Oh dear, I seem to have incurred the wrath of the militant faction of the Yorkshire recorder-playing fraternity. No…sorry, I can’t do this: to take my mind off scales and arpeggios, I have been reading The Mirror and the Light, the third book in Hilary Mantel’s brilliant Wolf Hall trilogy, and I can’t dispel the mental picture of those pesky northern papists, whipping up support and fomenting trouble in Yorkshire. It’s a wonderful read, but go slowly: it is densely packed.

On 12th May I posted a short video on YouTube entitled Why Scales are so Hard (click here to view). I linked this to my Facebook page and boosted the post. With hindsight, I think I should have targeted my audience more specifically as I received several comments from guitar players telling me that a) scales are easy, and, b) they were very good at playing them. I welcomed their comments and pointed out that they were actually reinforcing my case, which was very much about the challenge of clarinet fingerings (watch the video and you will see). There was much good-natured banter and it quickly became clear that the video had turned out to be my most successful so far.

Then came this from a recorder player called Nigel Martin:
I take great exception to your comments about the recorder being a limited instrument. You really need to do your research before you post untrue comments. The recorder has a near 3 octave range and beyond which is something that you obviously didn’t know about so please research!! The recorder also has a vast repertoire!!

Perhaps unwisely, I responded:
I am aware of the recorder repertoire and know that there are many fine players of the instrument. Nevertheless, more than two centuries of woodwind keywork development attest to the fact that wind players found the keyless model insufficient for the needs of the developing orchestra, especially as much of the technique used by recorder players to obtain the full chromatic range simply does not work on larger bored instruments. I regret your indignation: I am sure you would agree with me that embarking on a childish feud about who plays the better instrument would be futile and embarrassing.

Back he came:
My comments to you were simply about your untrue comments about my instrument the recorder and not about any other woodwind instrument! You are the one who even mentions pitting one woodwind instrument against another, not me. I regret your ignorance in the first place by stating that the recorder is a limited instrument! I find this to be appalling and I regret your arrogance! I certainly have no intention of arguing with you at all but please bear in mind that when you make a provocative statement about a musical instrument a response will occur. I do wonder what my colleagues and friends in ERTA, society of Recorder Players and professors of recorder at the UK Conservatoires/ Universities would think if they heard your posting about the recorder being a “limited instrument”?

At this point I started to smell a rat and responded:
I think this must be a wind-up! Best wishes!

Well, I was wrong about that:
For you to think that this is a wind up certainly says a lot about you! I can assure you that this is no wind up at all! Why would you suggest that?

I started to think it might be best for me to extricate myself from this, and responded:
If your colleagues and friends in ERTA take my comments as a provocation, I expect to hear from them. I fear your main aim is to whip up pointless antagonism and I am not disposed to continue this dialogue.

On he went:
I have no aim in any way, shape or form apart from challenging your ignorance about the recorder! As a committee member and Yorkshire Regional Representative for ERTA UK I certainly find your comments about the recorder to be provocative and ignorant. Your arrogance in making ignorant comments about the recorder is beyond belief! I will be discussing your video clip with ERTA members in our meetings as we often come across bad attitudes like yours about our beloved instrument!!
Then he added:
Just to inform you that I have shared your video clip on my timeline. May you receive many more responses!!

