Klarinet Archive - Posting 000157.txt from 1997/01

From: Fred Jacobowitz <fredj@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: Bass Clarinet Woes!
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 1997 11:10:00 -0500

Bill,
Have you tried any other mouthpieces? I had a Hite
mouthpiece (bought a long time ago when I was just starting out and had no
instrument but needed a mouthpiece, should the opportunity ever present
itself to play on a borrowed instrument) which squeaked all the time. I
thought it
was me or the instrument. It wasn't. I even let my (then) teacher, a bass
clarinet specialist, try the mouthpiece. He didn't squeak on it. But I
tried other mouthpieces and didn't squeak on any of them. For some reason,
This one mouthpiece was a squeaker when I played on it. Now I have a new
Selmer and I have no more squeaks (and I like the sound quality too). See
if you can get to a store and try out other mouthpieces.
Also, I tend to
overblow Bass clarinets - especially on loud attacks. I had to learn not
to. This stopped some of my cracked notes. Maybe you're chirping because
you also overblow.

Fred Jacobowitz
Clarinet/Sax Instructor, Peabody Preparatory

On Wed, 8 Jan 1997, bill wrote:

> 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
>