I play Selmer 10S with Vandoren BD4.

I play 4-5 times av week in community band/practicing.

I normally buy Vandoren V12 strenght 3, but many of them are a little too soft. 3,5 are usually a little strong.

I bought a Legere French Cut 3,25, but it was too soft (too late to exchange), and sounded bad in the high register.

What reeds would you recommend for a Vandoren BD4 mouthpiece?

It’s kinda gross so scroll if you don’t wanna know about snot problems.

I’ve dealt with this problem for a very long time, I think since Covid around the time I started playing, which was middle school. I’m mostly asking out of curiosity, if anyone else deals with this, if this is normal, and maybe if anyone has any remedies.

So pretty much every time I play my instrument, I make sure to clear my nose before I play, because when I play the air that goes up my trachea carries some mucus with it. After around 10 minutes of straight playing, the back of my nose gets clogged and it’s really annoying. It doesn’t exactly impact my breathing, but whatever gets stuck back there is difficult to blow out of my nose, and I’d rather not swallow it. It just happens every time I play, it’s happened in concerts, I’ve had to get up multiple times during rehearsals because of this problem, even after a quick nasal rinse my sinuses remain gross. Ugh.

Hi everyone!

I’ve been playing the clarinet for about 5 weeks. I’m self-taught so far, and I practice almost every day for around 30 minutes.

I’d really appreciate some feedback on my playing, especially on my tone, embouchure, breathing and anything else you notice that I should work on at this stage.

A few things I’ve been struggling with:

* Breath support and air pressure: I sometimes feel like I’m forcing the air out too much rather than letting it flow naturally. I also catch myself getting tense while playing.
* Embouchure stability and endurance: Towards the end of a practice session, my embouchure starts to fall apart and feels less stable.
* Tone quality: Sometimes my tone becomes weak and muffled. I jokingly describe it as a “choked duck” sound! I wonder if this could be related to my chin moving too much or my lower lip being too soft, but I’m not sure.
* Tone consistency: I can hear the sound wavering a little in places. This recording was made towards the end of my practice session, so I wonder if embouchure fatigue might have contributed.

A couple of things I’ve noticed about these recordings:

* In the legato exercises, I forgot to tongue the first notes, which I normally try to do by lightly touching the tip of the reed with the tip of my tongue.
* In the exercises where I articulate each note with my tongue, does my tonguing sound too pronounced or harsh? I’m wondering if the tongue attacks are too noticeable.
* I usually practice with a metronome, so the timing might be a little uneven here.

I’m still very much a beginner, so I’d love to hear what you think I should focus on first. Any observations and constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for listening!

(The clarinet I play is a brand new Yamaha YCL-450E
Reed: Vandoren 2.0)

It has been now 2 months I’m trying to build my online teaching studio. I’m a clarinetist from Europe with 15+ years of experience. I played with several orchestras and won competition and auditions. Now I tried to focus on teaching because I believe for my background I can really make the difference giving my advice to the students, but here is what it happened;

I registered to other website as a tutor but everytime they asked for a lower price (even lower than 10 dollars per hour), so to get students I offered 2 hours free before paying but NOBODY wants to do it..

‘right now I have just one student that is very happy with me and I’m with her as well, now 2 months taking class and preparing ABRSM exam grade 6.

Has anybody else tried to find students? What is it?

‘It looks like nobody wants to learn the instrument or who starts try from YouTube, I really would expect more people who at least would give a try, even I wrote people on Facebook, Reddit or X but they even don’t reply.

Any advice or suggestions?

I'm a relatively new clarinetist (I've only been playing for a little over a year) and I need to make a cadenza for the piece "Fandanguillo" by Victoriano Valencia. I'm thinking of using a snippet of a Pajarillo or Pasillo instead. Which one would you recommend?

P.S. Difficulty doesn't matter.

(I don't speak English, so if you find any mistakes in My words or don't understand what I mean, well, just so you know)

Hi. Sorry if this post seems repetitive, but I feel like nothing else I saw really answered my question. I'm a middle band director and I wanted a couple spare ligatures to sell to students in case they lose or break their ligature. What do you recommend for middle school students? I can't do these expensive $40 ligatures I've seen shared on this subreddit. Even $15 dollars might be too much. I want something durable and will get the job done, bonus points if it helps with tone. Any reccomendations?

hello to all that care, I recently played a 2 hour-ish (on my r13) where it ended up raining, we were undercover but some drops might've gotten onto my clarinet. I can't really tell if this is true or not but I am worried that somehow the weather and general cold has damaged and helped make my clarinet sound worse. I've looked it over a lot and can't find any damage (that wasn't already there) but i am very paranoid about this. Should I be worried? or am I imagining things and blowing them out of proportion in my mind.

Hello! Could anyone provide me information soon where to rent an A clarinet in the Netherlands?

Hi! I have an audition in early December in which I need a rose etude and a contrasting solo from standard clarinet literature. I have been preparing rose etude no5 for a while but have been neglecting choosing the other.

Does anyone have suggestions? It can be short because they will pick and choose the parts you play and I’d like it to ideally be learnable in a month.

Backstory(can skip) … funny story: When my husband and I were camping a month ago it came up that I played the clarinet for 5-7 years. I was young, so the exact details were blurry. So we joked it would be funny if I picked it up again and messed with my MIL who is so musical. And a sweet woman who I enjoy spending time with. (Sorry, no evil MIL stories. Everyone loves her, including me)

We laughed.

Today, someone walked into my husbands store and gave him a clarinet for free. So, the universe is telling me something.

Not just a clarinet. A metal clarinet that I’m trying to learn more about. A Noblet in a Leblanc case.

Since the universe seems to be telling me to pick this instrument back up, I’m trying to learn about restoration and any information about it.