He then posted a link to my page on his Facebook page and my Video duly received five “dislikes” on YouTube. Perhaps rashly, I made a final effort to lay the matter to rest:
Your hyperbolic language and sense of personal affront led me to conclude that your comments were made in jest. I now see that this is not the case and I am concerned at your failure to apply an appropriate degree of intellectual rigour in this matter. I shall try to set out my position in clear and simple terms. I described the recorder as a simple woodwind instrument. This is not a qualitative judgement, but a statement of objective fact. The recorder as illustrated in my video has no moving parts. However precisely the dimensions of its bore and tone-holes are calculated, it is simple in design because it dates from a time when wind players and makers had not yet developed the technology to add key mechanisms. I made clear that recorder players had evolved ingenious solutions such as half-holing and lowering notes by closing holes further down the bore, and I can assure you that I admire the considerable skill the best players develop to produce playing which is even and expressive even though they have to negotiate many tricky cross-fingerings. I explained that instrument makers eventually moved towards a different solution to accessing the full chromatic range, namely adding keywork, and this was the basis for the development of the instruments which have now become established as the regular woodwind section of the symphony orchestra. Again, this is simply a statement of fact, not a claim for superiority of some instruments over others. Clearly, the recorder did not become redundant with these new developments, any more than the harpsichord was made redundant by the piano, though this nearly happened. In the twentieth century we saw a great revival of early music. Scholarly research uncovered a huge wealth of repertoire and fine players of early instruments honed their skills to ever greater heights to perform this music, bringing the authentic sound to the modern ear. Some composers were then inspired to write contemporary pieces for these instruments, and I have much admiration for the skill and dedication we see so often in this area of music-making. Where qualitative judgements were made was in the growing consensus that the recorder lacked the power, tonal range and agility to be effective in the orchestra as it had become at the end of the enlightenment period. You may wish to condemn composers and other musicians for making this judgement, I cannot. I am concerned that the tone of your comments has become emotive and, at times, bordering on threatening. You are, of course, free to discuss this with your professional association and, indeed, any other party. I trust that, in so doing, you will ensure that neither I nor Plan Z Music will be misrepresented.

Back he came:
I most certainly don’t need you to give me a history of woodwind instruments as I play other woodwind instruments whilst the recorder is my main instrument. I challenged you on your comments when you stated that the recorder is a limited instrument. Again you are the one who has taken this out of all proportion. May I suggest that you research about the new modern recorders that are now available. I don’t condemn any musician or composer so stop making things up to suit your arrogance!! You need to start supporting recorder players and not attacking and demeaning me by showing off your arrogant behaviour! My only comments to you has been about your statement about the limits of the recorder. Please update your old fashioned, archaic view and accept that the recorder is an equal, valid musical instrument that is on a par with any other woodwind instrument!

At that point I decided that enough really was enough. Mr Martin’s comments were becoming increasingly emotional in tone (so many exclamation marks!) and alarmingly ad hominem. Nothing was to be gained by goading him further.

All instruments have their limitations, and players draw on considerable skill and dedication to overcome these limitations. My own, boëhm-system clarinet is the result of a couple of centuries of piecemeal development and presents many mechanical challenges which must be overcome. If you set out to redesign the key system from scratch, you would probably come up with something very different, but trying to do so does not seem to be worth the effort. I remember seeing a clarinet on display in the excellent Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels, which was the result of a complete, logical rethink; and the museum is where it remains.

I admire recorder players and the distinctive way in which they are able to bring an authentic voice of the time to early music. I am aware that players have also found ingenious ways to cover the full chromatic range for more recent compositions, but those of a scientific inclination may enjoy this article: click here

I detected some resonance in a quote I stumbled on the other day:
Human beings from time immemorial have felt the need to owe primary allegiance to a collective body of one kind or another – be it a tribe, a city, or some alternative ethnic, geographical or cultural unit; and the impulse to assert the identity of the group, however large or small it may be, can easily lead – especially when feelings of insecurity are involved – to aggression and intolerance.
Christopher Duggan, The Force of Destiny, a History of Italy since 1796, Penguin Books 2008.

Quite so.

