Klarinet Archive - Posting 000436.txt from 1995/01

From: Bill Parker <bill@-----.AU>
Subj: Re: Older clarinets
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 1995 04:52:28 -0500

Dan Leeson summarized it recently.......The issue of old clarinets has been
done several times on this list, to no definite conclusion. .......

........there are two views. One group believes that the effect of aging
on clarinets has never been sufficiently studied or reliably documented....

A second group is of the opposite viewpoint and.........the reasons
include, but are
not limited to, drying out of wood, the effect of years of swabbing,
the natural consequence of constant vibration on a media as fragile
as wood, etc.

He concluded in a message to me:

But you really should look at the volumes of comments made in past postings
to get an understanding of the lack of real scientific knowledge
about the aging of instruments.

I'll start looking, but clearly I won't reach a conclusion it seems.

What I would like to put up is the proposal that we might design a series
of experiments that could help lay the ghost. I suspect this might be old,
and I have heard the story of Jack Brymer playing the Boosey and Hawkes
range (student to top of the range) of clarinets years ago to a team of
people who couldn't see what he was playing and couldn't tell the
difference anyway.

I suppose the obvious one is the same player playing the same piece on an
"old" (say 25 years plus) instrument and comparing this with the a new
instrument (how new is new?). What is being tested? The sound? How? By the
human ear or by some form of electronic analysis or both? Then the double
blind if this is possible - neither the player nor the listeners know. Then
repeat on different human listeners, different players.
Does this sound like the sort of approach that will generate enough data to
answer the question?

BTW my 60year old Selmer - according to my wife sounds beautiful......

Can we afford to waste solar energy?
(Dr) Bill Parker : bill@-----.au
(+ 619) 328 3804 phone /fax
Box 175 North Perth
Western Australia 6006

   
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