Hi, I’m Ariana, woodwind performer and instructor. Today I’m showing you the clarinet basics. Now, I’d like to show you correct embouchure and how to blow through the instrument.
On one of the previous clips, I showed you how to sit and how to hold it and how to start to put the instrument in your mouth. Now, I’d like to elaborate.
When the instrument comes into your mouth at the proper angle, you need to anchor your top teeth onto the mouth piece, if they’re floating, the tone production will not happen correctly.
So, you get your top teeth on there. And I also showed you, curl your lower lip over your bottom teeth, what it’ll feel like is your bottom teeth are under the fleshy part of your lip. And you want to point your chin towards the ground so your chin is flat. Good embouchure and then there is bad embouchure, just crinkled, avoid that. It’s very good to practice this in a mirror. So, once it’s in, you want to think ooo, so the corners of your mouth are also supporting around the mouthpiece.
Next, we use proper breathing, so breathing all the way in to the lower part of your lungs expanding your diaphragm, you blow, and then you breathe in -- and blow, see what notes comes out.
For, I would advice starting off with no fingers just have it resting on your thumb. Once you can do that three times in a row, let’s go to the next clip, and I’ll start showing you how to play some notes.
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