Klarinet Archive - Posting 000236.txt from 1996/07

From: Donald Yungkurth <DYungkurth@-----.COM>
Subj: Re: Double Lip Discussion
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 10:59:25 -0400

Bill Fogle writes (in parts of two separate notes):

>I am a double-lip player. I've never read discussion in this >forum about
it. It's great for keeping mouthpieces >pristine. It requires four months of
scar tissue >development (how attractive!) Sometimes I'd like to go >back to
single lip, but I think my embouchure genes
>won't let me.

> . . . Italian player that devotes most of a chapter to a >defense of the
double-lip embouchure. I would have >thought the "French" way, because of
their more >characteristically piercing tone color----hotly debated
>here----would be single-lip embouchure. While I believe a >single-lip
embouchure is completely capable of producing >warm, mellow, dull sounds as
needed, I do believe it is >difficult to be piercing with the double-lip
technique.

I'm sure that I've shared my experience about single and double lip on this
list previously, but since the subject has risen again, I'll join in once
again.

I started on double lip and my teacher never commented or discussed the
subject (although he was certainly trained well enough to have had
knowledge). Forty years later I retired and again studied, with a teacher
who played 2nd and Eb with the Rochester (NY) Philharmonic. One of his first
questions was, "Why to you use double lip".

My response was that I didn't like the sound I made with single lip. He had
me play using single lip and replied that my tone was fine (and the same)
with either embouchure!
He then put a rubber patch on my mouthpiece and said to try single and double
again. They again sounded the same to him, but they also sounded the same to
me!

The bottom line was that, with single lip, I was hearing a lot of vibrations
through the upper teeth via bone conduction to my ears internally. With
double lip, I heard mostly via the ear externally, i. e., as others would
hear me. I now use the rubber patch all the time and can play either single
or double lip - they both sound fine to me.

My teacher, by the way, had used double lip for years, until he started to
play a lot of Eb soprano. He said that he had to switch to single lip for Eb
as double lip was just too hard on the lips. His view was that double lip
gave him better control than single and that he would have stuck with double
if only playing Bb and A. He had studied wtih Harold Wright and said that
Wright used double lip.

So - Bill - I wonder if your views of double vs. single are colored by what
*you* think you sound like, as opposed to what other people hear when you
play. I believe that the differences in apparent sound fron country to
country (or from one style of music to another) have more to do with the
concept of "proper tone" that is somehow implanted into our brains early in
our experience. That is certainly more of a factor (IMHO) than the equipment
or the choice of single or double lip. By the way, I certainly think I could
be just as "piercing" with double as with single!.

Don Yungkurth (DYungkurth@-----.com)