When you and your horn are in good shape, you increase your odds for enjoyable and effective playing sessions. These 5 tips give you ways to take care of yourself and your instrument and continue to grow as a musician.
1. Clean your instrument after each use.
When you play a wind instrument, you are blowing moist air into a wood, metal, or plastic cylinder. After even a short time of playing, moisture collects inside the mouthpiece and body of the horn. The inside of the mouthpiece in particular can get very unpleasant if not wiped out with a clean cotton or silk cloth after each use. Always take your horn apart and swab it out after playing. Apply cork grease if the corks are getting dry or sticky. Wipe down the keys if they’ve gotten sticky or grimy. Better yet, wash your hands before you play!
2. Dry reeds flat.
Have you ever seen what grows inside a mouthpiece when the reed is not taken off after days and weeks of playing? It’s not pretty. It’s not sanitary either. For your own health, always remove your reed from the mouthpiece and carefully dry it on a cotton cloth. And wipe out the inside of your mouthpiece while you’re at it. (See #1 above.)
For the health of the reed, store it on a flat, smooth surface. Cane reeds need to dry flat so they will be playable next time you use them. When you leave a reed on a mouthpiece or store it loose in a box or other container, it will dry with a warp, making it difficult to play, let alone get a good sound. Look for a reed guard with a desiccant for storing reeds.
3. Improvise a little every day.
If you don’t play jazz, you may not have any experience improvising. This tip is not just for jazz players. It’s for all musicians. Taking time to put together a sequence of notes of your own choosing is a gift to yourself. What’s inside the gift is different for each person. Some possible gifts are: feeling more relaxed during regular performance situations; gaining intimate knowledge of your horn; feeling more accomplished and confident of your playing abilities. What gifts have you received by improvising?
One definition of improvise is to produce or make something from whatever is available. Let’s try it now. You’ve just put your horn together and are ready to play. Blow one note – any pitch, just blow. Hold it as long as you can. Now play that one note repeatedly with a staccato articulation; fast or slow repetitions. Play it loud and play it soft. Add a second pitch and repeat the process. There is no correct way to do this. There is no wrong way either. Explore the sounds of your instrument. It may lessen any self-consciousness you feel to close your eyes when you improvise.
This is for you and no one else. Improvise a little every day to have the experience of playing without judgment. Remember, this is a gift to yourself, just because.
4. Get proper rest and eat well.
Your mother may have said something similar to you the night before a big test or job interview. Sleep is the way your body recharges itself. Food is fuel for your body. It follows then that when you are recharged and adequately fueled, you can accomplish great things. Like hitting that altissimo B and pianissimo low Bb on the sax. Like making a smooth and quick transition between A and B over the break on the clarinet.
5. Start each day singing.
You will be astonished at how singing some every day will make you a better musician. Not to mention, how it will give you joy.
You don’t have to limit yourself to making music on your horn. Make music with your first instrument – your voice. You have a lifetime of experience using your voice. Your first sounds as an infant had pitch. Perhaps your mother repeated those sounds back to you, matching your pitch. Have you ever noticed how people talk to babies? We sing! We modulate our voices to rise and fall in pitch. This is very interesting to a baby’s ears. These are baby’s first ear training lessons.
Open your mouth and say ‘la’. Now say ‘la’ and hold it out as long as you can. Just for fun, vary the pitch of ‘la’ as you say it. At what point does saying become singing?
Sing ‘la la la la laaaa’ – first on a low pitch, then on a high pitch. Start the first ‘la’ on a middle pitch and slide down or slide up on ‘la la la laaaa’.
Go ahead, forget this ‘la la la’ stuff and sing a song! It doesn’t take long before I am ready to burst out singing “Oh What A Beautiful Morning.”
These five tips cover a wide area of ground, from the fastidious to the philosophical. I’d love to hear from you about your experience with these suggestions. Comment directly to me using the form on my website or comment below.
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