The problem with clarinet scales is that the arrangement of keywork on wind instruments is chaotic: some keys are pressed to open holes, other are pressed to close holes. And the clarinet is particularly problematic because a large range is available within a relatively short instrument and fingerings are very different from one octave to the next.
Compare this to other instruments such as the piano or stringed instruments. I am not, for a moment, pretending they are easy, but, at least, they are set out in a regular form. You only have to look at them to see how they make sense.
To understand why this cannot be the case for wind instruments, you need a brief history lesson. The most primitive woodwind instruments followed the basic design of the recorder. This is a very limited instrument because it has no keywork: there are only as many holes as the player has available fingers. A scale of C major is fairly straightforward, but problems arise when the in-between notes, the sharps and flats to play in other keys are required. Recorder players get round this in ingenious ways such as half-covering holes or flattening a note by closing holes lower down the instrument – something that works after a fashion for the recorder, but cannot be applied on larger-bore modern wind instruments. This use of compromise fingerings leads to significant unevenness of tone, with notes of different strengths and timbres, as well as suspect intonation. A much better solution is to drill more holes in the instrument, but, if you do this, you need more fingers. The answer was to add keys – prosthetic fingers, if you like – to bring the opening and closing of these extra holes within the player’s reach.
Keywork on woodwind instruments has developed piecemeal over several centuries, accelerating as the demands of music increased, particularly when the orchestra grew in the Romantic Period and composers pursued more adventurous harmonies and dissonances. Modern instruments need to be made to work in all the keys. Fingering in keys such as C major or F major is relatively straightforward, but venturing into remote keys such as F-sharp major or D-flat major requires complex use of extra keywork and, while this works much more effectively than using recorder techniques, the simple logic of fingering patterns starts to break down.
There is no easy way to learn scales and arpeggios. They have to be conditioned in through persistent repetition over a long period of time. Building an instinctive grasp of all the keys can take years. And that’s where Learn Your Scales and Arpeggios, our course of lessons for download comes in. There is really no substitute for Plan Z.

You can find on our YouTube channel a number of short videos introducing Learn Your Scales and Arpeggios, a course of clarinet lessons online for download, and the worksheets to use for this are available from www.planzmusic.com. Most of us are stuck at home more or less all the time at the moment, but students still need some structure in their lives. Now is a good time to get properly on top of this tricky, but essential aspect of learning.
The seriousness of this pandemic must not be underestimated, and many lives depend on us all isolating ourselves, probably for a considerable period – nobody can predict how long. But, in a civilised society, education must continue.
A well-run school music department is a community, a complex network of interactions: successful music-making at all levels is essentially tied up in collective endeavour. For this reason, the necessity for the lockdown has potentially been devastating for music in schools. But we owe it to our children to ensure that they come out of this experience more resilient and more optimistic for the future.
Many schools have stepped impressively up to the mark, putting in place facilities for remote learning, keeping in contact with their students, maintaining the structure of the school day, monitoring work closely. This has been a challenge for instrumental teachers such as myself because our lessons need to be conducted face-to-face. Achieving this while ensuring that all the usual safeguarding measures remain in place requires careful planning and, for everyone’s wellbeing, must be closely monitored by school leaders.
There are a number of platforms for video link-up. My schools have variously chosen Teams or Zoom which can be logged into using approved school email addresses. The signal is not always great, and there is a time lag which prevents providing accompaniment or counting along to keep students in time. Many adjustments are required to make lesson delivery work, but, even after just two weeks, I can see and hear that real progress is being made.
Now is the time for teachers and learners to explore the many online resources that are available to assist home learning. I have always stressed the importance of self-directed learning. And, despite our best endeavours to deliver online teaching, this has never been of greater importance.
Do follow Plan Z Music on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to our YouTube channel as there is lots more useful stuff on the way.

