What you likely don't know about taking care of your clarinet...

CLARINET MENTORS NEWSLETTER - August 13, 2019

In this issue:

• Hello From Michelle - Do you want to hear 2 Eb Clarinets with Clarinet Choir? (Or, How I Spent My Summer Holidays...)
• Free Training - 6 Things You May Not Know About Taking Care of Your Clarinet - These pointers will help your clarinet play better and last longer
• Michelle Recommends - Vocalise Mouthpieces - special coupon until Aug. 30 for you
• Further Clarinet Trainings - Did you know that Michelle offers several detailed courses to help you play clarinet more easily? Many of them have a systematic 30-Day Workout plan for you to have clear improvement in a month

Hello From Michelle

Hello to all clarinetists in the Clarinet Mentors Community! Today's newsletter has some great pointers on clarinet maintenance, with some that will likely be new to you. At Clarinet Celebration in Portland, Morrie Backun gave a presentation on taking care of clarinets, and some of his information was new to me (including that you should vacuum your case from time to time). I've put some of his pointers together in a video for you.

Speaking of Clarinet Celebration, we had an incredible week of concerts, masterclasses, workshops and clarinet gear. One of the highlights for me was the Colossal Clarinet Choir with over 100 clarinetists from the amateur and professional clarinet world performing together in an outdoor concert. If you want to hear a fun quick (3 minutes) excerpt from this concert, here is a link to a Concerto for 2 Eb Clarinets and Clarinet Choir where myself and Dr. Deborah Andrus (of www.clarinetguide.com) played the Eb solo parts. Although Vivaldi originally wrote this as a double trumpet concerto, I'm sure he would've written for Eb clarinets if they had been invented by then! I'll try and include more recordings in future newsletters.

I'm enjoying a bit of summer holidays at various lake cottages with family and friends, and then I head back home to play a concert with Weird Al Yankovic. Life is never boring for clarinetists!

Thanks for being in my community!

Michelle

FREE TRAINING

What You Don't Know, but Should, About Maintaining Your Clarinet

I'd like to think that I take pretty good care of my clarinets, and overall, I do. However, when I sat in on Morrie Backun's presentation on Clarinet Maintenance at Clarinet Celebration, I learned some new things. I put some of the highlights together in a short video for you:


https://youtu.be/PCOKJNL3e4o
I think that there may be some new information in here for most of you. The resources that I mention in the video include:

BG Silk Clarinet Swab

Doctor's Products Cork Grease

Teflon Thread Seal Tape

Michelle Recommends

Vocalise Mouthpieces 

One new clarinet product that really stood out at Clarinet Celebration was the Vocalise Mouthpiece. I think at least a third of the participants ended up going home with a one (or more) in their clarinet case. I'm not a huge clarinet-gadget person, but I do like "stuff that works". When I first tried a Vocalise mouthpiece, I was warming up in a pit before an opera performance. I liked it so much that I played the show on it, and never looked back. Although people use these with cane reeds, they work especially well with the Legere European cut reeds, my favourite synthetic reed. If you have tried the synthetic reeds and they didn't work on your mouthpiece, you may want to try them with this mouthpiece. You can sound great, and have the benefits of long-lasting, "un-fussy" reeds. Another notable feature is that these mouthpieces are made from scratch at the Backun factory, rather than from a third-person blank, which is how most professional mouthpieces have been created over the past few decades. That makes the price much lower than comparable high-end mouthpieces. I highly recommend that you try these. The friendly staff at Backun Musical Services helped several members of the Clarinet Mentors community choose a good one at Clarinet Celebration, and have now offered to let you try it too. They are also offering all of you in the Clarinet Mentors Community a 10% discount on all of their clarinet accessories (mouthpieces, barrels, bells, cases etc.) for the month of August. If you want to try a sample of the Vocalise mouthpiece (or barrels, and bells), use the coupon code AUGUSTMENTORS. These mouthpieces have been so popular, they may sell out quickly. However, they will put you on the waiting list and get them to you as soon as they can make some more.

https://backunmusical.com/products/vocalise-clarinet-mouthpiece?variant=21284424646741

FURTHER CLARINET TRAININGS

Did you know that Michelle Anderson of Clarinet Mentors has created several step-by-step courses to help you play the clarinet better? Do you want to improve your tone, or move your fingers faster, or play high notes better? Check out all of the courses (which all have free samples for you to learn from) by going to:  https://www.clarinetmastery.com

If a friend forwarded this to you, I hope you'll become part of my clarinet community! Feel free to email if you have questions, comments or things you would like to see in future newsletters. I hope that you enjoy great music with your clarinet playing this week.

Michelle Anderson, Clarinet Mentors