Klarinet Archive - Posting 000471.txt from 1995/06

From: Rien Stein <rien@-----.NL>
Subj: Re: Down_in_the_Dumps
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 1995 05:28:33 -0400

Fred Cicetti wrote:

>Here's my question. Is there anything I can do to improve the acoustics
>in the cellar? It's all poured concrete with a wood ceiling. The sound I
>get is thin. No, wait. The sound is bright. Yes, that's it; it's bright.
>But, in the living room, the sound is as dark as Dan Leeson's moods.

When we moved into our present living, I faced the same problem.
Luckily I am not only a great lover of clarinet playing, but also of
reading, thus I own a very large store of books. It helped very much,
when I fastened a lot of bookshelves to one concrete wall,
and put my books on these, covering the whole wall. Besides we put a carpet
of a very cheap quality on the floor, covering the wall completely, so
my at that time still very young children could play there
without harming their knees. Even though the ceiling of the room and
two (adjacent) walls were still of hard concrete, it resulted in very
satisfactory accoustics, though one must not expect to get concert hall
quality.

The result was even better, when because of a party of one of the
youngsters,I hung a camouflage net against the ceiling, with a lot of
small "ornaments" like pages from old journals, and balloons and the likes
in it: obviously it broke the ceiling reflections in a pleasant manner.

I played in this room with much pleasure, but alas when the kids grew
older I rebuilt it to two rooms for my two sons. Nowadays I usually play
in the bed room, but accoustics there is somewhat less.

Thus, Fred, if you own a sufficiently large store of books, this may be the
cheapest solution to your problems (unless your basement is too moist
for this solution. But then you also couldn't keep your store of bottles
of wine in it, neither, I guess.)

Greetings

Rien