Beginner on Clarinet!

Instructions

This was how I sounded after two days of practice. Two. And I have no private lesson teacher. Coming soon: Progress report audio (where you can click on a day and hear how it sounded that day). Sorry I haven't had time to record lately....... I haven't really even had that much time to practice clarinet at all, but I have gotten a lot better in a week =D Also coming soon: Project on breaking in new reeds, but probably not until the next time I need to break in reeds. (In other words, a long time.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clarinet Day 3: Made different melodies to use for breaking in new reeds, good start on learning Careless Whispers, writing new song. Clarinet Day 4: When my mom was talking to my counselor, I took my clarinet outside (it was a nice sunny day) to practice walking around and playing; finished learning my original composition (or what I've written so far) Clarinet Day 5: New reeds pretty much broken in!! (I have a few pretty great ones now) so will try to post something with those at some point Clarinet Day 5: Learned the Star Wars theme to play for my dad when he came home from a work trip <3 After that I haven't really had much practice time because I'm extremely busy with Mozart violin concerto #4 which I have to learn in six weeks for my teacher's concert (it usually takes me six months to learn a two page piece and this is six pages....!), violin music for Virtuosi, and viola music for my school orchestra where we have Pre-UIL coming up and we just found out we have chair tests in a week.. Day something: I got braces which although doesn't make it impossible poses challenges to my clarinet playing. But I will try to continue to learn. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In case you care, the story behind this project: I was over at my friend's house a while ago and was talking about how I wanted to join band and his mom said she had an old clarinet I could borrow. I'm not sure why I didn't completely jump at the chance, I guess I was kind of put on the spot, but I said it sounded cool and I'd think about it, and five minutes after we left I was like, "Oh shoot why didn't I take it??" So the next time I went over there I asked if the offer still stood. It did. So now I have a clarinet!! The first day I picked it up, I didn't have my own reeds and was planning on just practicing different fingerings. Then I saw the old reed my friend's mom had left in the case and thought, "I should probably practice putting the reed on." So I put the reed on and that made me soooo tempted to play something that I took the reed off, soaked it in water for a minute, put it back on, and blew in it. At first, I couldn't get it to make any sound at all (I realized later my ligature was too tight, not allowing the reed to vibrate), but after I fixed that was soon able to produce a good solid squeak. I worked at troubleshooting my technique and stuff for maybe 20 minutes until I actually played a note. After that I did more work and research on how my mouth was supposed to be, mostly making squeaks with a few good notes thrown in there sporadically. Then when I was making good notes more consistently I realized my lower lip had been too far down on the mouthpiece. So I was able to play mostly notes with a few squeaks, and, with the help of a fingering chart and a YouTube video, could play Ode to Joy and an A natural minor scale. Within two hours of picking up the instrument for the first time I was making music. I'd consider that an accomplishment.