Klarinet Archive - Posting 000072.txt from 1998/09

From: Kenneth Wolman <kwolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Children and Clarinet Playing
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 09:02:46 -0400

>>I was surprised when I went into a music store in my work neighborhood and
>>saw that the nameless They are still manufacturing the Flute-o-phone, the
>>"instrument" that I learned to play when I was being given musical aptitude
>>tests in the 1st or 2nd grade, somewhere around 1951. Those and the
>>infamous Tonette. I don't remember what they sounded like.
>>
>Yes, they are still available, but they used to make them better. I still
>have mine (c. 1960). It is basically a recorder designed not to blow an
>octave.

Maybe it was because kids my age back then had no sense of how to shape a
tone or know what a good tone should sound like, but I remember stuff like
Tonettes being real easy to play. When my younger son had to buy a
recorder for some preparatory music classes in 1990 or 91, I joined him and
got myself a Yamaha alto, a low-end Baroque system ABS body instrument. I
still have it and fool around with it now and then. It is not at all easy
to get a good tone out of the thing: you really need to develop a "touch"
if not specifically an embouchure, just the right amount of pressure on the
mouthpiece. And the art of half-covering toneholes is tricky. But if you
get everything coordinated, it's a real nice sound. I can only imagine how
much better real maple recorders sound, but I can't afford to find out:-).

Ken

Kenneth Wolman Information Technology Morgan Stanley Inc.
750 Seventh Avenue New York, NY 212-762-1685
"From the Meadowlands": http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/1649
"The extent to which my four-legged kid controls my existence is relegated
to the status of `secret life' most of the time. The average American on
the street just cannot comprehend inter-species parent-child
relationships."--Anonymous

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