Julie A. Linder

For the interviewer asking a potential candidate about clarinet pedagogy looking to fill a knowledge gap in your program, it’s important you clarify the answers you’re searching for ahead of time.  For the interviewee, it’s important to find out what classes you’d be teaching within that program if you were hired and if it is a clarinet class, identify your strengths and weaknesses in that particular area ahead of the interview and make a plan for how you will address your weaknesses. Some interviews may not get this detailed and specific, but they certainly can if the person hiring is unhappy with how the clarinets sound in their program.

Besides the basics of interview preparation, there are some particular aspects of teaching clarinet that can be approached in different ways that you might want to have consensus on amongst all staff. These are the top three clarinet specific issues you’d want to ask a candidate about.

Beginning Equipment

While Vandoren 5 RV Lyre was the gold standard, many middle school band programs here in Texas have gravitated to starting beginners on M13 Lyre mouthpieces and blue box 3 reeds. That means students are growing up getting resistance almost completely from the reed and not the mouthpiece. It allows young students to develop a compact, homogenous, pitch-steady and fairly focused sound at an early stage in their development. 

There’s a host of reasons that I believe that is not the best approach for the long term development of the student:

1. Students do not develop a strong air column.
2. Students will struggle with both finger and tonguing technique without the air pressure needed to have notes respond quickly, especially in the upper clarion/altissimo register. This is often already an issue in middle school when they get first part, and becomes more severe when they’re expected to play the full range in high school 
3. The ability to sustain is severely impacted by this equipment set up in all levels of player, from beginners to pros. 
4. The tone on this set up is completely inflexible. Students will not be able to explore the softest and loudest volumes, nor will they be able to change tone color expressively when they are ready to begin doing so.  

I encourage band directors to start students on a set up that gets resistance more equally from the mouthpiece and the reed. A more open mouthpiece facing and a 2.5 or 3.0 reed (depending on the mouthpiece and reed cut) will make for a happier band director later on. 

Ability to model in class

To some band directors, the ability model correct technique and tone in class is an essential tool and skill of the job.  If you are interviewing, consider whether it’s important that the candidate have this ability. The best beginner clarinet teacher I ever worked with never modeled at all because of a jaw injury. And I find that unless it’s the band director’s primary instrument, they might be unintentionally modeling a “middle school” version of clarinet tone. The pandemic taught me that much can be taught without modeling. It was incredibly helpful that I had already written a method book and been forced to put it into words many years before zoom lessons were a thing. 

Voicing/Tongue Position

There are two approaches to playing and teaching clarinet in regards to the role of the voicing/tongue position (I call that the inner embouchure). Some schools teach a moveable tongue position – the tongue is lower in the low  register and gets higher as you ascend. Others teach fixed tongue position – where all notes are voiced essentially the same except in the upper altissimo (high E three lines above the staff and up). 

This is the most essential clarinet fundamental that your vertical team should have consensus on. I teach a fixed tongue position and often inherit students who were taught the other way and its a tough transition for the both of us. My preference is to start students with a fixed tongue position and begin to discuss the very minor changes in voicing to make certain notes more resonant in high school once the student has developed a good enough ear to discern the difference. I think other teachers have success the other way, but I’m not sure how!

Additional questions

As the campus clarinet teacher here’s some questions I’d love to be asked in an interview:

Q: How/when would you go about transitioning from mouthpiece and barrel to the full clarinet? I would first talk about about air/embouchure/articulation goals on mouthpiece and barrel and then strategies to set up hand position: i.e. set up the left hand first by adding the top joint only, or set up the right hand first on the full clarinet.

Q: What is your approach to teaching single reed tonguing and when should tonguing be introduced? The answer here is as soon as possible! I teach attack first, then tonguing.

Q: What are some common problems you’ve experienced teaching single reed tonguing and a) how did you identify them b) what solutions do you prescribe? I have a whole section on this in my method book, and a band director once told me this is my super power. I’ve heard it all, and I also did not learn to tongue correctly until I was 26. Single reed tonguing is a skill that must be continually addressed and refined. 

*some of this article may be specific to hiring practices in Texas band programs, where most students start band in middle school in like-instrument classes.