Klarinet Archive - Posting 000975.txt from 1998/11

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Why I can't play in tune: a clarinetist's apology
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 17:33:36 -0500

Another tidbit I forgot: if you start a note with a fresh lungful of
air, the pitch of a note drifts flatter as you play it due to the
replacement of the oxygen by denser carbon dioxide. This is
sufficiently noticeable to make it worthwhile breathing in a few seconds
early if you have to begin with an exposed sharpish note, e.g. Schubert
Octet slow movement. Also it's better to take breaths before naturally
flattish notes e.g. middle of Brahms F minor Sonata slow movement.

Martin, I think you're the man to give us an estimate of the precise
magnitude of the effect. Sorry to have called you a physicist by the
way -- I can't read.

I once brought the subject up at dinner in Cambridge with the
neurophysiologist Giles Brindley, and he did an off-the-top-of-his-head
estimate, but I can't remember what the numbers were, and I can't be
bothered to go and look up all the relevant facts.

Brindley was an interesting offbeat character who I got to know because
he supervised a pal of mine, David Marr, for a bit. David was the
mathematician/scientist who wrote the seminal book 'Vision' and the
early papers that changed the direction of computer vision research. He
was also a fine amateur clarinettist -- I wonder whether anyone here
from MIT remembers him? He died tragically early of leukaemia in 1981.

Brindley was also an amateur musician, and he constructed a gadget
called 'the logical bassoon' in Cambridge in the early sixties, well
before integrated circuitry was available. This was a primitive
instrument acoustically, but it was a bassoon, with a real bassoon reed
you blew into; the fingering, though, was done by electrical relays,
operated from a keyboard. It was possible to programme very complicated
fingerings, ones you couldn't possibly do on a real instrument, and
change from one to another with a simple keypress. There was one key
that moved any note up a semitone, I remember, so that you could do a
trill with just one finger on the keyboard while the instrument itself
flapped about wildly between one amazing fingering and another.

He also submerged himself in freezing water for several minutes to check
a predicted effect on his colour vision, and learnt Russian by studying
it for ten minutes every day, I was told; but his most outrageous
exploit in later life was to give a lecture on some treatment for
erectile dysfunction he had developed, the efficacy of which he *pulled
down his trousers and demonstrated* in front of an enthusiastic
audience.

Going back to the clarinet: it's also amusing to play with a lungful of
helium from a child's balloon -- a B flat clarinet turns into an E flat!
But be careful, everyone; I'm told that if you pass out with helium in
your lungs, your breathing reflex isn't activated, because it's
triggered not by oxygen lack but by CO2 excess. I haven't checked, but
I'd hate anyone to decide the issue the hard way.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE
tel/fax 01865 553339

"...his playing soars so freely, one is aware of witchcraft without
noticing a single magical gesture."
(C.D.F.Schubart on the harpsichord playing of C.P.E.Bach)

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