Klarinet Archive - Posting 000106.txt from 1997/01

From: bill <bill@-----.ORG>
Subj: Bass Clarinet Woes!
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 21:43:44 -0500

Hello, all!

I'm an amateur clarinetist in a small, sort of ensemble of friends
and coworkers at my workplace, and I've recently been encountering some
quite tricky problems in getting familiarized with the bass clarinet.

I'm a really competent, pretty together player, when it comes to Bb soprano,
and, though it's a student model, I have a nice Yamaha eefer that I'm
able to lip into tune _really_ consistently. I really love the bass
clarinet the most though, and though I'm making progress getting adapted
to it, I'm having a devil of a time. Basically, I'm plagued by squeaks.
I've tried a variety of reeds, from vandoren blue boxes, to v12's, to
different flavors of rico, all of which I've smoothed and sanded so as not
to be warped just like my soprano reeds; I've worked with both an ordinary
selmer metal ligature and a rovner, on my mouthpiece, which is selmer
standard. I just can't seem to get past a strange tendency to get these
ODD sounds out of the instrument, when hitting the high end of the clarion
register, and the lower part of altissimo, and sometimes, especially at the
beginning of playing, in the chalameau register. The clarinet's been checked
up as being in good working order, and when played by a professional friend,
it's been said to respoind well, even though it's an older plastic one-piece
horn. Anything I can check, or change about my practice, that might help me
get my sound unstuffy, and clean in breaking? Any help would be _deeply_
appreciated.

--Bill