Klarinet Archive - Posting 000596.txt from 1995/04

From: Martin Pergler <pergler@-----.EDU>
Subj: Confused mathemusician
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 20:50:18 -0400

After an unproductive half day reading at best partially comprehensible
math papers, I decided to spend an hour fiddling with various clarinet
gadgets I "inherited" from a friend who stopped playing.

Now I try a (completely unlabelled) barrel on my Bb. Wow! what a sound
(description omitted) -- much nicer than with my current Bb barrel. Let's
try it with the tuner -- the twelvths sound rather wise. Whoa..one line A
and two line C are about 15-20 cents sharp. Now I tend to bite down to
hard on my mouthpiece (or so I think...see below) and I have to watch that
part of the range, but not by _that_ much!

On my desk lies a 1 1/2 by 1 1/2 inch piece of thin flexible plastic (from
one of these vinyl checkbooks that come when you order checks). On
impulse I twist it into a tube and stuff it inside the barrel. The sound
is (almost) the same, but hey the pitch is right on! And the chalumeau
register is not flat, except the low F, which I now have to lip up a bit
more. The top stays in tune even when I bite down harder and pinch the
mouthpiece. Why is that? It reminds me that pitch and pinching don't seem
to be as much of a problem on my A and didn't seem to be a problem at all
on my old high-school band mouthpiece, which I retired in favour of other
mouthpieces which gave me more tone flexibility. I dig it out and try it.
With my current barrel, it seems to play at pitch now matter how hard I
bite and the tone is not great. With the new barrel, it sounds dull and
uninteresting (so with the old m.p. I wouldn't have given the new barrel a
second look). Without the plastic, it's on in pitch, with
the plastic inserted, the top half of the clarinet sounds uniformly flat.

I wonder if there are some bore dimension mismatches. Looking through
the clarinet in various configurations I don't see anything interesting.
My calipers are in Canada.

Any hints? explanations? comments?

Was I chasing ghosts in thinking my pitch problems were caused by
pinching? Can I play with a piece of plastic in my barrel? Do I glue it
in (seems a bit questionable)? If not, I see visions of a very funny
sound followed by the piece of plastic flying out of my bell in the middle
of next week's concert. Anything better I can stick in the
barrel --- being brought up that the clarinet bore must be kept polished
clean and without the slightest scratch, it feels funny to play with an
unevenly rolled up 2 cent piece of plastic wedged in there. It *ought* to
sound awful!

Do I forget the barrel for a bad job, plastic notwithstanding, and
continue thinking "don't pinch" whenever I go above the staff? Do I
spend the next five years searching for that elusive barrel that sounds like
this one but plays flatter near the top? Do I just go back to reading
incomprehensible math papers and leave you all in peace?

Thanks to all, Martin

-------------------------------------------------------
Martin Pergler pergler@-----.edu
Grad student, Mathematics
Univ. of Chicago