get a really fertile ground for music going in your own home. There are tons of great documentaries about all sorts of things, about the backup musicians in Motown or you know, even about famous composers like Mozart and Johnny Cash and Ray Charles. You can watch and discuss and talk about what their music, the music of that artist, or what the story of that musician, how it, what you thought about it and what it meant to you. The more you share your own experience with other people about how music moves you, the more it grows inside of you and more passion that you have for it with all of us traveling and car so much these days. Another great musical fertilization that you can do is to plan on having music on car trips and really having people listen for a lot of us. Actually, the best stereo that you're going to own is going to be in your car. Car stereos are usually quite high-quality, So it's a great way to experience music. One thing that's happened, unfortunately, as we've gotten into more individual devices of smartphones and mean it started with Walkmans and CD players and things like that is we tend to experience music isolated. Each person will have earphones in and be in their own world experiencing music, which in a way is great. It's nice to have some personal time with music. But one of the things we've really lost is the connection and the sharing of our joy with each other. So trying to set that up on, on travel, times together with your family can be great or with your friends and just talking about and sharing it and letting everybody have a turn with the stereo and okay. 43. How to create a sucessfull practice routine: Hi, I'm Todd, the music coach. And in this video, I'm going to be talking about how to set yourself up for long-term success when you're practicing music and learning an instrument. The biggest challenge I've found, not only for me personally, but for most of my students. It's not the technical requirements of whatever instrument they are playing, or even how much innate ability that they have when they start. The biggest challenge people have with consistently making progress in music has to do with their practice habits. And for most of us, we have a negative reaction to that idea. Even practice habits, discipline these things. We feel like we get tense about it. And adjusting your relationship to those ideas will open you up to being able to fully embrace all of your abilities and really take giant leaps forward in your playing. I know for me personally, I realized early on I had to change my relationship to what I thought practicing meant, how it worked, what I thought discipline meant. And I had to really re-frame in my mind what it meant to play an instrument. This has a lot to do with where the way we're, we're perceive learning a musical instrument and society unfortunately is largely negative. You've probably seen this mostly what you get fed in the outer surroundings is that some people have talent and some people don't have talent. And when you go to a concert and you watch someone play, you think, well, they're just have it. And that's why they sound amazing. And this doesn't in any way reflect reality. It may be that they had some natural ability, but there's thousands of hours that went into what you're seeing when you see someone performing in a professional context. Then the question becomes, well, how did they get from not playing it all to having the discipline and the patients and learning the right things to get all the way through that process. And although musicians will give you a variety of different answers, I think the best way to do it is to find a healthy way that's realistic and is repeatable. So what first key to having real success in your practicing is to set goals. Because like anything else in life, if you have an idea of where you wanna go, It's a lot easier to tell where you are in that journey. Rather than just a loose idea of like, I want to learn how to play this instrument. And if you have that thought and it just sort of dissipates out into the air. When things get difficult, you're more likely to quit because it's like, where am I in the middle of that journey? As opposed to you could say, my goal is I want to, for example, I want to play the piano and I want to learn how to play these three songs in the next year. And he may have no idea how you're gonna do it, but even just having that goal is going to help propel you along. And when you hit rough patches, you can check in with yourself and your goals and you go, Am I doing the things that I need to get to my goal? A good goal to think about when you're playing a musical instrument is how to get to a place where you can make music with other people. Music throughout human history has always been a community event. It's only in the last few 100 years that it's sort of moved into conservatories and into school settings. And we've isolated from each other. And somehow we've lost the idea that the point of it is that you can actually make music with another real life human being. So my suggestion, if you're not quite sure what goal to set, I'd pick a goal that involves eventually playing with other people. Whether that's joining a band or just playing with a friend and going like my friend also plays the guitar and I want to be able to play the same song so we can play together. Another really big key to long-term success with practicing is