Clarinet For Dummies

I like this book a lot and am very glad that I got it. It contains an awful lot of information, and the author is pretty good at explaining things.I had just acquired a cheap clarinet (>$100) from friends who bought one for their daughters, who weren't interested. I got this book to help me get started. I've played flute for more than 30 years, so I have a woodwind background as well as some knowledge of music, but it looks to me as if the author explains the basics of music pretty well (musical notation, breathing, basic concepts) -- although I didn't read those parts closely.What I was most interested in was the hands-on clarinet stuff, and that's pretty well done: the embouchure, posture, clarinet mechanics, sound production, reed fundamentals, etc. The illustrations are mostly done via photos, of a clarinet from various angles or taken apart, or of a young assistant doing the embouchure, holding the clarinet, etc. These are helpful.A couple of nitpicks: The author seems to be fairly opinionated -- not intrinsically a bad thing, but one should be aware. He sometimes sounds like a know-it-all. For example, he strongly recommends two mouthpieces for beginners, and implies those are the only ones out there. I asked a clarinetist friend about this (a great musician and has studied/worked with some of the top clarinetists in the world) and he didn't like one of the mouthpieces and had never heard of the other, and pointed out that there are several others that are at least as good. Any author will have his/her likes and dislikes, of course, but sometimes I wish this one had added a phrase like, "This is my personal preference," and perhaps even mentioned some of the other practices out there -- for instance, some clarinetists don't put their top teeth on the instrument at all. This is a completely valid practice, even if most people don't use it. He also doesn't mention things like German clarinets (i.e. with a different internal configuration) with Boehm fingering, which some musicians swear by.In addition, the book doesn't seem well edited. For example, in Ch. 9 the author has you play an excerpt with D above the staff, but you don't learn the note until Ch. 10! I found a few instances of the author referencing things that you hadn't yet learned. Also, he will mention things without explaining what they are -- for example, there's quite a bit of talk of the "tip rail" in reference to tonguing, etc., but he never explains what the tip rail is (the very top edge of the mouthpiece?). In instances like this, I wish he had included some diagrams of the clarinet and labeled the various parts.Another editing/formatting beef I have is with the one fingering chart. It's in the appendices, and is spread out over two pages (not across the gutter -- you have to flip the page to get to Page Two) and the diagrams are TINY. So you have to flip back and forth from the chapter you're reading to the chart, which I found really annoying and inconvenient (I ended up downloading a bigger, easier-to-read chart from the Internet instead). Also, I would have preferred that the author include fingering diagrams in the text, which he does only on a couple of occasions (e.g., in the discussion of chromatic fingering for F# and B). Not quite sure why -- to save ink? I think it would have been a negligible amount of ink, and wouldn't have taken up much space.Criticisms aside, I do like the book, and feel that it contains quite a lot of information. I worked through about half of it over a month or so, managed to play up to E above the staff, and then had a clarinet lesson with a real teacher -- he corrected my embouchure and fingerings a bit, but otherwise said I was on the right track. And that was all thanks to working with this book.

To give you some background information on me, I'm a former collegiate musician who already played a couple instruments (no woodwinds) and is, of course, familiar with music notation and other basic skills. I wanted to learn the clarinet, so I bought this book around the same time I bought my clarinet, thinking it would be a good way to learn.The book isn't bad for someone in such a situation: it explains the author's tips for how to play clarinet, including how to put the instrument together, how to hold embouchure, and how to play your first note. It also contains the author's recommendations for what models of clarinet different levels of learners should buy, so it's too late for this if you already have one. There are a lot of pages dedicated to basic music, like how to read note names, durations, and whatnot. I expected this with it being a "For Dummies" book and all, but I was still surprised by how much of the book it consumed. Of course, these are easy to skip over.After having read most of the clarinet-specific parts of the book, I was hoping to have a fingering chart I could use to figure out notes that either handn't been introduced yet or that I needed to play for some reason. Unfortunately, the chart in this book both has very small diagrams and is spread out across multiple pages (not two side-by-side). I may have missed it, but I also don't think there was a good explanation of how to read them--for example, I had to Google how I was supposed to, apparently, cover the thumb hole and press the register key at the same time. For those unfamiliar with the instrument like me, the diagram and the matching keys/holes on the clarinet were also never explicitly shown, but it was usually easy to figure out, particularly with the fist few notes introduced in the book since he explained what your hands and fingers were doing.I kept this book but ended up buying the first Standard of Excellence clarinet book a couple weeks later, too. Considering that this is what I used to learn my first (brass) instrument in elementary school, I felt a little odd buying one as an adult, but I suspect I'll get just as much use out of its note introductions, better fingering charts, and greater number of practice exercises (and even a few easy pieces). Like the Dummies book, it also contains several tips for playing the instrument, albeit in prose suitable for 10-year-olds.

My background is based in the 1970's with playing the trumpet and baritone horn. Yes, I am 62 and learning to play the clarinet. Quite frankly, this should be fun. If it isn't fun then why do it?It would be difficult to find another source with as much useable information about learning to play the clarinet for beginners. All is not perfect, though. As has been stated by others, the fingering guides are not the easiest to use. The Melbay chart by Eric Nelson is inexpensive and solves that problem. Another aid is to order the is the book one Tradition Of Excellence by Bruce Pearson and Ryan Mallin. These three sources are great when learThis is a worthwhile purchase and I would buy it again and along with the MelBay chart and the Traditions Of Excellence make a great beginning.

This is a decent book for a beginning clarinet player with a lot of tips for producing a better sound and managing difficult transitions. However, I wouldn't recommend anyone attempt to learn the instrument from this book alone for the simple reason that it doesn't have an illustration of the instrument with all the keys and levers labeled with the names the author uses for them (which in many cases are not the same as the names used in many method books). Coupled with a method book, or better still a method book and a teacher, I think this book deserves a place on the shelf.

Very comprehensive, takes nothing for granted. However, being written by an American it contains some unfamiliar terminology, eg a minim is a half-note, a crochet a quarter-note, etc. Also any prices quoted are in US dollars. Nevertheless, as an elderly newcomer to the instrument it is just what I wanted.

Very clear how to improve sound quality of my clarinet playing.

All dummies books are well written - I have bought many over the years.

its cool very helpful and easy to understand, well worth the money i can finally play it now....sort of (;

The DUMMIES Books are Very Good. They explain all you need to know in common sense language.