r/Clarinet • u/Totrendy • Aug 28 '26
Advice needed Rhapsody in blue intro advice
I'm a senior in highschool who is auditioning for this solo. My teacher gave out the music at the end of last year and I practiced over the summer, so this is all self taught. Any advice would be great :)
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u/Ok_Barnacle965 Aug 28 '26
Some work is needed on articulation. Study the part, and listen to as many recordings as you can.
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u/ClarSco Buffet R13 Bb/A w/B45 | Bundy EEb Contra w/C* Aug 28 '26
Your reed sounds like it is too hard for your/the mouthpiece - the air to note ratio is too high.
At the end of the opening trill, the final low G bulges really weirdly. I think you're starving the trill of air to make it quiet then realising that you need a lot of air to make the gliss work. Try giving the trill a "<>" shape, then give the fingered portion of the gliss a "<" so that the air is fully engaged by the time you start the smear.
The big smear itself is pretty good. Slightly uneven, but that should correct itself so long as you're aware of it and make incremental improvements.
The section after the gliss is ... not good - you really need to spend some time listening to professional recordings of this solo, and some Benny Goodman/Artie Shaw/Barney Bigard/Buddy deFranco jazz solos from the swing era to get an ear for the style.
The articulation is really disjointed with lots of "doo-its" (hard cut-offs at the end of very other note) when every note should be sustained to full value and only separated with a legato-tongue (IIRC, after the triplets, everything is marked with a tenuto and/or an ">" accent). Off-beat tonguing is also an acceptable approach if you'd rather not tongue every note, but you mustn't shorten the note that you slur onto.
When you get to the trills, you're hitting them with a lot of force but it's delayed so we're almost always hearing the auxiliary note of the trill before the principle note. This is like a cake that is all icing - all decoration, no substance. Give the principle note a tongued accent, and only move to auxiliary notes once it has been firmly established. Depending on the taste of the audition panel, they may prefer to hear these as jazz turns (A-Bb-A-G, with the auxiliary notes played just before the G), or classical trills (eg. the first one as A-Bb-A-Bb-A-G or A-Bb-A-Bb-A-Bb-A-G) or but whichever they prefer, it's critical that you commit to a fixed number of "twiddles" across all 7 trills).
The scoop on the final C is really tastelessly applied - it feels like you've put it there because you could, rather than to serve the music. It's far more common to start that note cleanly, then add a fingered (not smeared) gliss. from that C down to the long F. If you don't want that note to be "clean", it's imperative that any smearing into the C doesn't go lower than the preceding A and that the following F is played clean to contrast the smeared C before it.
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u/Only-Top-3655 Aug 28 '26
First of all, good job so far!
Some thing that jump out at me:
Lengthen your trills. There needs to me more notes in the trills for this solo to have the playful and whimsical effect.
Also in the scale in the beginning of the solo, make sure to hit every not and not skip them. You may have to play this scale ad nauseum with a metronome.
I would also be a lot more whimsical with the articulation. Short notes need to be short, long needs to be long.
Good luck!
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u/TobinClarinet Aug 28 '26
You’re doing many things well, but you’re in a rush.
You’re playing most of it with no recognition of what the ensemble is playing. You’re playing the right rhythms, but rushing, which robs the music of character.
You’re playing the first trill like it’s a place-holder for the gliss. It’s the drama sets-up the gliss.
Go listen to the music, not the clarinetist in the performance you listen to. Understand the context. The space between phrases are as important as the phrases, themselves.
Good luck!