Texas Bandmasters Association
Bandmasters Review • April 2014
15
put it in the naturally high position. When your mouth
is closed, if you think about where your tongue is, you
can probably feel your upper molars with the side of
your tongue, and the tip of the tongue is either floating
behind the upper teeth, or it might even be touching
them.
When you open your mouth, you just leave the
tongue relaxed in that same position, and think of
saying “shhh…,” like you’re telling someone to be
quiet. The secret is, you have to make sure they’re
saying “shh” and not some weird alteration of that.
If they blow like that, that’s the first step to good
tone and consistent pitch. To reach the very highest
altissimo, when you get above high E, you may have
to give yourself a little more space in the mouth, but
not that much.
MEC:
Do you use a syllable?
JD:
If I were going to use a syllable, I would use
Robert Marcellus’s syllable of “eee-yuh,” and then give
a little more space in the mouth for the altissimo. I
almost hate to say that because most of the time,
once the students learn to play the altissimo, they’re
good enough that tongue position alterations, which
are not done often and are subtle, will start working
instinctively.
Then for the embouchure I would ask the students
to open their mouth slightly, maybe a centimeter or
maybe a little more; it depends. The best place for
what I call the pressure point (which is where the reed
touches the lip, which touches the teeth) is right where
the reed and mouthpiece separate. You usually only
have to open the mouth about the width of your finger,
unless they’re tiny little fingers. Then I start with the
bottom lip. Roll the bottom lip over the bottom teeth,
using the lip muscle. In other words, don’t let them
roll it in with their finger or with the clarinet. You
want to get them in the habit of using the muscle. Roll
the bottom lip into their mouth, over the bottom teeth
until the front edge of the bottom teeth is right about
where the color change is between the lip and the skin.
That’s important because it makes them get some of
the next steps.
MEC:
Do you roll over the teeth or do you just cover
them?
JD:
The place where the clarinet is going to sit is
right at the color change between the lip and the skin.
The top front edge of the bottom teeth will be right
at the line where the lip and skin meet, and that’s
because I don’t like the reed resting just on the lip
tissue because there’s no muscle there. Or, if you go
in too far, you’re only on your skin, and that’s going
to be painful and not sound good. You want to get on
the line of muscle that controls your lip. I would say
you’re rolling over your teeth; you’re just not going
ridiculously far in. You should still see a triangle of
your lip on either side of the mouthpiece.
Think about the cheekbones and the jaw itself,
which is the bone (not the muscle,) that goes up and
down when you talk or eat. The cheekbones, jawbone,
gums and teeth - the whole structure of your face
is
the structure of your embouchure. Don’t think of the
embouchure as going around the mouthpiece. Think
of your embouchure as going against the structure
of the face. I describe it as being like the beams and
girders of a building. Without those, you can build the
walls, but the building will still fall down. It needs its
structure. We use our cheekbones, we use our gums,
we use our teeth, and we use our jaw to be the structure
of the embouchure. You open your mouth that small
amount, and you gently relax the jaw forward, then the
lip goes in as we just discussed, and the chin muscle
goes flat against the jawbone. I ask them to open the
Clarinet Clari ty: An Interview wi th Jul ie DeRoche