Klarinet Archive - Posting 000812.txt from 1998/12

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] The Bb sounds different
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 19:25:36 -0500

On Mon, 21 Dec 1998 14:07:32 EST, CmdrHerel@-----.com said:

> What we tend to do for those notes is used what are called "vented"
> fingerings

Teri, I applaud your entirely correct advice on how to improve these
notes. Your fingerings are also pretty much the ones I use, so, for
what it's worth, I add my vote to yours.

But I'd like to give a slightly different explanation of how they work.
It seems to me that what you said:

> , that is, fingering combinations that result in forcing the air to
> travel further down the clarinet body, allowing for more overtones in
> the sound.

...has some implications that exclude other considerations that could
be advantageous. You probably wouldn't exclude them yourself if you
were teaching someone, because you'd have other things to say as well.
However, in the clarinet world, the picture that a good sound requires
air_to_travel_down_the_instrument is, I think, over-represented, and I
want here to support the opposite view: namely, that it's a resonance
effect that can best explain the phenomenon.

I think a good way to approach it is to make an analogy with another
circumstance in which resonance helps sound: the way in which a
xylophone can be transformed into a richer, more sustaining instrument
by hanging resonating tubes underneath the body of the instrument. If
we do this, we get an instrument called a marimbaphone.

A marimbaphone note dies away less than a xylophone note, because the
vibration of the resonating tube co-operates with the vibration of the
wooden bars.

So the analogy is that, on a clarinet, the effect of your vented
fingerings is to hang a resonance tube underneath the bit of tube that's
playing the note. The effect of this may be both to amplify the sound,
and to support the vibration of the reed.

But there is an added implication that we have been talking about quite
a lot here recently: resonance tubes can occur on *either side* of the
vibrating reed.

If the resonance of your mouth shape, created by your tongue position,
*matches* one part of the note that you are playing, you support the
reed in vibrating in a way that is appropriate to that note. So you are
supporting the system in producing that note on *both sides* of the
vibrating reed.

So then, the answer to Steen includes both things: the resonance on the
clarinet side, and the resonance on the mouth side.

To find the best resonances requires experiment.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
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"'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own."

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