QuickStart Clarinet Blog

The clarinet repertoire is enormous. There are hundreds of solo pieces, concertos, chamber works, and unaccompanied showpieces out there, and sorting through all of it to figure out what's actually worth your time can be overwhelming.

This is my personal ranking of the best clarinet solo repertoire...

Picking a reed can feel like a guessing game. Even within a single box of the same brand and strength, individual reeds vary a lot, and what works great in the practice room doesn't always hold up when you actually need it.

Here are two practical tests you can use to quickly find out whether a reed...

Photo by Enis Yavuz on Unsplash

You've probably heard that the corners of your embouchure are important. But why exactly? And how do you actually develop those muscles so they can do their job?

This post covers both of those questions: why the corners matter so much for your clarinet sound, and wh...

Quarter note triplets are one of the most commonly misread rhythms in music. If you've ever played them and had a teacher or conductor stop you because something felt off, you're not alone. The quarter note triplet is genuinely tricky to internalize, and most players approach it in a way that makes ...

Tongue position and articulation are two of the most misunderstood aspects of clarinet playing. Most of what your tongue does happens completely out of sight, which makes it hard for teachers to spot problems and hard for students to know what to fix.

In this post we're going to cover where your to...

Whether you're buying your first clarinet or upgrading from a student model, this is a significant purchase and it deserves some real thought. There are a lot of options out there and the differences between them actually matter for how you play and how much you enjoy playing.

Here's everything you...

Photo by Laura Rivera on Unsplash

The altissimo register is one of those things that every clarinetist eventually has to tackle, and for a lot of players it feels like a wall. The notes are finicky, they squeak, they don't always come out on command, and the harder you try, the worse it gets.

Here...

Photo by Declan Sun on Unsplash

I seriously do not recommend majoring in music performance. And it's probably not for the reasons you're thinking.

Before you close this tab, hear me out. I have a bachelor's and a master's in music performance. I lived this experience for six years. I'm not here to...

If your clarinet sound has that breathy, fuzzy quality to it, where the tone feels more like air than actual note, you are definitely not alone. It's one of the most common complaints I hear from players at all levels.

The good news is that a fuzzy or airy sound is a fixable problem. Once you under...

Every beginning clarinetist makes mistakes. That's completely normal, and it's part of learning. But some mistakes are so common that I see them come up over and over again with students at every level, and a lot of them are completely avoidable once you know what to look for.

Here are the ten most...