Charlie's Clarinet

Now that Charlie is back in school in-person/full-time, he is able to select a musical instrument. I suppose technically, he didn't have to.  He could have just stuck with the recorder or perhaps the general music class.  But since Graham picked the violin in 4th Grade, I suppose it's only fair that Charlie gets to pick an instrument too. 

At first, Charlie mentioned that maybe he would just play the violin.  And then, he mentioned the trumpet.  I wouldn't have minded the trumpet, although it would have been a rather loud instrument!  And then, after watching the video on all the instruments, he finally decided on the clarinet.  Wooo... I've never played the clarinet before, so this will be interesting!

Here is Charlie's first few attempts at the clarinet:

I gave the clarinet a few tries as well.  It's not so easy!  You really have to put quite an effort into getting the air through the clarinet.

And after a few more days... not too shabby!

Here's the video link: https://youtu.be/t-4ecRxaCr8

Hopefully this will sound a lot better next Christmas??!  The kids have not been blowing into their clarinets at school though due to the Covid protocols at this time.  So just practicing fingering.  In a way, that's not too bad because you should see all that yucky saliva during clarinet cleanup.  YIKES!!

And I'm still trying to convince the store in crediting us for a free mouthpiece.  So far, they have been quite cooperative in entertaining my request.  Here's the problem... the mouthpiece is not attaching to the barrel properly.  Fair enough it's a used instrument, but I shouldn't be sold something that doesn't fully function properly:

I went to the same named store here locally (this clarinet was shipped from Miami, FL!) and eventually just bought a new mouthpiece. I hope I don't have to make another trip to get the old one repaired. It would costs just about the same amount AND it would take 2 or more weeks to get the mouthpiece back!

The new mouthpiece to the left (which is also the original brand) is so much thicker than the one to the right.  I'm definitely learning quite about clarinets this past few weeks.  Ha ha!

Nothing less for these kids, I tell you.  Recently, Charlie has been working on the Rubik's cube a lot.  Supposedly the kids at school are competing during a small part of their PE session:

He did pay us for a fancy one:

Nothing we won't do for these kids... including cookies & cream boba takeaways!

It's no wonder we have a chunky Charlie with all this sugar intake.  Ha!

I just hope his teeth are surviving well through all this.  We did opt out of all the dental work on his cavities for his baby teeth the last time.  I'll have to figure out when his next cleaning is.  But in the meantime, here's to more music at home!  The boys have both stopped their private music lessons for now, so it's been rather quiet.  I do miss them playing the piano and violin.  Will need to try and get that going again, even if it's just for a few minutes every other few days.