PJM Home

Peter Moore Peter J Moore

Clarinet, Flute and Saxophone Teacher.

Manchester, England.

(44) 0161 437 4772

email:

In addition to his private teaching practice, Peter is a partner in Dr Downing Music.

At the age of 18, he taught himself to play the clarinet. Like so many others before him and since, he 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, Peter has suffered them all.

At the age of 40, he took up the flute, with the intention of becoming a teacher. He studied first with Joan Miller and then with Jane Pickles, Principal Flute in the BBC Concert Orchestra. Peter has also attended residential courses with Susan Milan and Sebastian Bell and studied the clarinet with Pamela Weston.

In the past 49 years he has developed his own ideas of how the clarinet, flute and saxophone could be taught - with the finest teachers possible - his pupils. His research and experimentation has resulted in a method of teaching which is highly effective, particularly with beginners.

Peter is 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.

His 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. Peter Moore's students ALL start playing the clarion register with a correct embouchure.

When he met Sandra Downing, who had likewise suffered from poor bassoon teaching, they decided to try to do something to help other sufferers, thus the Dr Downing Doctor Books were born.

Peter's method is clearly explained in his 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 his method, the "break" doesn't exist. Using this method, Peter's students normally achieve passes at Associated Board Grade 5 in 18 months, those of higher ability in a year.