Hi. Sorry if this post seems repetitive, but I feel like nothing else I saw really answered my question. I'm a middle band director and I wanted a couple spare ligatures to sell to students in case they lose or break their ligature. What do you recommend for middle school students? I can't do these expensive $40 ligatures I've seen shared on this subreddit. Even $15 dollars might be too much. I want something durable and will get the job done, bonus points if it helps with tone. Any reccomendations?

It has been now 2 months I’m trying to build my online teaching studio. I’m a clarinetist from Europe with 15+ years of experience. I played with several orchestras and won competition and auditions. Now I tried to focus on teaching because I believe for my background I can really make the difference giving my advice to the students, but here is what it happened;

I registered to other website as a tutor but everytime they asked for a lower price (even lower than 10 dollars per hour), so to get students I offered 2 hours free before paying but NOBODY wants to do it..

‘right now I have just one student that is very happy with me and I’m with her as well, now 2 months taking class and preparing ABRSM exam grade 6.

Has anybody else tried to find students? What is it?

‘It looks like nobody wants to learn the instrument or who starts try from YouTube, I really would expect more people who at least would give a try, even I wrote people on Facebook, Reddit or X but they even don’t reply.

Any advice or suggestions?

I play Selmer 10S with Vandoren BD4.

I play 4-5 times av week in community band/practicing.

I normally buy Vandoren V12 strenght 3, but many of them are a little too soft. 3,5 are usually a little strong.

I bought a Legere French Cut 3,25, but it was too soft (too late to exchange), and sounded bad in the high register.

What reeds would you recommend for a Vandoren BD4 mouthpiece?

It’s kinda gross so scroll if you don’t wanna know about snot problems.

I’ve dealt with this problem for a very long time, I think since Covid around the time I started playing, which was middle school. I’m mostly asking out of curiosity, if anyone else deals with this, if this is normal, and maybe if anyone has any remedies.

So pretty much every time I play my instrument, I make sure to clear my nose before I play, because when I play the air that goes up my trachea carries some mucus with it. After around 10 minutes of straight playing, the back of my nose gets clogged and it’s really annoying. It doesn’t exactly impact my breathing, but whatever gets stuck back there is difficult to blow out of my nose, and I’d rather not swallow it. It just happens every time I play, it’s happened in concerts, I’ve had to get up multiple times during rehearsals because of this problem, even after a quick nasal rinse my sinuses remain gross. Ugh.

Hi everyone!

I’ve been playing the clarinet for about 5 weeks. I’m self-taught so far, and I practice almost every day for around 30 minutes.

I’d really appreciate some feedback on my playing, especially on my tone, embouchure, breathing and anything else you notice that I should work on at this stage.

A few things I’ve been struggling with:

* Breath support and air pressure: I sometimes feel like I’m forcing the air out too much rather than letting it flow naturally. I also catch myself getting tense while playing.
* Embouchure stability and endurance: Towards the end of a practice session, my embouchure starts to fall apart and feels less stable.
* Tone quality: Sometimes my tone becomes weak and muffled. I jokingly describe it as a “choked duck” sound! I wonder if this could be related to my chin moving too much or my lower lip being too soft, but I’m not sure.
* Tone consistency: I can hear the sound wavering a little in places. This recording was made towards the end of my practice session, so I wonder if embouchure fatigue might have contributed.

A couple of things I’ve noticed about these recordings:

* In the legato exercises, I forgot to tongue the first notes, which I normally try to do by lightly touching the tip of the reed with the tip of my tongue.
* In the exercises where I articulate each note with my tongue, does my tonguing sound too pronounced or harsh? I’m wondering if the tongue attacks are too noticeable.
* I usually practice with a metronome, so the timing might be a little uneven here.

I’m still very much a beginner, so I’d love to hear what you think I should focus on first. Any observations and constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for listening!

(The clarinet I play is a brand new Yamaha YCL-450E
Reed: Vandoren 2.0)