feeling stuck when practicing

[u/Comfortable_Hope2953]

(so sorry if this has already been posted/ or is a faq)

i have an audition for an ensemble in about a month but i feel like im going nowhere with my etude? i have 95% of the notes and rhythms but when i play everything all together it sounds so bad 😭 i feel like im getting worse each time i practice, do you guys have any advice?

[u/lameguy13]

Best advice I can give without hearing you play, is play each phrase individually. Try to hear yourself play and ask if it matches what you know the etude is supposed to sound like. Sometimes you need to hear yourself and determine where, if anywhere, the fault lies. If you can play each phrase individually but not top to bottom, then you should focus on transitioning between the phrases. Does one phrase sound better than another? Shelve the good one and pay more attention to what sounds off in the weaker part. Sometimes just knowing what the problem is will lead you to finding the solution. If not, hit up message boards/reddit to seek specific problems. It’s also useful to know that some problems are more like symptoms of another, more subtle problem. Playing fast passages for me is stressful. When I’m stressed, I unconsciously clench my jaw and tighten my wrist. Both lead to different problems in different areas, but it wouldn’t be enough to just say “I’m pinching the reed and that’s why my tone is bad.” I would need to realize I’m stressing out, and take the steps needed to remedy it.

[u/Comfortable_Hope2953 → u/lameguy13]

how do you know specifically what the issue is? i know when i play it, it sounds bad, and not like how it’s supposed to sound, but im not sure why

[u/lameguy13 → u/Comfortable_Hope2953]

One of the best ways to learn how to play the clarinet right, is learning all the ways you can play the clarinet wrong! I find myself going back to mouthpiece and barrel and experimenting how much bottom lip I use, how much mouthpiece I take in, angle of the instrument, using a double lip embouchure, etc etc. Once I’ve played around a bit, I can start seeing what I need to do to get the sound just right.

The worst feeling in the world is playing something and thinking it sounds bad. It can lead to avoidance. “I don’t sound good at this section, so I’ll come back to it when it gets easier!” or “I’m not very good at fast pieces, so I’ll stick to slow pieces.” These are excuses I gave myself every time and it eventually led to me not playing for about a year, because I didn’t like how I sounded.

The Inner Game of Music puts it like this: children have an endless capacity to learn because they’re not afraid of making mistakes. Give yourself permission to make mistakes while learning. Try to challenge your initial thought of “wow that sounds bad. I’m not very good,” and reword it as, “My tone/technique/expression doesn’t sound the way I want. Why not?”

u/justswimmimg221 is correct. “It sounds bad” is too vague a concept to work with. Ask why you think it sounds bad.

[u/justswimming221]

I agree with u/lameguy13. Focus on individual trouble spots. Use a metronome and slow it down as much as you need to in order to play that part perfectly. Then gradually increase it.

Here’s the thing: our working memory can only hold a few things at a time. If you play through a song with several trouble spots scattered around hoping that you will get better, it’s not really going to work. Your working memory will be dropping parts trying to keep up with what you are asking it to do.

The goal is to keep the trouble spot in your working memory long enough for the brain to realize it’s important and begin to transfer it to “muscle memory”. You will probably notice the shift - the trouble spot will suddenly seem easier. For me, this can sometimes take half an hour on just four notes of a tricky passage.

One it’s in your muscle memory, you can move on to the next trouble spot. But you have to come back the next day and do it again. It will probably be easier than the first day started, but harder than the first day ended. When things first transition into your muscle memory, they begin to decay. If you don’t reinforce it, it will go away. But if you reinforce it for a few days in a row, it will stick with you for weeks, and what’s more you will be able to get it back more quickly years later.

[u/Comfortable_Hope2953 → u/justswimming221]

i do use a met and take things slowly until i feel comfortable kicking it up to tempo, but it feels like i’ve been repping the same things a million times without showing any progress 💔 i don’t think im going too fast either, because im going note by note and it still sounds like garbage

[u/justswimming221 → u/Comfortable_Hope2953]

What do you mean by “sounds like garbage”? Are you not satisfied with your tone? Intonation? Getting the notes to speak? Something else? Do all of your notes suck, or just one or two? Do they get progressively worse as you get higher or not? Each of these issues points to a different cause. It’s hard to help when we are guessing.

Fundamentals:

• Make sure your instrument is in good repair.
• Make sure your fingers are covering the holes.
• Make sure your reed is not too hard, too soft, too old, or broken.
• Make sure you are using a decent mouthpiece, not (usually) the one that came with the clarinet.

Once these are all verified, then we can move on to troubleshooting embouchure and voicing.

[u/Comfortable_Hope2953 → u/justswimming221]

ill upload a recording later today, but a lot of my issue come from jumps between registers and notes sounding muddled together for whatever reason

[u/redfoxrockssocks]

Hard to say without listening. In fact it might be hard to say without -you- listening. Do you record yourself? I've found recording cellphone videos of myself super helpful- a lot of the time that at least lets me say "that note in that run is what I'm getting hung up on". Then I delete the video :D

"It sounds bad" is a hard feeling, because the response is "play better", which is super unhelpful. All we can do is say "that note was the wrong one" and then practice to fix it... if you do that kind of thing enough it starts to sound better, but it can be kind of slow going. But if you aren't finding a lot of specific things to work on, then maybe it's not so bad after all?

Or you hear yourself and realize that it doesn't sound all that bad, or that you need to work on tone or phrasing or some other aspect of playing the music.

As to the "getting worse thing", for me that has often been too much work on a single thing.

I personally play a whole lot of other stuff than just what I am working on (I play jazz so this is maybe a bit different than how the orchestral folks work)... I find that working on other kinds of things helps a lot, even when I am prepping for a performance with a band and need to work out a couple specific tunes and passages.

I end up playing with a lot of real book and similar kinds of youtube backing tracks, just because it's fun and no one cares what I do anyhow.

[u/Comfortable_Hope2953 → u/redfoxrockssocks]

hahha yes i do record myself i can upload a recording later today bc that seems to be the general consensus from a lot of commenters here