Klarinet Archive - Posting 000451.txt from 1997/02

From: Adam Michlin <amichlin@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Sax/Clar Doubling
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 17:32:08 -0500

(Apologies if anyone gets this twice)

At 03:18 PM 2/13/97 -0600, Edwin Lacy wrote:
>On Thu, 13 Feb 1997, Adam Michlin wrote:
>
>> >These players invariably sound like either clarinet players trying to
>> >play the saxophone, or saxophone players playing the clarinet.
>>
>> And, most likely, these players didnt use a good embouchure for either
>> instrument.
>
>Absolutely not true. I have heard experienced professional clarinet
>players, people with advanced degrees and study with some of the world's
>most outstanding clarinet teachers try to play the saxophone with their
>clarinet embouchures. One thing I can tell you is that it doesn't work.
>The same is true, perhaps moreso, for professional saxophonists,
>especially jazz specialists, no matter how advanced technically, who try
>to play the clarinet with a saxophone embouchure.

Jazz specialists, especially, get away with some pretty horrible
embouchures. In no way do I equate horrible embouchures with horrible
music. Great music can come from the worst embouchures and vice versa.

My only statement, and I'll qualify it further, is that it is very possible
to play clarinet and saxophone at the highest levels with the same
embouchure In no way do I claim someone using the embouchure as taught by
Joesph Allard on saxophone will magically be able to pick up a clarinet and
sound like Eddie Daniels. The embouchure is just the basis, each
instrument must be practiced extensively to produce a good overall result.

I submit an alterative explanation for your experiences (of course, each
case will be different). My experience is that many great clarinet players
think they don't need to practice saxophone because they play clarinet so
well. No matter how "correct" their embouchure, they just havent put in
the time to sound good on saxophone. They then make excuses like "I sound
bad on the saxophone because of my clarinet embouchure" or "I dont practice
saxophone because it will ruin my clarinet playing". I know I used to make
these excuses. The differences are in the fingerings, intonation
tendencies, and styles required, not the basic embouchure.

>> I'm afraid I'm the one who has to disagree here. "Cushioning" to me
>> implies more lip pressure than jaw pressure. This is a bad idea for *any*
>
>"Cushioning" does not mean lip pressure. It means just the opposite. If
>there is considerable pressure of the lip against the reed, whether
>created by the jaw or the lip itself, the result is a smaller area of
>contact between the lip and the reed. This means that there are larger
>areas of the reed, both inside and outside the mouth, which will be
>vibrating without the player being able to control the degree of
>vibration. On the saxophone, the result usually is a thin, pinched sound,
>reduced dynamic range, and the exacerbation of the normal intonation
>discrepancies of the instrument.

>From my understanding (from both the teaching of Allard and my own
background in physics), I have to disagree with your explanation. Their
are two major factors involved in getting a "good" sound. The first, which
I doubt we disagree on, is that their must be air support, otherwise the
reed simply wont vibrate. The second is that the reed must be allowed to
vibrate.

What do we as players do to prevent the reed from vibrating? The two most
common things are wrapping the lower lip around the sides of the reed and
taking too much lower lip into the mouth causing the reed to rest on the
skin rather than the lip. The skin is much stronger and much more inclined
to prevent vibration of the reed. The reed needs to be against the red
part of the lip to allow for proper vibration. The quanity of lip touching
the reed will vary widely depending on each persons lips, but the key is
the red must be the contact point.

Both are totally independant of whether you're playing a saxophone or
clarinet.

>The reason that the clarinet and the saxophone work differently in this
>regard is a little difficult to explain, but I'll give it a try. Imagine
>a hypothetical single reed instrument. By playing with varying degrees of
>embouchure pressure and wind speed, the pitch of any given note can be
>varied by an interval ranging anywhere from a semi-tone to a major third
>or more. (For the moment, I'm assuming that we can agree that air speed,
>air pressure and air volume are interrelated, and directionally
>proportional.) Now, if that instrument is no longer hypothetical, but is
>a clarinet, most clarinet players will say the the instrument sounds best
>when it is played near the top of the range of pitches available for a
>given fingering, while saxophonists prefer the sound of their instrument
>when it is played nearer the bottom of that range. Let's say that the

I'm curious about this statement. I'd say the goal is to make all
registers sound the same, or at least being *able* to make them sound the
same. I find the statement above highly subjective. I know a heck of a
lot of bass clarinetists (myself included) that find their low range a lot
more pleasing than their high range @-----. I've always prefered the high
range on my sax (although I'm working towards equal sound in all registers).

>As we know from the field of acoustics, there are a larger number of
>overtones present in the harmonic spectrum a tone played at its nominal
>pitch than in the same pitch if played sharp or flat. So, given the
>characteristics of embouchure, breath, reed, mouthpiece and instrument
>required to produce an in-tune pitch, the tone quality as perceived by
>either the player or listener will be dependent on that particular
>overtone structure. If the physical characteristics of the sound are
>changed due to using an embouchure or breath pressure inappropriate for
>that particular setup, the result will not be just a different pitch,
>but it will also have a different tonal spectrum.
>
>That's a little about why the clarinet and saxophone are not the same
>instrument, and why each one requires a slightly different playing
>technique as far as embouchure and breath are concerned.

The only difference between the clarinet and the saxophone is that the
clarinet is cylindrical with one end closed and thus only the odd harmonics
are produced while the saxophone, being conical and closed at one end,
produces all the harmonics. The effect of the embouchure is to weaken or
deaden these harmonics. A "dark" sound has the characteristic of strong
lower overtones with weaker higher overtones. A "bright" sound is the
opposite. What I consider a "good" sound has an equal strength in both the
upper and lower overtones of the harmonic series. An embouchure that
weakens either range of overtones will have the exact same result
harmonically (if you look at the sound on an oscilliscope). Aesthetically,
we may accept a dark clarinet tone but not a dark saxophone tone, but the
fundamental sound production mechanism and cause/effects are the same.

-Adam
amichlin@-----.edu
amichlin@-----.com