Klarinet Archive - Posting 000254.txt from 1994/05

From: Jeff Bowles <jab@-----.COM>
Subj: A new member and a couple of questions...
Date: Sun, 15 May 1994 16:57:00 -0400

I just got onto this list and have been combing through thr previous
submissions.

I normally play Bb soprano (a nice, old Buffet that's treating me
nicely, thank you) and on a lark, rented an Eb contralto to see
how "the other half" lived.

What a lot of fun! It's quite pleasant being the lowest woodwind in
my band, and the growl-mode on the lowest half of the
chalumeau register is quite a challenge to make sound full, yet
not buzz. (One thing at a time. It's a student-grade mouthpiece
and will be the first thing to go.)

Now, I have several questions/comments about the Eb-contra:
1. This is an older Selmer, and goes down to low-E. (concert G0,
if I'm calling it right.) The chalumeau and clarion registers
seem acoustically to be divided (in sound) into two halves,
making jumps from left-hand D to low-F (and the like) pretty
hard to do without anticipating a potential squawk. Is this
the player or an eccentricity of the instrument?
2. The octaves seem stretched a little, so that if I tune
a concert-Bb in the clarion register, the one two octaves
below seems flat. Is this what "blowing out" of an instrument
means?
3. [General comment] Band music tends to not use this much,
does it? I'm using BBb-contra parts (transposing) a lot,
because the BBb-contra parts don't REALLY seem to go below
my EEb-contra's lowest now, except in a rare case. (And if
there's no BBb-contra part, it's off to the string bass parts
we go. The nice thing about the EEb-contra (and, I 'spose, the
bari sax) is that you can read bass clef parts with only
a few little headaches.

Jeff Bowles