I got out my clarinet last night. Julia is in jazz camp in Kansas and staying with me, so I was trying to see whether I could play anything by ear. Sometimes my fingers knew how to play something and sometimes they didn't. They knew Body and Soul and In a Mellotone, for example but for some reason they didn't know Stella by Starlight. Holding the instrument in my hands I found that my memory for certain songs dissolved into thin air. Not only did I have no idea of how to make the fingers play, but I had no notion of the melody. These were songs I know pretty well, too, when I don't have the instrument in my hands.

It was an experience akin to groping for something in a box full of junk in the pitch dark.

Ten Goals, Some More Realistic than Others

1) Publish the book of poetry.

2) Do the same for book of poetry written in Spanish.

3) Become a truly excellent teacher.

4) Become a really good drummer.

5) Become a truly mediocre clarinet player.

6) Find a way of supplementing income (hint: it won't come from 1-5).

7) Learn to fix a flat tire on the bicycle.

8) Job at better university?

9) Saxophone?

10) Publish another scholarly book with U of C P.

I find my time is better for having played drums. I feel the pulse pretty strongly when playing clarinet, even though my drumming pulse itself is not that strong (I thought.) The difference is that in drumming you are playing the beat, whereas playing clarinet with no other instruments you are playing in reference to a pulse that nobody is playing.

Songs I played today include "Bemsha Swing," "Monk's Mood," "Bolivar Blues," "Reflections" (several other Monk tunes,) and "Greensleeves." I was actually able to play a pretty good version of "Greensleeves" all the way through with some dynamics, articulation, phrasing, etc... I could now re-join my 7th grade band of 1972.

I'm restarting the Bach Suites, listening to Pau Casals instead of Ma. I've kind of absorbed Ma's version so I'm relearning the music now from another perspective.

Some things that are getting better:

*Reading, especially accidentals. Three sharps is relatively easy, for four you just add D#. Going in the opposite direction around the circle of fifths, you just B flat, E flat, A, flat, etc... A flat is the enharmonic of G#, so that's the third accidental you add whether in sharps or flats. So about eight key signatures are manageable, leaving four that we'll just ignore for now. I'm reading through a jazz fake book and haven't found more than four sharps or three flats.

*I realized that sqeaks and squawks are the fault of the fingers, not the mouth as I had thought.

*You can't correct a problem in tone quality or intonation unless you first hear it. Ah ha! For some reason C# in the middle register has a hissy quality on my instrument. B flat is kind of strained and wimpy. So making adjustments per individual notes and general ranges, compensations...

*There's a break between B flat, which uses almost no fingers and has that strange quality, to B just above it, with all the fingers and has more resonant. So it's helpful to play pieces which have you moving constantly between those two registers, instead of avoiding having to do that.

*Articulation is getting better. I've been able to play a few phrases that actually sound like musical phrases, giving them shape, rather than just playing everything legato with no tonguing at all.

*Endurance is improving. I can play for longer.

Tone quality: fair to middling.

Knowing where the notes are, sightreading: improving

Playing by ear: haphazard

Transition between chalumeau and clarion register: improving
Altissimo register: non-existent

Articulation, tonguing, phrasing: poor

General enjoyment of playing: wonderful

I was playing "Our love is here to stay" today. I don't have the music to it so I just started on C and went from there. Anyway, I got stuck, I had the next pitch in my head but I didn't know where that pitch was on the instrument. I sang the pitch (luckily nobody was home) and immediately my fingers went to a certain position and I played the same note. It was a D, but I didn't think "D" and then look for a D. I simply played it and then took cognizance of what note it was. This seemed deeply weird to me, since I haven't played the clarinet since 1975 and am not a particularly gifted musician. We know that the brain can tell the vocal chords exactly how much to contract to hit a certain pitch--if you can match a pitch played on the piano with your voice. So can the brain tell the fingers and the mouth exactly the right configuration to hit the same note? Obviously a good musician proficient on the instrument, with perfect pitch, could do this every time. But a very unproficient musician?

Ego is mostly an obstacle in scholarly writing. You should have a healthy sense of being competent and having a perspective worth hearing. (False humility is pretty much worthless.) But ego interference can be crippling, leading to

1) Writer's block. What you write is never good enough for your own over-exalted sense of how good a writer you are. Therefore, you write nothing.

2) Inabilty to take criticism from others.

3) Inability to be a good critic of yourself, to evaluate what you've done the day before with a cold eye.

4) Lack of generosity toward previous scholars and critics.

etc...

Egotism manifests itself both in being overcritical of one's own work and in not being critical enough. It's a matter of calibration. Use ego when it helps you, discard it when it doesn't. (Easier said than done!)

Imagine me playing the clarinet. I was today just exploring the tone quality of each note on the instrument. Some were more in tune than others; some had a more pleasant tone quality. That's information that I can use. If I make it about the note: "that note is not in tune," that is more useful than a statement about myself like "I am a lousy clarinetist." If a note sounds good, I am thinking, that sounds good.

I use the same principles for something I am very good at (scholary writing) and something I am definitely not good at (clarinet playing). The wrong calibration of the ego would be harmful to either one.

I got a sound out the clarinet. The first day I had a little difficulty because I was overblowing the notes in the lower register and making them sound a 12th higher, even without hitting the register key. The second day I produced a fairly good tone and got my fingers to remember where some of the note were, with the help of a chart. I sight-read some easy duets with Julia, out of her elementary school trumpet method book. Luckilly both instrumenets are in B flat. Julia told me how to play "St. Thomas" in the key Sonny Rollins does, two sharps.

My next goal is to learn where all the notes are automatically, unconsciously, the way my fingers know the qwerty-uiop keyboard. Embouchure should come along fine by itself for now, without professional help. I don't need an atllissimo register right away. The clarinet sounds best in the lowest range and the medium high range.

The instrument itself seems fine. Since a better instrument gives better tone, and my tone is already half-way decent on only my second day, I'm figuring it's going to ok until I reach the point it's holding me back.

Medium-term goal: learn Russell Procope's solo on "Mood Indigo."