Klarinet Archive - Posting 000439.txt from 1998/04

From: Kenneth Wolman <kwolman@-----.net>
Subj: Re: DENTURES AND CLARINET PLAYING
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 10:06:09 -0400

At 08:59 AM 4/9/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Four comments:
>
>1) (Testimonial)I have been using the commercial (expensive) stuff since I
>returned to playing a few years ago after a 40-year layoff. I don't have
>dentures, but do have a ragged set of lower teeth, and they used to give me
>hell playing for any length of time. Now I may have other endurance
>problems, but a cut lower lip isn't one of them. So its not just folks with
>metal in their mouth who can benefit from this stuff.

Well, that describes my problem: a long layoff (I stopped playing in 1961
after having played starting in 1952) combined these days with an aging
body:-). Though I remembered something interesting regarding producing an
acceptable sound from the horn. When I began playing, I had braces and a
bite plate because I was in orthodontia roughly from ages 9 to 13. The
first couple of years I played, to put it bluntly, I sucked. Then, as I
recall it now, when the braces came off and the bite plate came out, the
tone improved dramatically, and I got good enough technically to be able to
negotiate the Mozart Concerto without, nevertheless, deceiving anyone into
thinking I was Kell or DePeyer.

I got the dentures in 1996 and have discovered that a good denture cement
is my best friend in clarinetting as well as eating anything more chewy
than yogurt. I can play with the store teeth or without them, but it seems
to make a difference in my embouchure, and my instincts tell me to pick a
method--teeth in or out--and don't deviate from it. Hell, Richie Havens
made a lot of money singing without his false teeth:-).

The embouchure problem remains on real above-the-staff high notes: I'm
still learning how to "work" my mouth so I can attack a note directly
instead of sliding or squealing my way into it.

I wonder if there is not some correlation between reeds and the techniques
needed to compensate for dentures. On an impulse yesterday I picked up a
box of No. 3 Vandoren V-12s (I've been using the Vandoren traditionals),
and spent 20 minutes earlier today sucking on the reed before attaching it
to the mouthpiece (Selmer HS*, Rovner Light ligature). I was astounded. I
got what I wanted: an "edgier" tone and much easier production, with much
more ease and better intonation on the high notes.

Someday I might even be READY for a teacher and for that Mozart again:-).

Ken

"The East River. But it was not a river at all. Merely a column of water
connecting the upper harbor to the Sound. Yet everyone called it a river.
They chose not to think about it. They clung to the surface of things."
--Peter Quinn, "Banished Children of Eve"
Ken Wolman kwolman@-----.com/SoHo/Gallery/1649