finding a consistent time of day that you're the best frame of mind and being to practice in. And this is different for everybody and which is why there is no one answer of everyone should practice like at five o'clock or I mean, that's not helpful for anybody. We all have different lives and different schedules and commitments. I suggest you experiment around with it a bit. I found for me personally, I feel the best practicing early in the morning. And for me it's just I find my mind is very clear and relaxed and I haven't been sort of inundated with emails and phone calls and other commitments. And I set aside a small amount of time, not every day of the week, but four or five days a week. Because I'm a professional musician, I have to work on a lot of things, but for you it might be one or two times a week and I block off that time and when I'm there, I'm as present as I can be and I'm working on my goals to get me closer to where I wanna go next. Some things to think about, about when the time of day is going to be, when you're gonna practice, are make sure you have had enough sleep. So waking up too early if you're going to bed too late is not going to be ideal. Make sure that you've had something to eat. If you're really hungry, like if you get home from work or school and you're starving, it's not going to be ideal for your nervous system in your body to be in a calm place. So make sure that you've had something to eat. But you also may find you don't want to play right after you eat something because you might feel a bit full. So these are things to think about about where in your day you're going to plan to have your practice time. When it comes to practicing, quality is so much more important than quantity. Unfortunately, you may have even already heard from other music teachers that you gotta practice for an hour every day or half an hour every day or so many hours per week. And this information isn't really helpful because the quality of the time you're putting in is what's really important. If you were to take the same approach to eating food and say, well, the way you get nourishment and your body is you sit at the dinner table for 45 minutes. It's missing so much of the point. There are so many other factors. Are you eating too much or you are not eating healthy foods? Are united eating at all? Are you just sitting there and practicing music is the same. You can sit down with your instrument for an hour and not only make no progress, you can actually regress because if you're reinforcing bad habits, then you're not actually you actually making your playing worse. So what I like to tell my students is focus on the quality. Five minutes of really focused practice can change your life forever. I know for me it's that way. I had this. I had to start out by getting the routine working first rather than trying to figure out what I was going to even practice. So picking a small thing and being consistent with it. And when you're there, challenging yourself to do a little more of it each time is the best way to go. Now in life, things are gonna come up. You're gonna get sick. You're going to have to travel places. You're going to have holidays, all of these things. And it's important to be flexible with your practice routine and to think a little bit into the future. And so for me, for example, when I'm planning, when I'm going to be practicing, i'm taking into account some of those factors, the ones that I can control anyway. So like if I know that I've got family coming to visit and I'm going to be busy entertaining people and doing things. I will suddenly is put my practice routine on hold to give my full attention to that. Knowing that when the time is right, I'm going to come back and be fully focused rather than trying to ram in practice time when you're distracted with other things. The same can be true of getting sick, having a cold and flu, something like that. I would say it's good to have a break from things. And always when you're practicing, you want to be in a good frame of mind and being. Because you're not just practicing musical information, you're training your body to have a relationship with the gaining of musical language. And if your body is in a frenetic state, every time you do that, when you go to touch your instrument, it literally will reset your brain to feel anxious and upset. Now the other side of that is that if you can train yourself to be calm and presence every time you're with your instrument. Pretty soon after a while, you'll just go over and pick it up and your body will come into a calm place. Before I practice, I like to take a moment and before I even touched the instrument or put it together and just see if I can get myself. I sometimes close my eyes and take a few deep breaths and try and get myself into a very calm place because I want to reinforce that with everything that I'm learning. If you don't have any experience with meditation, I highly recommend that through whatever form you can find, you find a good practice that's small and to the point where you can get yourself into a calm and relaxed place before you start. Another key element to actually getting towards your goals is to make sure to always be challenging yourself. There's this fine line when you're learning new things between going over what you already know and challenging yourself to do something new. And the balance, you might think, well, once I learned how to do a few things, I'm only just going to ever wanna do those things over and over again. But what will happen is you'll start to get bored with what you can already do. And a good thing I like to tell my students is you should always be feeling a little bit uncomfortable when you're practicing. And I don't mean like nervous and agitated, but you should be doing things where you're not getting it right all the time. Because you want to be that's a sign that you are actually working on something that's making you better. It's the whole point of practicing in the first place. I work on things on my own so that when I go play with other people, I can have more things that I can express. Not so that I can just repeat the same things that I already know how to do over and over again. 