Musical Piece Help on the Clarinet?

I need to practice this piece, Tales of the Emerald Isle, for school tomorrow. It's a very fast piece with lots of slurring- going from low to high notes in one slur- largely unnecessary tempo changes i.e. 3/4, 3/8, 6/8 and tempo changes throughout.

My main problems are:

1.Not having enough time between notes to breathe

2.My lips keep drying out and end up loosening my embouchure

3.Playing the clarinet, in my case, takes 3 different sorts of breathing for maximum performance. During quick notes i can't change my breathing fast enough

4.Accelerating from very slow to very fast is in the piece and is hard for me.

That's about it. Please help with what you can. Thanks, and I admit I could have practiced a lot harder.

Musical Piece Help on the Clarinet?listen to opera

Practice is the key. As far as breaths, try to figure out where you need to take a breath, then look for a logical place to sneak a breath back a few notes, and mark it in the score. You can take the breaths out later when you're better at it. As far as the 2nd point, lips drying out, hydrate, hydrate hydrate. Got to have the water in your system. And practice, practice, practice. You're not going to be able to think of a shortcut that's going to get around having to practice.

Musical Piece Help on the Clarinet?concert venue opera theatertest Report It


Efficient practice- Have a plan of what you're going to work on during a practise session and stick to it. After a session, ask yourself if you assigned yourself too many items to work on or too few. Report It


Give yourself enough fun stuff to keep you interested in practising, but also make yourself do some real work. It will pay off!!! Keep at it! Report It


1) I would make an effort to play without taking a breath for the phrase. If you can't do that, you can shorten a quarter note, to take a breath from half of it, at a good spot.

2) Sorry, I've never had that problem

3) I breath quickly on fast pieces, otherwise I just take a normal breath. Being in good shape is important, to ensure good lung capacity.

4) Accelerating is all about practice. It will come with time.