As I mentioned before, I’m working on videos of Ron Caravan’s Polychromatic Diversions for Clarinet which I think make a solid introduction to contemporary clarinet techniques. So, here’s the second video in the series – the etude 2. Digital Etchings. As you might imagine this etude places continued emphasis on micro-tonal and timbral fingerings. However, these are more complex than in the first etude. Here are two examples. Note how Caravan discards the traditional placement of fingers on the clarinet.
Now, I’d hate for you to think that there’s nothing else in this etude besides moving your fingers around your clarinet in weird ways. In fact there’s another valuable lesson here as well. Many of the clarion and altissimo notes are played without the register key. Not only that, but because they are on long tones with decrescendos, the tongue has to be placed very high in the mouth, which is great practice for tone and voicing control. Here’s an example (note – off T refers to the register key not the thumb key for the altissimo F-slightlyflat). You can also see the note I made to myself in the first example about tongue position through the trills.
