Klarinet Archive - Posting 000089.txt from 1998/12

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] The helionet
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 07:37:49 -0500

On Wed, 02 Dec 1998 11:45:26 PST, scottdmorrow@-----.com said:

> > (1a) Would it be better to put the helium in lower down, since it's
> > less dense than the air?

> ------> If you apply it with a bit of pressure, it will flow well
> enough! I just don't understand why we want to do this!

Good question.

Well, composers have always wanted to extend the possibilities of
instruments. Think of prepared pianos, multiphonics, electronically
enhanced harpsichords and guitars, ring modulators, etc etc. There are
many effects.

Unfortunately, such effects are often overdone. A skilfully prepared
and 'heard' multiphonic on the clarinet can be entrancing, but as soon
as there are more than a few of them in a piece, the listener's interest
wanes.

Another difficulty with electronic modification is that the thing is too
easy. Somehow the best effects come about when the player interacts
with something that is a bit difficult to make work. (It's worth
discussing why this is, but perhaps not in this thread.)

One of the most striking examples of the sort of effect I'm thinking of
is one I encountered in a week-long series of improvisations I played in
1984 with a group called 'Company'. The rules of this eight or nine
player group were nonexistent, apart from the fact that the guitarist
Derek Bailey set the instrumentation for each 'piece' a few seconds
before it began. "I think, piano, drums, Zorn and clarinet for this
one," he would say, and we'd go out onstage and see what happened. We
didn't really know each other, and had to set/discover the parameters of
each piece as we went along.

Sometimes the results were good, sometimes dreadful, I thought. But we
got better over the week.

For the curious, the 'Zorn' above refers to the musician John Zorn, who
on that occasion did things like play bird decoys underwater (yes, you
may well ask), which as you can imagine was a 'problem' for me to solve
when we played together.

Anyway, the 'effect' I want to talk about was created by the horn player
Pip Eastop, who had the idea of removing the slides on one side of his
double horn and connecting the open tubes to a couple of pieces of
rubber hosepipe several feet long. He then attached another horn and a
trumpet to the other ends of the rubber pipes, and placed these
instruments among the audience. At a critical point in one
improvisation, which I remember was a duet with a blind amateur tenor
sax player with considerable charisma, Pip depressed a valve and
'played' one of the distant instruments. A few moments later, the other
one sounded -- and then it became clear that he was able to make his
sound 'spin' around the equilateral triangle simply by operating the
valves.

OK, it doesn't sound much. But it was done with a great sense of
theatre, he had the sense not to overdo it, and the improvisation as a
whole brought the house down.

Now, I imagined the helionet (should it be a clarium?) would be just a
normally played clarinet most of the time; but with the potential,
because of the gas attachment, of transforming into something both
strange and recognisable. (And *real*, like the multi-horn.)

In one section of a solo piece, you could do clever glissandi mixed with
fingered passages. Very quiet perhaps. I don't know. The idea would
be to find out.

I had the idea a few years ago, but was too lazy to get it going. The
reason I mentioned it here is because of the large US presence, and
because I associate the US with all the mail-order catalogues, workshop
facilities, spirit of adventure....:-) (Imagine, it might make 'The
Amateur Scientist' in Scientific American!!)

Don't let me put Europe off, though.

> > (6) Since helium is expensive, how about CO2?

> -------> I pay about $140 for a large cylinder of "zero" grade (higher
> purity) helium. This would last you a while!

See what I mean?

How about one of those little gas cylinders, hooked up to the barrel?

> > (8) I'll get my coat. (for the British TV audience)

> -------> I guess we'll have to wait a few years for this in the States!

It's 'The Fast Show':-)

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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