I can understand that beginning to play the clarinet can be a little bit too much and intimidating in the beginning.
I can remember my first time trying to produce a sound with this beautiful instrument. I can tell you, the sound I produced wasn’t pretty. But after that I started to learn, to get better and finally I even graduated with my instrument with a perfect score. The beginning is never easy but my first teacher showed me tricks and methods that helped me later to master difficulties more easily. He did a great job in guiding me through this very difficult beginner phase. In this article I want to share with you some of those tricks, so they might help you to advance further and more easy with the clarinet. It is absolutely worth to invest some time in this awesome instrument, because in my opinion there are not many instruments that compare with its sad, melancholic but beautiful sound.

Tip Number 1: Start holding the notes for four beats
In this exercise you are challenged to hold all notes you know at least four beats long, every single one of them. You start from the deepest note you can play to the highest, while holding each note at least four slow beats long. If you got to the highest note, go the same way back down again. If you have mastered this you can try to make it more difficult by starting each note very quietly, getting louder and afterwards fading back to quiet again. All of this in the time you hold every single note. If you do this exercise repeatedly you will start to develop an iron stamina which will help you if you play longer pieces of music. You might have noticed that after a certain time of playing your lips get weak and you are not able to hold the note in a stable way and the tune begins to shiver. This exercise helps to avoid and prevent such things. Of course if you overdo it you lips will get weak again, but I tell you that you will be able to play any general music piece without problems by only doing this small stamina exercise.
This exercise also helps you to develop a nice sound with your clarinet. A nice sound is not naturally given and takes time and practice but I promise you it is worth it because it makes playing the clarinet so much better. A small tip at the end. If you produce with your lips the same sound a horse is doing when it is snorting, while they are exhausted it will give a small amount of strength back even though you are fully exhausted. It helps the lips to relax and squeeze out a little more stamina.

Tip Number 2: Scale practice
My first clarinet teacher taught me this trick in a very clever way. He taught me scale after scale from the easiest to the hardest ones, making every one into a challenge that I had to master. I did not only need this for exams in the clarinet I took later. No, scales are the very basic of every musical piece. Every song, every classical is written in one or more scales and it uses notes from the scales. If the scale has special notes for example the Bb instead of the B, just like the F-Scale, also the notes in the piece that is written in that exact scale are changing. By teaching me how to play the scales, even to play them by heart, he cleverly trained my fingers to play difficult phrases in pieces with special notes more easily, because they were already used and trained to play notes in that special way. I still remember that sometimes it annoyed me to learn more and more scales, but now I need to acknowledge that this trick, this teaching gave me a very important technical advantage in difficult music pieces.

Tip Number 3: Belly Breathing
If you are a beginner you might not have thought about how to breathe properly. Me for instance started to play the clarinet while breathing with the chest. This might seem natural because if you don’t really think about it you most likely breath with your breast. It is a very shallow but easy way of breathing. But what if I tell you that there is an even better way to breathe that will improve you playing by a lot. This breathing technique is called the musician breathing, but you could just call it belly breathing for simplicity. But how to do it? Try to suck in as much air as possible and when you feel that your chest is filled to the extent of its volume try to put more air into your belly, It will grow like a balloon. This is the sweet spot where you want to land. Each time you need to breath after playing some notes try to concentrate and move the air into your belly instead of your chest. Now when you breath out try to contract your belly muscles and press the air out with them. It will allow you to create a stronger and more stable air flow than with breathing with the chest. This stronger airflow makes it easier to produce harder tunes and will bring you a better and steady sound. If you have achieved this and trained this it will come naturally while playing.
Give those tips and exercises a try and stick to them a little bit. I know it can be hard but you will see the results as you improve in playing the clarinet by a big extend. I hope you will have a lot of fun with making music , just like I had and still have.