If you don’t know what double lip embouchure is, here you go.
When I first heard about double lip from Tom Ridenour in Dallas, I thought he was insane (what can I say? I was 19 and didn’t know anything). But years later I was sitting across the dinner table from Ricardo Morales, sharing a beer and terrible pizza with arguably the most famous clarinetist alive. Ridenour came up and Morales immediately expressed his admiration of the man. He went on to say that if he could ever invest the time he would switch to double lip, and that the best thing anyone could do for their playing right now is spend time practicing double lipped everyday.
That was the point that double lip embouchure entered my playing life. But the subject here is double lip and 4 year olds. Or double lip and trying to convince 16 out of 75 5th graders that clarinet is the instrument for them.
One day I went to hang out with my 4 year-old niece and brought an old mouthpiece and barrel, ligature and some strength 3 reeds. I gave her very simple instructions:
1) Roll your lips in a little, like this, no no, a little less we still need to see pink.
2) Put the mouthpiece in a little and start to blow
3) Push the mouthpiece gently toward your ponytail (Ridenour calls this “snugging”) and blow faster until it makes sound
Voilà. She made a sound. Well, not just a sound. A perfect F#. Then we experimented. We stuck our fingers in the end to bend the pitch down and up slowly, we pushed the mouthpiece up and in until a loud shrill squeak, then moved it down and out until the sound disappeared from lack of friction. I thought: I wish I could be silly like this with my students.
Why was it so easy for Reyn to make that precious F#? I mulled it over, realizing the lack of steps and simple symmetry of the double lip embouchure meant even a 4 year old could play.
A few months later I secretly did my first instrument drive demonstrating double lip, and double the kids signed up for clarinet after their increased success at making a tone. Plus, double lip showed me the natural shape their face instead of the unnatural faces that came with single lip explanations.
Despite all these advantages I did that drive in secret because double lip remains controversial to music educators. The Band Director for tonight’s drive had to give an explanation to a concerned Fine Arts Director! But after so many successes I’ll go ahead and say: I play double lip when I can, I teach double lip often and when necessary (with far more detailed explanation than above) and if you ask me to spend a Monday evening testing 5th graders for clarinet, my response will be “yes, as long as you know I’ll test them all double lip.”
Recommended Reading: Tom Ridenour’s “The Educator’s Guide to the Clarinet.”
Julie A. Linder 