Klarinet Archive - Posting 000018.txt from 1997/12

From: Da Shouryu-man <jnohe@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: New topic...when to transcribe?
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 15:46:21 -0500

On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, Roger Shilcock wrote:

> Personally, I don't see why anyone should *want* to have a similar
> embouchure on the bass - one is dealing with two pretty different
> instruments. I started out that way on the bass, but found I couldn't
> control it. Also, if you try to sit with the top part of the instrument
> sloping away, you will be sitting right on the edge of your seat, which
> may well not be a good thing for several reasons, not least the increased
> likelihood of falling off. Another reason is that it can make breathing
> difficult.

Sitting on the edge of the seat works just fine. In fact, you should sit
close to the edge of the seat regardless, since if you sit back, you can't
reach the mouthpiece. The proper posture for playing all instruments is
to be sitting 'up', at least with a straight back, where you're not
slouched. I sit so that I am halfway on my seat, positioning the peg so
that when I sit up, the mouthpiece is right at my chin. This allows
proper breathing, and keeps the shoulders from becoming hunched (a bad
habit I have on the soprano). Now, tilting the horn is a little awkward
(especially if the peg has a tendency to slip), but is workable. You just
look funny.

The instruments are not totally different. If you have to alter your
embouchure to play with good tone/in tune, etc., so that it is radically
different than your clarinet embouchure, then in means any of these.

A) Your horn sucks. (This is a common cause. Basses built from '81 to '94
make good firewood. Selmers and Buffets from '95 to now should
play well in tune, and Buffets preceding '80 back to '71 are very
nice, if they are still in good condition.)

B) Your mouthpiece sucks. (Another common cause.)

C) Your reeds suck. This is a VERY common cause. On the Contrabass
Mailing List, there is a least one new guy who pops up every month whining
about how half the reeds he/she buys don't sound really good, or are
'bad', etc. This is due to the fact that many people don't know how to
break in reeds properly. Nearly every reed larger than an alto sax reed
for every single reed instrument will have to be sanded to be broken in,
because due to their large size, they warp so that the back of the reed is
convex, and therefore doesn't sit completely against the facing of the
mouthpiece, and plays like crap. There is a long and tedious process as
to breaking these in so they play well, and it must be used on all reeds
bigger than alto sax/alto clarinet reeds. Otherwise, you won't get
optimum sound. Or, a common thing for people who switch from soprano to
bass, is to carry over the same strengths. It doesn't make a difference
if you play on a 3.5 on clarinet or a 6, you should almost never play on
anything harder than a 3 (Vandoren strength, since strengths seem to vary
from brand to brand) on bass, unless you want to sound like a duck with
bronchitis. The harder the reed, the more you'll have to alter your
embouchure from register to register. And altering the embouchure will
mean that your tone will be inconsistent. Yuck.

I realize that I may come off as being a little cocky and self righteous
with this, but I have put a lot of time and effort into being a good
bassist. A LOT of bands brush the instrument away, considering it
unimportant, and in turn, its not often that people take the study of the
instrument seriously. Yes, there are a lot of little quirks that will
distinguish the bass from the soprano. The way you deal with this is to
forget all the little quirks you know about the soprano and go right down
to the basic fundamental embochure necessary to play the soprano with a
good sound, and then learn the quirks of the bass. Once this is done,
you'll find that the instruments are really not all that different.

Of course, this is assuming that you're playing on decent equipment. I
discovered wonderfully last year that improvement can't happen when your
equipment is holding you back.

Shouryu Nohe