With the lockdown and curtailment of almost all normal activity necessitated by this horrible virus, I have no alternative but to deliver my clarinet lessons online. I have noticed that many well-known names in the music business have taken to providing advice, demonstrations and inspiration to young learners through YouTube and other online platforms. They are to be commended for this: now, more than ever, our students need as much encouragement as they can get to maintain their musical enthusiasms and aspirations. Spare a thought, though, for the regular school instrumental teachers, those who deal with the nuts and bolts of instruction week in and week out; the ones who know that it is not enough to inspire, you have to perspire as well.
Many schools, especially at secondary level, aim to continue education remotely, linking with their students via platforms such as Teams or Zoom. There is much emphasis on maintaining the regular school timetable so that students’ work from home is structured. When I first suggested to my schools delivering clarinet lessons online, via video link, the reaction was close to panic: schools are very sensitive about safeguarding, and this would entail my students and me looking into each other’s homes. It was even suggested that I might simply enjoy a very long paid holiday. This may seem an enticing prospect, but if the instruction I provide is put into suspended animation, it may never be revived: at my schools, the contract for lessons comes up for renewal every September. The safeguarding issue was eventually resolved by using the same platform as the school, accessed through my school email login, and only provided once written consent had been obtained from the parents of each student.
I have stuck to my regular timetable, and online teaching has worked pretty well, barring the odd frozen screen or dropped link. There is a time lag though, so you can’t click your fingers and count to keep them in time. This places extra responsibility on the student to concentrate on rhythm and fluency – no bad thing. I dare say my emphasis on discipline in learning makes me come across as a bit of a fascist – I am not really – but we all know there are no instant results in this business, and our students need all our encouragement to explore and develop.
And the clarinet worksheets available from Plan Z Music, guiding students through the whole process of learning scales and arpeggios, have an important part to play in all of this. For remote learning to work, the student needs to develop musical self-sufficiency. This requires a developed technique and a sound grasp of the navigation of the instrument. The six-day practice plans, which are presented at the end of every stage, fit perfectly into a well-structured learning day.

I conduct a lunchtime music theory class at my girls’ grammar school. We have advertised it as Fast Track Grade 5 Theory from Scratch and it is aimed at students who have been taking graded exams up to Grade 5, want to continue, but have never done any theory. This is a common situation, especially among those whose first musical experience was taking up an orchestral instrument at the end of junior school or after starting secondary school. I am still surprised that children can get up to Grade 5 on an instrument without even a scintilla of theoretical background being explained to them by their instrumental teacher; it’s a bit like trying to learn a language without paying any regard to grammar.
The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music recently changed the syllabus for Grade 5 Theory, removing the option of melody-writing or word-setting. This was the one section of the exam which required the candidate to look at music on the page and hear it mentally. The whole paper can now be completed by a robot. Whilst my students are rather more than that, I have every expectation that even those with little musical aptitude can pass with at least 90%.
The students in my group, some of the most intelligent children I have ever taught, are earnest, attentive and utterly delightful; though I sometimes wish they would be a bit more shouty and combative. Some years ago, I taught at a major public school for boys. The students were spectacularly wealthy, often rather dim and imbued with a profound sense of entitlement. The meek do not inherit the earth.

For those of a scientific inclination, the following may be of interest: click here.

The problem
The recorder, a very simple wind instrument, is little more than a pipe with holes in it. The holes are opened and closed by finger action and enable the player to vary the effective length of the instrument, thereby varying the wavelength of the tone produced and playing a range of notes. The number of holes available is limited to the number of available fingers. Since the right thumb supports the instrument it cannot play any part in fingering notes. That leaves us with nine fingers, therefore nine notes. Those nine notes have been pitched to constitute part of a diatonic scale, which means there is no provision for chromatic notes: the sharps and flats. The same problem existed on the earliest forms of the flute, oboe and clarinet.

One solution
The full chromatic range can be obtained by cross-fingering. This entails closing one or more tone holes below the highest open one. For example, the recorder player moves from E to F by lifting the middle finger of the right hand. To play F# the index finger is lifted while the middle finger is replaced as shown below.

As you can see, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but essentially the fingerings are the same as on the saxophone and in the second register of the clarinet. The problem associated with this is that it is well nigh impossible to achieve a perfect legato when swapping fingers in this way: there is always a bit of a “clonk” and a clearly discernible, unwanted note can creep in between the two desired tones. The other problem is that uniformity of tone colour is compromised as cross-fingered notes have a darker timbre. On larger instruments such as saxophones the technique simply cannot work.

A better solution
The other way round the problem is to drill more holes and get yourself some extra fingers, and that is effectively what keywork amounts to: the rise and fall of keys mimics the action of fingers and the soft skin or leather of the pads is similar to the cushioned fingertip. A variety of clever mechanisms bring all these extra tone holes within reach of the player’s nine fingers (on the modern, low C bass clarinet and the basset horn, even the right thumb has a busy time of it).