44. MC breathing Exercise: We're now going to do a reading exercise. You're going to inhale to the count of four, hold to the count of eight, and exhale to the count of eight. And we're gonna do it four times. 12. Ready? Begin, inhale 1234, hold 12345678, exhale 12345678, inhale 1234 hold 12345678, exhale 12345678, inhale 1234 hold 12345678, exhale 12345678, inhale one, 234 hold 12345678, exhale 12345678. 45. Clarinet tuning: Hello, my name is Todd Porter and I'm the founder of the music coach. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to tune your clarinet. The first thing you're gonna need is a chromatic tuner, and there are two ways to get that. The easiest way is to go into an app store for a tablet or a smartphone and download either a free app or sometimes there are one or $2 to get some sort of a chromatic tuner. The second way is to get one from a music store. And they either will sit on a music stand like the one in this video, or sometimes they can clip onto the bell and they have a display so you can see whether your notes, you're in tune or not. Once you turn the tuner on, the first thing I want to you look for is the number 440. This is really important because it's the calibration of the tuner. And if that number is 438 or 4w, 45, for example, it's gonna make a big difference in how in tune your instrument is going to be. So you can use the calibration buttons to make sure that it displays 440. It probably will when you turn it on for the first time. But I just want you to be aware of that because sometimes if you bump one of those calibration buttons and it goes off, it's gonna make the readings that the tuner uses not as accurate. The next important thing to know is that you're playing a B flat concert instrument on the clarinet. So when you play a note, it's not going to display the same on the tuner as the note you're playing. So in this example, we're going to use the note C on the clarinet, and it's going to display on the tuner as a B flat. So it's just important to be aware of that so that you don't get confused as to which note you're playing. The first note I want you to play is going to be the low C on the clarinet. And the reason is, is that you want to select a note that uses the middle of the two. You don't want to play something that's really high up because it's only measuring how in tune the top part of the instrument is. And you also don't want to get a low note to use with your tuner either because of the same reason it won't give you is much of an accurate reading of where the middle of the instrument is. When you play your note, I want you to not look at the tuner right away. Because as soon as you see what the tuner is telling you, you're gonna start making adjustments to play it in tune. And I want you to just become aware of where the node is really sitting. And one other important tip is to make sure to warm up your instrument before you try and get it in tune. And this is because as the instrument warms up, it's going to, it's going to change the pitch characteristics. So if you just pick up an instrument and blow into it with a tuner and it's cold, it's going to be different than when it gets warmed up. So here I'm going to play RC and you're going to see it displayed on the tuner as B-flat. Now, in the tuner measures the note, the needle if it goes to the right as it did in this case, it means the notice too sharp or too high. And if it goes to the left, it means the node is too low or flat. Now, I'm not just going to, I'm not going to make any adjustments of the instrument yet because I want to tune the note that's an octave higher. So in this case I'm going to use the sea with the octave key to hear how it sounding. So as you can see, the whole instrument is a little bit sharp. So what are you gonna do? I have two options. I can move the mouthpiece out a little bit or the barrel out a little bit. In this case, I'm just going to move the barrel just a little bit to make the tube slightly longer and we'll see what happens to the cell. So even that tiny little adjustment made a huge difference and out went for being too sharp to being too flat. So I either split the difference. And so they can see it's playing more in tune. Unfortunately, because of the way they instrument's constructed. If the whole clarinet is flat, there's not a lot you can do other than to make all the pieces fit together as tightly as possible. And then you have to use your armature to make the notes play sharper. Remember to head on over to your music coach.com for free beginner clarinet lesson. Thanks for stopping by and I look forward to seeing you soon.