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In addition to my private teaching practice, I am a partner in Dr Downing Music.
At the age of 18, I taught myself to play the clarinet. Like so many others before me and since, I struggled to achieve a good technique despite the contradictory advice offered in the existing primers and tutor books. If there is a fault to be played on the clarinet, I have suffered them all.
At the age of 40, I took up the flute, with the intention of becoming a teacher. I studied first with Joan Miller and then with Jane Pickles, Principal Flute in the BBC Concert Orchestra. I have also attended residential courses with Susan Milan and Sebastian Bell and studied the clarinet with Pamela Weston.
In the past 53 years of playing and 30+ years of teaching, I have developed my own ideas of how the clarinet, flute and saxophone could be taught - with the finest teachers possible - my pupils. This research and experimentation has resulted in a method of teaching which is highly effective, particularly with beginners - even old ones like me.
I am firmly convinced, from bitter personal experience, that the standard method of teaching the clarinet, advocated in primers and tutor books, is seriously flawed. Yet, correctly taught, the clarinet is incredibly easy to play.
My major criticisms of the standard tutor book methods are:
a) An embouchure is normally not taught. Pupils are given a soft reed and the standard advice to "turn your lip back and blow". There is usually little or no further explanation. As a result, pupils often spend more than a year struggling in the bottom register with a dreadful tone.
b) Not only is the fingering taught to beginners oversimplified, the concept of a "break" is also taught, creating a mental hang-up. Every other woodwind instrument has a "break" but it is never taught to be a problem. Worse, having learned this "baby talk" way, students are then shown the correct, better method. This "learning and unlearning" process is contrary to all good teaching practice. Is it any surprise that most give up playing the clarinet?
There is also absolutely no good reason why clarinet students should be taught initially exclusively in the bottom register of the instrument. My students ALL start playing the clarion register with a correct embouchure and only move lower as their embouchure develops - which is many times quicker than conventional teaching.
When I met Sandra Downing, who had likewise suffered from poor bassoon teaching, we decided to try to do something to help other sufferers, thus the Dr Downing Doctor Books were born.
My method is clearly explained in our latest book, Playing the Clarinet is Easy!
The Clarinettist's Technique Doctors, also show you how to develop excellent tone and finger technique from the start - without biting or blowing. In this method, the "break" doesn't exist. Using my methods, students normally achieve passes at Associated Board Grade 5 in 18 months, those of higher ability in a year.
With the onset of osteoarthritis in his late 60's affecting my fingers and restricting my ability to play the clarinet, I decided to take up the Bass Trombone at the tender age of 69. Adrian "Benny" Morris, Professor of Bass Trombone at the RNCM in Manchester and Principal Bass Trombone with the Hallé Orchestra agreed to teach me. The result of this venture is a whole new series of books and charts for Trombonists.
Age is no barrier to learning! You are never too old to learn to play music - as I prove daily.