Players and instrument builders have developed a variety of key systems over the last 300 years or so and have succeeded in eliminating the need for cross-fingerings as employed on the recorder (the saxophone was born virtually fully grown around 1846: although its inventor, Adolph Sax was incontestably a genius, even this mechanism was built on principles developed for other instruments over a long period of time). However, much technique still calls for cross-fingering type action, in other words simultaneously lifting one or more fingers while lowering others, and legato can still be compromised. Whilst these are not cross-fingerings in the true sense, that is how I refer to them in my publications.

Much development of keywork has been aimed at eliminating the need for such cross-fingerings. On the boehm system clarinet there are alternative fingerings for throat F# and second register F# (and, therefore, low B), while the saxophone has alternative C and F# fingerings as well as a variety of fingerings for Bb. Many students are reluctant to take on board more than one fingering for any note, but it is important to employ appropriate fingerings to maximise smoothness. It really does matter: I have always regretted that the cross-fingering between top B and C on the German system clarinet can be a blemish on otherwise fine performances. The same action on the saxophone can be excruciating because of the size of the mechanisms involved and the relatively large distance through which keys move. It is particularly important to find mechanically simple solutions on the saxophone if one is to avoid sounding like an old fashioned typing pool. In my forthcoming series, Learn Your Scales and Arpeggios for Saxophone, I offer some fingering options which some may find unpalatable:

• I recommend using the side key fingering for C even when crossing between registers: for example, in both octaves of the scale of C major. Many players are reluctant to do this and, indeed, moving between side key C and second octave D also involves elements of cross-fingering, but I and those students who choose to follow my example can execute the relevant passages more quickly and smoothly than with the middle finger C.
• The side key fingering for Bb (or A#) should be used in all scales where those notes appear. The other Bb fingerings are for arpeggios. Using middle finger C with the bis-key fingering for Bb is as undesirable as cross-fingering between B and C in C major (it is not appropriate to combine the C side-key with with bis-key Bb as the C would be unacceptably flat).
• The long fingerings for Bb, using either the RH index finger or middle finger may be convenient when the note is adjacent to B§, but should not be used when also adjacent to a lower note as this would require a cross-fingering: in such instances, the side key fingering should be chosen.

The saxophone is a woefully underestimated instrument: when I was a student at a major British conservatory you could not take it as your principal study. To this day many teachers of other instruments imagine they only need to get a few simple fingerings sorted and they can then take on lucrative(!) extra work. I often have to undo the technical flaws and misconceptions in young saxophone players who have had the misfortune to take lessons from them (click here to see my previous post about junior schools).

The choice of left and right alternative fingerings often presents a dilemma for clarinet students. Many teachers are seemingly sweetly reasonable about the matter: “You could do it this way, or you could do it that way. Do whichever you prefer,” they say. This generally results in the student dithering between the two options and becoming increasingly confused. All three volumes of Learn Your Scales and Arpeggios for Clarinet set out clear rules to avoid inconsistencies.

I shall start with bottom F/2nd register C. The use of the right hand fingering for these notes, wherever possible, is normal practice among the great majority of clarinet players. I regard it as the orthodox choice since it stems from the Albert system clarinet which preceded the Boehm system and only has a RHC and a LHB (most German players use instruments based on this system to this day). The right hand choice for C means that B, in C major, G major etc., is played with the left hand whilst the right hand remains on the C key. It is not strictly necessary to hold down the C when playing B, but it is good practice in these scales as it avoids cross-fingering when transferring between B and C.

