How to make jumping octaves on the clarinet smooth?

Question:ok i got one peice of music and i'm jump octaves in 16th notes. i keep my right hand down but it still dousn't make it smooth what can i do to chang that. please answer soon.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: ok i got one peice of music and i'm jump octaves in 16th notes. i keep my right hand down but it still dousn't make it smooth what can i do to chang that. please answer soon.

A hell of a lot of SLOW practice. This is called 'crossing the break' and its one of the hardest things to do in Clarinet. Practice slowly with a metronome and then increase the speed. Watch that your fingers arent late and keep them close to the keys so that they have less far to travel to get back to the clarinet! Also make sure you use your ab muscles to support the air. Sometimes notes dont speak because they arent supported. A chance in octaves requires you to suppport the air while you are blowing. This is called breath support. Ask your teacher for some excercises if you think this is the problem! Good luck

Ah, the thrills of non-idiomatic composing!

OK, first: do what Richard Stoltsman says to do--quit thinking it's a big deal. It's just playing notes--

Now, to make practice more effective, change the rhythm of the passage. Play it in sixteenth-dotted sixteenth rhythms throughout--and then reverse that and play dotted-sixteenth-sixteenth pairs. This gets your fingers to do one interval faster, the next one slower--it's a "divide and conquer" sort of practice method. Then you could try playing sixteenth-sixteenth-eighth--or eighth-sixteenth-sixteenth--or sixteenth-eighth-sixteenth...

Another possibility; set a metronome to the fastest tempo under which you can play the part flawlessly. Don't worry if it seems way slow--practice it a few times at that tempo. Then turn the tempo on the metronome up a click and practice at that tempo. After a few times, move the tempo up again--eventually you get the passage up to speed.

go see if you can find Acker Bilk's performance of Stranger on the Shore

He's an expert at doing what u ask

This is a classic cut every clarinetist should know about

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7jZeXvpy...

This guys playing just makes you cry