Klarinet Archive - Posting 000198.txt from 1993/12

From: Jay Heiser <jayh@-----.COM>
Subj: How does a clarinet work?
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1993 09:47:43 -0500

All of this conversation about tonal colors, materials & even homogenization
(spelling?) begs a question: How does a clarinet work? Acoustically,
how does it function and how are the components responsible for the sound?

Where does the sound come out?

It doesn't come out the bell, so does it come out the tone holes or does
the entire instrument vibrate?

My point is that to me a discussion of materials is too abstract without
knowing what the materials are supposed to do. I suspect that the crucial
area is pretty close to the mouthpiece. Aren't microphones sometimes
attached to the barrel? (reed mikes are avail too).

Gold plated necks are avail for saxes, and its astounding to me that the
coating on just the neck could significantly affect tone (I'm not
convinced it does). Certainly metal mouthpieces create a difft sound
then hard rubber (and none of the hard rubber wannabe materials impress
me very much). My wife is not a musician, but I took her along to
help choose my first piccolo, and out of several dozen I tried, she could
easily hear the difference between the solid silver and the cheaper ones.
To my ear, a solid gold flute clearly has superior tone.

If we're going to categorize metal as a 'natural' material, I have yet to
encounter any instrument where the best natural material didn't advantages
over the best 'artificial' material (maybe drumheads? I dunno).

To summarize, I have no trouble believing that grenadilla & rosewood make
different sounding instruments. What is it that makes a Buffet superior
to a Vito?
======================================
The interesting thing about narcissism is that the
more severe the case, the less likely the narcissist
is to even be aware of what's happening.