Wait a minute I read you cry, she’s written read wrong. All will become clear as you read unless you’ve seen the blog header photo that is.
So a new year and my husband suggested that sod the new year’s resolutions, let’s try something new…..what about a musical instrument? Great idea, so decide to have a think on instruments. A piano would be too big and Uber expensive, though cool to play so it was ruled out. What else could I possibly try…..hmmm, my late grandad played the clarinet, I quite like the sound of a clarinet, my late Nan said she liked the clarinet and grandad used to play her favourite song on it for her …..ding lightbulb moment…… and that is how I chose to learn the bb clarinet.
Once decision was made, my husband goes oooooh I want to learn clarinet too but maybe bass clarinet. Search on internet and we find a site called gear 4 music https://www.gear4music.com
They had a deal on for clarinets with stand etc so cue two clarinets brought as it quickly became clear that bass clarinets are way too expensive compared to a bb clarinet, we look at self learning and husband discovers a teacher who lives locally.
We’ve only managed a few lessons, purely due to shift working and sadly Charlie passing away at the end of January, then the decision to rescue another dog which resulted in rescuing two (more on them in another blog). Life basically just got in the way. We were doing well and I was taking my clarinet into work and practicing during break on night shifts. However, I was finding the book we were learning from just so boring and the tunes just didn’t sound like anything and were classical based – yawn. I was getting frustrated and bored, so I found an app on apple store called TomPlay which displays rolling sheet music, can change tempo, choose level such as beginner and have to say it’s helped massively. You can record yourself with two options: audio or audio and video. https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/tomplay-sheet-music/id1054809074
Six months into learning and I can string a few notes as well as play a few songs albeit a bit squeaky and mostly self taught. I’m thinking of updating my clarinet to a wooden one, although I have to admit I do worry about the durability of a wooden clarinet but the sound is far superior than that of a plastic/resin clarinet. My next step is to try and sort out the thumb test as that is causing a bit of pain in the right thumb and I just can’t seem to find a comfy position at the moment.
One day, I’ll have the confidence to attach a video at the end of this blog for you all to see how far I’ve come but that requires making myself look presentable and I like to be a bit of slob when I’m on rest days a large majority of the time 🤣
As promised….here’s a little video
The Weird World Of Dub Mouse 