I'm an aging classical trumpet player who is trying to learn clarinet as a more physically accessible instrument, I guess the jury is still out if that will remain true but on a rico 2.0 reed with a BD5 and a Yamaha YCL-255 I seem to be doing very nicely. Been about a month of playing so far. I started on a 1.5, and 2.0 felt terrible, I can play on a rico blue box 2.0 now reasonably well, so some progression is happening.
I was very surprised to find that much of what I know from trumpet playing transfers directly to clarinet (some mods needed but intuitive and easy for a trumpet player to learn). Breath control, voicing (we would call it tongue level on trumpet), and the embouchure is very similar which was quite surprising to me. Playing clarinet is like a duck to water, except for the break which I am still struggling with, does that ever go away? I am guessing that rapid scale runs up and down over the break never become completely easy though.
So far a big encouragement is that I have a lot more endurance on clarinet than on trumpet and can access most of the range of the instrument, can do low E through high F reasonably well. My upper range and endurance on trumpet is long gone, so I have some hope here at least. The two embouchures synergize nicely, neither interferes with the other (as long as an hour break in between), and clarinet seems to help trumpet and vice versa.
I did play for a few days on a Mendini by Cecilio (CSO) from amazon before the yamaha came in. The surprise is it actually plays, the tone is a bit thinner and more shrill, and the bottom three notes take less air than the Yamaha, but in retrospect it was pretty carefully tuned to be easy to play for a beginner and it worked perfectly, a very well thought out package. That's a lot better than I was expecting from a CSO actually. I had a similar experience with their flute, although I mostly learned I don't like playing flute and I do like playing clarinet.
So that's it, my "high there folks", I can pronounce Klose now too. :-)
A bit of humor, playing trumpet music on a clarinet is brutal, it ignores the break entirely, but it is nice to have the endurance to play through an entire 2 page st jacome etude (at 1/4 speed at best), been a long time since I could do that.
I went to the clarinet bboard first, but those guys seem not really oriented towards beginners to be polite...
I guess the main point of this is that brass players do get a leg up on clarinet as a double (and probably most woodwinds), and I am really enjoying playing clarinet. I can make it sound quite musical within the level of technique I have so far, which limits me to slow lyrical passages and some basic ornamentation. but I can do a beautiful shmaltzy vibrato - feels the same as doing trumpet lip vibrato - and pitch bends come easy too. Too bad vibrato is not called for in the classical clarinet style, still useful in other genres though.
Count me in as a clarinet lover for now. My niece called me Squidward too, which I thought was pretty funny, I am guessing that is not the first time that has happened on this forum.
Until later.