Small children, starting the clarinet at an early age, often have difficulty reaching RHC and, particularly, LHB, so their teachers introduce the alternatives: RHB and LHC. Some junior school teachers encounter this problem so frequently that they introduce these fingerings routinely, without checking to see if the orthodox fingerings can be made to work. I have inherited many such back-to-front players from junior school teachers, usually at a point when they are too far down the line to switch them around. I have had quite a few go on to reach a good level, including Grade 8 and County Youth Orchestra, but their playing is always a bit laboured. The Mozart Concerto, in particular, suffers, with awkward left/right coordination. Any player aiming for a career in music would be well advised to make the switch. I have already written about my misgivings regarding junior school tuition: this is one of the reasons why.

For scales with C#, my choices are a little more controversial. Many players in the profession use LHB followed by RHC# in the scales of D major, B minor, A major and F# harmonic minor: in other words, when C# is followed by D§. They then need to change to RHB and LHC# when D# comes in to the scale. This seems to me to be rather illogical and is certainly likely to lead to confusion in students who have got used to pressing RHC at the same time as LHB and are likely to tend to forget to switch when learning E major. Crossing the break to RHB followed by LHC# in sharp scales is referred to in my books as the Sharp Break Fingering Pattern; it gives rise to the F#/C#/Db Rule which appears repeatedly throughout Books 2 and 3. This rule states that bottom F#, second register C# and Db should always be played with the left hand in scales and with the right hand in arpeggios.

There are several reasons to back up imposing this rule:
• It means that, in anticipation of crossing the break in both scales and arpeggios, the player can reach for a right hand fifth finger key while the left hand is busy dealing with throat notes (A or A#, for example).
• It ensures consistency throughout the major and minor scales and arpeggios.
• This is the most efficient fingering choice mechanically. Players are invited try the following exercises using both C# options:

This scale exercise is cumbersome when played with the right hand fingering because the fourth and fifth fingers are conjoined within the hand. Most players can execute this much more rapidly with the left hand fingering.

This arpeggio exercise is more efficient played with the right hand fingering because the fourth and fifth fingers are predisposed to move together. When the left hand fingering is used problems arise with the coordination of R4 and L5 and an unwanted note tends to creep in at high speed.

For the same reason, the student is advised to cross the break to a right hand fingering in arpeggios wherever possible in order to keep the following finger movement in one hand.

A few pages before the lamentable review of my scale books, in the November edition of Music Teacher Magazine, there is an excellent, intelligent article by recorder teacher, Heather Ward. The main thrust of her argument is for the recorder to be regarded as a “developmental” rather than “first-access” instrument. Having seen evidence of the excellent work done by my friend and colleague Phillippa Penkett at her school in Chelmsford, I certainly concur with this.

Heather Ward tells us: Current first access provision in schools may offer children one year’s experience of various instruments: perhaps ukulele, drums, harmonica, ocarina, strings, adapted woodwind or brass… At the end of the first access year, children are generally encouraged to take up orchestral instruments for continued learning. However, maintained schools and local authorities are often unable to make good provision for instrumental teaching. Any take-up is restricted to the few who have parents with the resources to pay for private tuition. Despite the ambitious initiative of first access, instrumental teaching for any but the wealthy is dying out in many primary schools. She goes on to suggest that the recorder can be a suitable alternative for continued learning as it offers a wealth of musical experience, is cheap, easy and can be taught in a whole class context. Perhaps most importantly, she states that, in the classroom, it can be taught with a minimum of expertise.

I feel this brings us to the heart of the matter. With the proliferation of academies and free schools and the decline of local authority control or funding for musical education, instrumental tuition has become worryingly unregulated. The hiring of teachers in schools is generally at the absolute discretion of headteachers and their overriding consideration when making choices is increasingly budgetary. Few heads have any understanding of instrumental teaching – why should they? – and the 2014 report, Inspiring Music for All (funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation) found that only 17% of primary teachers feel confident about doing music in their classrooms. The inevitable result of the deficit of understanding combined with the deficit of funding is a deficit in expertise. Pay levels for specialist instrumental teachers in the maintained sector are significantly lower than in private practice and ISM and MU recommendations are routinely ignored; the gulf between their pay and other teachers’ pay is considerable and widening. I have heard much – too much – about the problem of players who don’t know how to teach: the glaring problem is rather of teachers who don’t know how to play.

