u/tremendous-machine

Hi Clarinetists, I am just starting down the road of the bass clarinet, coming from decades of tenor saxophone (and years of soprano sax), but no clarient. I have a question about embouchure. On sax, I am comfortable with multiple embouchures: lower lip over teeth, lower lip not over teeth, and to a lesser degree, lower lip out. Home bass (ba doom cha) for me is normally a fair bit of mouthpiece in the mouth with a basically straight up and down lower lip that does not curve in over the teeth. (I'm used to a D'Addario 7 or 8 tip opening, with 2.5 to 3 reeds FWIW )

So.. question.. is lower lip ALWAYS over the teeth on the BC, or is the no-curving-over-the-teeth approach also a thing? Do any saxophonist doublers coming from the same technique baseline as me have suggestions on embouchure shape, mp choice, and the process of building a BC emboucher coming from tenor?

thanks!

Hi bassists, I am relatively new to upright bass (~1 year), though have been playing electric and other instruments for decades so have pretty strong fingers.

I am finding when I reach for the highest (in pitch) notes in Rabbath 3rd position, I am more accurate when I let myself use the ring finger instead of the pinky, especially going for the C natural on D string. It also means I can keep my thumb anchor basically where I want it for that position rather than having to rotate my hand around a bit. (FWIW I have quite small fingers, exactly one octave on the piano)

I'm not necessarily switching to a 1-2-3-4 approach there (though I do if I need to chromatically ascend 6-b7-7-1 say) - the pinky and ring are still moving as a unit, but trying to get the finger tip of the pinky on the string just requires more awkwardness than the ring, and experimenting with both pinky vs ring, it seems to lead to better intonation when I use the ring finger.

I am curious if this is a normal or done thing? pros and cons?

thanks!

In case you care to share, I am interested to know what your reaction to musicianship training software would be if it part of the marketing was that no LLMs were used for anything. (software dev, writing, audio, video, design etc). The rationale being that it is a signal that the work was created thoughtfully and deliberately rather than thrown together without much thought, but of course also that many musicians (myself included) do not like what the LLM companies are doing to society, the internet, our brains, and the music world.

I ask because this is an area I have been working in for years, and am now wondering whether to just throw in the towel and shift to something else (writing books I guess? who knows) or whether doing so is worth a try. I don't use them at all, which I'm sure slows some of my progress down, but it's just not how I want to spend my life or a phenomenon I want to be part of. On the other hand, nor do I want to be part of the flood of people hawking crap online (or be perceived as part of that). :-/

Maybe the flood of vibe coded slop has soured everyone on anything that uses computers for practicing, and it's hopeless. Or maybe this is a way to salvage something from the current mess. Or maybe I should just write off the business-to-consumer side entirely and focus my efforts on music schools.

Hi fellow music heads, I am hunting for new-to-me ambient electro-acoustic music featuring woodwind or brass prominently. I'm especially looking for stuff that veers close to the contemporary classical minimalist, post-minimalist, or experimental electroacoustic world.

I am working on my own project using audio-reactive computing and electronics with soprano sax (not LLMs! lol) and would love to find out more about prior art I have not yet encountered. But what I find doesn't have to be limited to that approach in particular.

Recommendations most appreciated, thanks!

Edit: What a wonderful bunch of responses, thanks everyone!

Heya mods, I sure appreciate the new rules against drive by promotion of vibe coded apps here, but given that the type of people doing that don't stop to read the rules (or don't care), maybe more dramatic measures are needed?

I suspect requiring moderation of first posts in the subreddit would do it.

today's lovely contribution, for example, is from someone who has not posted on reddit in 7 years except for a burst of identical posts promoting their vibe code slop