C.O.D.A. auditions are coming up in two months, and I need some tips on improving tone quality. My directors have always told us to tighten our embrochure and blow harder, but I've done both. The inside of my bottom lip has a mark now, and I think I've reached the limit of how intense my airspeed can be. I just need help on improving the tone above the staff and on the throat tones. Any tips? I'm using a #3 reed btw, if you're gonna recommend a new strength reed.

On the part about pitch, I need help training myself to tune without a tuner. Do you have any suggestions of how I would go about ear training?

Well, if you help me at all, I owe you heaps of gratitude.

Okay, I'll do the easy part first. What size mouthpiece are you using? If it is a larger bore mouthpiece you should actually reduce the strength of the reed in order to increase tone and volume. If you are using a stock mouthpiece I'd suggest looking at a new one. My personal favourite at the moment is the Selmer C*. It's a fairly large bore mouthpiece made of hard rubber. It allows for a fair amount of volume but still retains the classical tone. You also said that you just got a new ligature, that's probably the best way to change your sound quickly so you're on the right track. You may want to continue ordering in new ligatures and trying them out (any good music store will order you one in without making you buy it) because you'll always be looking to improve your sound and ligatures are a cheap way to do it.

Now onto the harder stuff. Your directors aren't really giving you good advice. You should always blow fairly hard but it's more important to support your air. Make sure your abdominal muscles are firm and you are brething properly. The breathing properly part is the most important thing. Make sure you are breathing out, not up. You'll want to try practicing in front of a mirror and make sure your shoulders don't rise when you breathe. You wan't your chest and midsection to expand forwards. I suggest you try and find a clinic on how to do this as it's very hard to explain through text. Also your embouchre shouldn't be tight. It should be somewhat firm and make sure no air leaks but if you tighten your embouchre to improve tone you'll end up choking your sound.

Once you have a proper embouchre and breathing technique there's one thing that will make a huge difference: long tones. Play one note for as long as you can. Then play it for as long as you can as loud as you can. Then play it for as long as you can as quietly as possible. Then try doing it as long as you can starting quietly, crescendoing and then decrescendoing. Then play it as long as you can using vibrato. Once you've done all that, move on to the next note in the chromatic scale. Work all the way from the bottom to the top of your range and do this at least once a day. This will make all the difference in the world. There are more things you can do with long tones then the ones I've listed so you should try experimenting but that should make a huge difference very quickly.

I hope I've helped and if you have any questions I'll be glad to answer them. This is the basic techniques I used to improve both my clarinet and my bass clarinet tone (if you have played bass clarinet you know how horrible its throat tones can be) so it should work for you.

Edit: I just saw that you said you bought a Selmer ligature. You should also look at the Rovner, Bonade and Baye ligatures if you get a chance.

Elite gave the most excellent tips ^^

Heres my lil chunk even tho it was probably stated XD

Embushure (however you spell it...) changes by how you want the pitch. If you are flat, you tighten it (i think...) and if you are sharp, try loosening it a bit.

About tuning, you need to have a tuner, but a way to help yourself tune is not to look at the tuner while you are tuning. Close your eyes and stop at wher eyou think is a good pitch and look at the tuner. this way you can see how you need to adjust the next time you repeat this and is what you are playing. I was told " Don't work for the tuner, let it work for you XD"


And what i really liked about Elite's comments is about air support. You always want to have lots of air support regardless of the dynamic you are playing, just adjusting how much air actually comes out. having lots of support lets your tone sound a lot better. Because what tends to happen is that when ppl try to play really soft, they don't support it and the tune goes really bad.

Good luck with your auditions ^^

OneAnimeFreak also has good suggestions although I've taken a different route I know many people who work like that and sound great.

You do bite harder to raise the pitch and loosen to lower it but that should be a last resort and only used on those few places where a note on the instrument is out of tune with the rest of the instrument (G in the middle of the staff comes instantly to mind). Overall, tuning shouldn't be done with embouchre but with your barrel, if your barrel doesn't allow for you to sharpen the pitch at all (if you don't play with the barrel pulled slightly away from the next piece) then you should look at getting a slightly smaller barrel so you don't have to sacrifice tone and ease of play for tuning.

As for learning to hear the right pitch what I did was constantly play the note on the piano and then adjust your clarinet to the piano's note (make sure you're using a well-tuned piano). This will get the proper sound in your head in the first place and adjusting your clarinet's tuning to fit it will reinforce it. You should always be tuning the clarinet using B (concert A) it just works far better for woodwind instruments then concer Bb.

One last thing is, when you're playing the G, G# or A in the middle of the staff try to put down your C key and possibly even your whole right hand (not your pinky) this will usually fix the tuning on those notes as on almost all Clarinets they are sharp.

Hmm...I forgot all about air support. I'll try getting better at that. Also, if you don't mind me asking, Elite, but how do I play vibrato on a clarinet? About the barrel, I do play with it slightly away.

Okay, if you play with the barrel slightly away then it should be fine, I was just mentioning that in case you had tuning problems.

As for the vibrato, the way I do it is mainly with breath control. Its hard to explain but I push little bursts of air up using my throat (you should feel it right below the voice box if you do it). This allows for very great control over the intensity and the speed of the vibrato. When you start with vibrato you can even try using you lips or jaw to simulate vibrato and eventually you'll start using your throat instead without even thinking about it. I actually just had to go play my bass clarinet to figure out where the vibrato is coming from so it will be a very subtle change but if you work at it it will happen eventually. That's how I started anyway, you may want to go get one or two private lessons just on vibrato. It will cost a bit of money but it will be worth it.

One last thing, your vibrato will probably sound extremely stupid and horrible when you start but if you keep practicing it soon your sound will be far more mature.

Edit: You may also want to try singing with vibrato, if you can get that down it will be easy to have it show up in your instrument playing.

Editx2: I swear this is the last thing, when you start with vibrato try to do it to a specific rythm like quarter notes or eigth notes, then when that works increase the speed.