Every September, as a teacher who only works in secondary schools, I take on new pupils who have received tuition at junior school for two, three or even more years. Rarely beyond Grade 2 standard, and generally no further on than Grade 1, they routinely present serious deficiencies of technique and musicianship. Some of the horrors include: almost complete inability to read music, inappropriate or non-existent embouchure, no concept of pulse, rhythm or fluency in performance, inappropriate choice of left and right fingerings on the clarinet which generally leaves their playing impeded for ever more (more on this elsewhere in this blog). More than 50% have never been introduced to tonguing and, when asked to tongue a scale, either huff or grunt each note. Addressing these problems and putting them right can be very dispiriting for a child who has repeatedly been told “that’s lovely, darling!” for the past two years.

I have long contended that most junior school children do not have the stature or stamina to be able to learn orchestral instruments effectively. The clarinet presents more difficulty than the saxophone as many children struggle to cover tone holes effectively. The industry has responded with a variety of children’s instruments which have limited keywork. One, the Howarth Junior MX Bb Clarinet, developed with Lambeth Music Service for the Musitrax whole class ensemble teaching programme, appears to have a range of about a dozen notes and is barely sufficient for the demands of Grade 1. It costs £220 including VAT (the assisted purchase scheme, administered by local authorities means that you can purchase the instrument minus VAT for your child’s educational purposes. Academies and free schools can now also benefit from this scheme, but one academy I know charges a £25 handling fee). The next step up, the Howarth Junior PLUS+ Bb Clarinet, another limited keywork instrument which is barely adequate for Grade 3 (only one B and one C# key, both in the same hand: bang goes D major), will set you back a further £260 including VAT. These instruments are really designed to be bought by departments and authorities and loaned to pupils – fat chance for most of us with current funding levels. The Trevor James Alphasax alto saxophone, with no bottom Bb or B, nothing above top D and no side keys for F# and C in chromatic scales, comes in at an eye-watering £399 (I teach the full range and use of all alternative fingerings before Grade 3). Junior schools in my area are persuading parents to fork out these sums to buy these instruments for their children.

Surely, a more effective programme for music in education would involve singing, including learning to read music and sight-sing, recorder playing, basic keyboard skills, rhythmic training with group percussion work. A combination of imaginative (and appropriately trained) teaching and suitable resources would give children a sound basis on which to develop as instrumentalists when the time comes and will keep them engaged by giving them a tangible sense of achievement. Some instruments such as strings need to be started at an earlier age and a minority of children will be ready to play wind instruments below the age of 11, but this this should be provided on the basis of need, outside the classroom, in one-to-one lessons.

My secondary school beginners generally quite quickly overtake those who have learned at junior school; it is as well that they do since much of the early learning material is aimed at rather younger children and they find it rather patronising. There is a running joke amongst some of my teenage students about adults who want to “get down wiv da kidz”. One student mocked up a cover for my scale books, with the title: “Fun Wiv Scalez and Arpeggioz for Kidz!” and a cartoon of a child on a skateboard, baseball cap on backwards, brandishing a clarinet. When they are ready, students are prepared to take learning seriously provided we take them seriously.

First, a definition:
[Embouchure is] the mode of applying the lips and mouth to the mouthpiece of a wind instrument as expertly advised and the mode actually adopted or developed by a player for a particular mouthpiece of a wind instrument. (Maurice Porter, The Embouchure, Boosey and Hawkes 1967)

Whole volumes have been written about this complex subject which, by necessity, preoccupies players and is the subject of endless controversy and debate. I am not going to try to add substantially to this written material since nobody ever developed an effective embouchure by reading a book. I will, however, offer some thoughts and try to dispel some popular myths.

