Well, I’ve officially been learning the clarinet for just over a week! My fundraising site is now set up at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/clarinet2018, and I’ve set the ambitious target of £3,000 for all this effort.

I’m surprised by how much I’m enjoying the clarinet and looking forward to practising it. I’ve started off with a tutor book, Paul Harris’s The Cambridge Clarinet Tutor, that was recommended to me by a fellow clarinet-player. I’m about halfway through it already and have also started doing scales and sightreading. Some highlights in this first week have included…

• Getting a note out of the clarinet! The very first time I tried, I blew… and nothing happened.
• Managing (just about!) to play ‘Ode to Joy’ on my first day, before my lips got too tired.
• Coming across ‘Drink to Me Only’, which I’m sure is karmic revenge for having inflicted this same piece on a couple of adult piano beginners recently.
• Playing my mum ‘Happy Birthday’ and experiencing the joys of an instrument that I can pick up and take to her house!

The various animals in my life have certainly noticed the presence of the new instrument. My mum’s dog went absolutely crazy; he ran towards me, jumped up and tried to grab the clarinet with his mouth! One of my cats, Carmen, was fascinated at first… She walked towards the clarinet and insisted on standing as close to it as possible, even when I played loud notes. When I put it down, she sniffed it thoroughly and even tried to lick my mouthpiece (gross!). She seemed to have got used to it until today, when I tried to play some clarion (middle register) notes for the first time and she got up and walked out of the room in disgust. I don’t blame her, as they did sound pretty awful!

It is already clear that my biggest challenge will be getting the embouchure (shape and position of the mouth) correct and making a nice sound on the instrument – closely followed, probably, by mastering its technicalities. It seems to have an awful lot of keys and alternative fingering possibilities for different notes. In typical Helen fashion, I have made my own worksheet to help me remember these as I come across them:

As some of my piano pupils probably know, I’m not a fan of ‘codes for codes’, so I prefer my own version to this system in my tutor book, which requires looking up numbers for quite a few of the notes:

Codes…

… corresponding to keys.

That’s it for now! I’ll work on those higher notes, and try to update again soon.