Sorry about last picture. It’s hard to take a picture of shiny metal. I wanted to show the label(?)

hiii wonderful people I need some recommendations please! I have played the clarinet for 10 years, but she’s been hiding under my bed for 5. I am really keen to get back into playing, and have some technical workbooks etc. that I have started working on. But I actually have no sheet music anymore/song books which is what I miss most!

Do you guys have any recommendations? I definitely can’t go too crazy, but I’m also not a beginner. Anything slow and pretty with some nice runs? Idk… I just want to have some fun. anything would help!

Thank uuuu :3

Located on the lower joint of a bass clarinet, I think it’s just a deep grain but wanted to double check. I’ve had the instrument for a couple months

Hello everyone!

I am an absolute beginner with no prior wind instrument experince and would love to learn clarinet. The only problem is that I want to learn G clarinet but I hardly found any material online. I will have face to face lessons but I am wondering if the lack of material will be a problem. Because It already is a problem finding and buying the instrument :(

The main point of this post is; can I use Bb clarinet lectures and online materials (sheets, finger practices etc.) for G clarinet as well? Any help is appreciated.

Estou com uma dúvida, quero comprar uma paleta nova para meu clarinete, mas não sei qual é a mais adequada para mim, eu estou pensando na plastireed. Será que ela é boa mesmo?

https://reddit.com/link/1xgftfc/video/g44rx2bg0xxh1/player

Hello!

I'm a sax player who has been playing the clarinet for a couple of years now and am looking to upgrade from the stock mouthpiece that came with my clarinet. I'm looking for a mouthpiece that would work for classical and possibly some jazz. I've heard good things about the Vandoren B45, but I noticed there are a lot of options, so I wasn't sure which would be best. I've read that most people prefer the Profile 88 or the Series 13 versions of the B45, but I'm not entirely sure what the difference between them is. If anyone has any other recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

My son plays Bb clarinet and wants to get better at recognising notes by ear. I'm a developer, so I wrote him a small app: it plays a note, he names it.

Now I'm stuck on a question you can answer much better than me: should the note names be what he reads (written pitch) or what actually sounds (concert pitch)?

Two players with perfect pitch told me their ear "shifted" after years on Bb instruments, so I don't want to set him up for confusion later.

How do you think about it? Does it change if he later picks up A clarinet or piano?

(Not linking anything, the question is what I'm after.)

Hello all you wonderful clarinetists! I am a 13 year old boy in 8th grade. I am pretty musical, I play piano, drumset, mallet percussion, guitar, bass, and a little alto sax. I also arrange a ton of music.

But anyway, I have always wanted to play clarinet. In 6th grade I did it a tiny bit, but not a lot at all, and I stopped within like three weeks, which I regret.

But tomorrow, I am going to ask my band teacher if the school has any extra clarinets that I can play around with to learn clarinet. I still have a few reeds from when I tried it before. I just need to get a mouthpiece.

If I get relatively good fairly soon, I will ask my band teacher if I can play clarinet for a piece we are doing in the school's Jazz Band, which I would normally play drumset or piano for.

I am really excited to ask, I just hope he says that there is an extra clarinet!

P.S. The piece is We Three Swing, arr. Vince Gassi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_8wpY00PuU
(Also for this video put it on 1.25x speed)

Hi folks.

I have a clarinet that has been in the family a long time, and which I played it as a kid. I’m interested in playing again but the clarinet is nearly 60 years old and hasn’t been regularly played for over 25 years.

It’s a Boosey and Hawkes Regent, I believe from 1968 ish. A few years ago I was quoted around £250 for a full refurb of it but I didn’t go ahead with it. I’ve given it a bit of a clean and attached some photos.

My question is, am I on a hiding to nothing trying to play this, or will it still have some life in it? Is a refurb worthwhile, or am I better spending that on a new clarinet?

If I spent say £100-150 on a new student one, would it be a notably different experience from using this as it is?

I know there is some special fingering for this, but I can't figure it out. If anyone knows, please write a comment.

Edit: this has been resolved. Thank you!

i know about practicing really slow but is that the only way? 🥲 all state auditions are in little under a month

I've been playing older jazz (think Django or Danny Barker) bands for a couple of years now and enjoy that quite a lot. I am trying to decide if I should just overhaul my current instrument or start looking for another one before I do that.

I'm curious what other folks would do, so any advice is helpful.

Hx: I played through HS, quit in college, and have played many other instruments in pro situations over the last couple decades, and I got a used Buffet e11 about 5 years ago.

I haven't really done any service to it and it has a hairline fracture in the bell (which is hard to even see), needs tenon corks replaced, and the b foot is wonky. At the same time, I like the instrument and have settled on a mouthpiece/reed combo for the last year that's been working well. It plays fine, if I don't mind the dental floss...

I am in a rural spot and the one instrument repair guy in 3hrs of driving i pretty backed up. I'm much slower at repairs in the short run, but it would take him 2 months to get my instrument back to me. I've repadded a clarinet but never replaced the tenons, though I have some cork and could probably (maybe) just do it myself- I'm handy.

Recently I've started playing with a more serious band and I am trying to decide if I should just overhaul the thing myself or get another instrument while I send the current one to get overhauled. But I have several gigs coming up over the next several months and don't want to be without an instrument for more than a week or so.

Money isn't a super big deal- I am leaning towards finding another used e11 and then sending the current horn to a better-than-me tech. But if I had to spend more than $800-ish, I'd need to really think on it or it'd have to be a much better instrument. And I'm in the rural west US- I'd have to travel a long, long way to find a place to try out horns.

What would you do? Buy a different instrument and then send this one off? DIY refurb your horn? Give up and go back to playing pedal steel guitar?