When given instruction about the importance of using lip and face muscles, many students make the mistake of thinking that this is to apply sufficient pressure against the reed; and the higher you go, the harder you have to bite. Some years ago, I taught a student who was preparing to perform the Artie Shaw Clarinet Concerto. Always ready to instruct me in how things should be done, he explained to me that to get the top C at the end (no, not that one, the one with four ledger lines), the player would require an extra hard reed.
“No you don’t,” I said.
“Yes you do, then it all works fine.”
“No you don’t,” I said, and took a Vandoren 1 from my drawer and fitted it to my fairly close lay American mouthpiece before playing a top C to him.

It’s tricky, mind you: any pressure on the reed simply closes up the mouthpiece so that you can’t even get air into the instrument. What you do need is precision in placement of the lower lip, jaw etc. and a very firm muscle tone in the lip to make the right shape which is then applied to the reed very lightly. Many muscles go into this: the orbicularis oris (lip muscle) and all the other facial muscles which are attached to it. The position of the tongue is also critical as high notes entail the generation of sound waves inside the head, behind the reed as well as in the instrument and these have to be shaped appropriately within the oral cavity. It’s all horribly complicated and very, very hard to teach as most tone production is invisible and highly conceptual.

Q: How do you make a beautiful sound on the clarinet?
A: Listen.

It is not so easy to stand at one end of a room playing and, at the same time, stand at the other end listening objectively, and I have sympathy for players when they forget to try. There is so much to concentrate on, reading the text, choosing fingerings, playing in time and so on. We can all be poor listeners, hearing what we want to hear instead of what is really coming out. But, if we can listen properly, the process is really very simple: if you listen you will ask all the right questions: “Do I like that? If not, why not? What do I really want? OK, so let’s see if I can find a way of getting there.” I can talk (and, indeed, often have talked) until the cows come home about embouchure, applying physics, physiology, psychology, cultural history; it gets the student almost nowhere. Get the student to listen and everything will flow from there.

The diaphragm is a wall of muscle which divides the thoracic cavity from the abdomen. It is attached at its circumpherence to the base of the rib cage and, in its relaxed state is dome shaped. It is largely controlled by the autonomic nervous system: in layman’s terms, its action is mainly reflexive and involuntary. If you stand unclothed before your dressing table mirror, you can flex and admire your pectorals, abdominals, deltoids and biceps muscles, but you cannot see your diaphragm which is internal. When your body needs oxygen for survival the unconscious part of the brain instructs the diaphragm to contract and move downwards, thus enlarging the volume of the thoracic cavity. This reduces intra-thoracic pressure: In other words, enlarging the cavity creates suction that draws air into the lungs. When the diaphragm relaxes, air is exhaled by elastic recoil of the lung and the tissues lining the thoracic cavity. In other words, inhaling is physically active, whilst exhaling is passive.

In the most effective wind playing the active/passive relationship is reversed. It is not enough to allow air simply to feed passively into the instrument, but it must be directed with some force. For wind players this means, primarily, using the abdominal muscles to exert force to the air stream against the natural resistance of the instrument. To illustrate this I invite the student to think of the breathing cycle in reverse order: in other words, blowing first and inhaling after. The abdominal muscles contract to force air from the body until the thoracic cavity is (comfortably) empty. On relaxation, the lungs reflate to return to their relaxed level of inflation through the natural elasticity of the body. I use exercises to demonstrate this principle to my students thus:

A good, positive delivery of air through the lower note of each pair will produce a secure upper note. The student should aim to pause on each pair of notes long enough to be comfortably out of air at the end of the upper note. Simply opening the mouth and relaxing should be sufficient to replenish air in the lungs for the next pair of notes. As the exercise progresses the student should gradually become more relaxed and each passive inhalation should cause more air to be drawn into the body. This exercise illustrates that the body replenishes its supplies of air without any appreciable action of the diaphragm. This also helps the student to detach breathing from any shoulder movement.

This exercise demonstrates that, whilst the diaphragm undoubtedly continues to function, for any practical purposes, its function is of no significant importance.

Wind teachers and singing coaches bang on endlessly about supporting from the diaphragm despite the above evidence demonstrating this to be physiological nonsense. Do they simply revel in using this technical sounding word?