Klarinet Archive - Posting 000418.txt from 1995/09

From: "Steven M. Gorelick" <SMG@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Undertones
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 1995 15:27:28 -0400

TheDate sent: Tue, 19 Sep 1995 13:57:50 -0500
From: "Edwin V. Lacy" <el2@-----.EDU>
Subject: Re: Undertones
To: Multiple recipients of list KLARINET
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On Tue, 19 Sep 1995, Pat Flannery wrote:

> All this talk of Undertones and subtones reminds me of a question I've been
> meaning to ask for some time now. I think I know how to make a subtone
> accidentally, but how do you do it intentionally? That is to say, how does
> one produce what, in the 30's and 40's, was called a subtone? This was an
> effect on the clarinet used in Big Band (or Smooth Band) music wherein the
> low register was made to sound unusually low and (pardon me here, Dan)
> dark. My favorite example is Freddy Martin (a tenor man, I know, but he
> did double on clarinet) doing "Deep Night".

What I always did to produce "sub-tone" on either clarinet or saxophone was
play very softly, play closer to the tip of the reed so that the instrument
would respond at the lower dynamic level, and play with a much looser
embouchure. It tends to make the instrument sound pretty unsatisfactory if
you have otherwise been trying to produce an acceptable "classical" sound, but
in a section of 3 to 5 saxes/clarinets it can be quite an interesting sound.

Ed Lacy
el2@-----.edu