![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/clarinet.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI pulled this bad boy out of the closet earlier today:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This is noteworthy, at least to me, since it’s been approximately thirty years — THREE DECADES! — since I made an attempt at playing a clarinet.<\/p>\n
I was pleasantly surprised that none of the pads had fallen out, all the cork was still intact, and I spotted only one insignificant crack in the wood thanks to years in the dry West Texas climate and lack of regular oiling.<\/p>\n
I miss making music. I began playing the clarinet in junior high, and by the time I was a senior in high school I had gotten pretty good. I don’t have any natural musical ability, but I didn’t mind practicing and I did a lot of it. Amazing how that can work out, right? <\/p>\n
I played a little in college as well, at least for the first couple of years. But I lost the ambition somewhere along the way, and stowed the instrument. I never completely forgot it, though.<\/p>\n
Ten or fifteen years later, I was presented with a guitar…one strung to accommodate my left-handedness…and I noodled around on it for a while. I finally admitted the futility of teaching myself to play, and I didn’t have the energy to look for a teacher who took southpaw students. Plus, chords are HARD…at least for a clarinetist. <\/p>\n
I still had the unsatisfied-if-suppressed urge to make some music. So, today, with MLB<\/acronym> out of the house and me confined to it with a mild cold, I opened the case and assembled the instrument while sucking on the reed in an attempt to bring it back to life.<\/p>\n I ran my fingers up and down the keys and I have to tell you that they didn’t feel as if I’d been gone for thirty years. I guess when you do something for a few thousand hours, the brain and nerves and muscles still retain some of that learned ability.<\/p>\n Making actual music come out of the instrument was a whole other thing, though. Any wind instrument player will attest to the fact that the muscles involved in the creation of a workable embouchure<\/a> do not automagically stay fit. It’s no different than trying to run a marathon after 30 years of sitting at a desk; the results are guaranteed to be painful. After about ten minutes, I was close to being a drooling slob. (Well, more so than usual.)<\/p>\n But…!<\/p>\n I was able to coax some actual clarinet-sounding stuff out of the instrument, and even more remarkable, I could match the notes on a page (or in my head) with the proper placement of fingers on the keys. I grabbed a couple of books of music — a Baptist hymnal for tunes and a book of practice exercises for, well, practice<\/i> — and even if every tenth note or so was a squeak<\/i> or a squawk<\/i> (legit technical musical terms), I exceeded my admittedly low expectations for skill.<\/p>\n Anyone unfortunate enough to have been within earshot would be forgiven for thinking this was a hopeless endeavor, but for me, it was just successful enough to give me motivation to start practicing more regularly. I figure that if I did it once, I can do it again.<\/p>\n Y’all might want to pray for MLB<\/acronym>, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I pulled this bad boy out of the closet earlier today: This is noteworthy, at least to me, since it’s been approximately thirty years — THREE DECADES! — since I made an attempt at playing a clarinet. I was pleasantly surprised that none of the pads had fallen out, all the cork was still intact,… Continue reading The Creaky Clarinetist<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9982,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions\/9982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}