Klarinet Archive - Posting 000026.txt from 1995/05

From: Douglas Sears <dsears@-----.ORG>
Subj: Re: Confused mathemusician
Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 13:46:51 -0400

On Sat, 29 Apr 1995, Martin Pergler wrote:

> 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.

Arthur H. Benade makes it clear that one of the major problems of clarinet
design is the tradeoff between good tone and good tuning. The register hole
sharpens second-register notes toward the top and bottom ends of the bore;
to counteract that, the bore is tapered larger at top and bottom, which
improves the tuning but hurts the tone. "This shape has evolved through
the past two centuries to give a fairly accurate played twelfth between
the registers, but it does this at the expense of pitch stability,
promptness of speech, and clarity of tone in the low register."
(Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics, p. 478; Dover corrected edition, 1990)

Your unlabeled barrel has put you at another point on the tradeoff curve.
Some months ago there were some good suggestions made on this list about
how to go about choosing a barrel (basically: go to a store and
systematically try a bunch). As you found out, it can make a noticeable
difference. I think this influence of bore taper on tone and tuning is
also a major factor in choice of mouthpieces, and explains why it makes no
sense to say, for example, "B45 is a good mouthpiece" without specifying
which model of clarinet (and barrel) it's attached to.

Benade goes on to say that the tradeoff I've been talking about could
be mostly eliminated by giving a clarinet two register holes, like a
saxophone. I wonder if anybody has built such a thing. I'd love to
get my hands on a clarinet with all the improvements Benade has written
about.

-----------------
Doug Sears dsears@-----.org (503)343-8943