Klarinet Archive - Posting 000050.txt from 1999/03

From: Richard Bush <rbushidioglot@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] FROM LEAKY PIPES TO CLARINET REEDS
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 21:09:27 -0500

FROM LEAKY PIPES TO CLARINET REEDS

Last week our house developed a leak. Where do leaks develop? Why, of
course they develop where you can't get to
them, where you have to tear down half of the basement ceiling to repair
them. They develop where they will do a lot of
damage unless attended to RIGHT NOW.

No problemo! I'm an instrument repairman, so soldering pipes is a piece
of cake, right? There are a few basic
differences though. A saxophone doesn't spew scalding water onto your
scalp when you unsolder a joint, and a
saxophone doesn't need to be soldered back together overhead, dripping
molten solder onto your arms.

The job is done. The pinhole leak has been replaced with a fresh and
shinny length of copper pipe. While in the process
of doing this chore, water was turned on and off several times over a
two day period, on to take a quick shower, flush
all of the toilets, run water for dish washing etc. You get the picture.
My wife commented, "It kind of makes you
thankful for indoor plumbing."

We take a lot of these things for granted. Our lives are so much easier
than they were for our ancestors just a couple or
three generations ago. When my grandfather came to America for England
to settle with his family in Salt Lake City he
was twelve years old in 1907. By then, many folks had indoor plumbing.
Salt Lake had been electrified and_modern_
technology was quickly changing the way everyone lived.

The advancements of the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century were as
spectacular then as what we are witnessing
today, and built upon them, the Twentieth Century came screaming in.
Here's a short list: Modern steel making was
transforming big cities into skyscraper cities. The east and west coasts
were connected with a transcontinental railroad.
The telephone of 1875, the typewriter, the phonograph, the light bulb,
the roll film camera and soon on its heals, the
motion picture camera were changing the ways everyone lived, did
business and played. Men even started to look
different after Gillette patented the safety razor in 1904. One year
before that the Wright Flier and the two bicycle
mechanics from Dayton, Ohio launched aviation. For sure, these were
exciting times.

As is always the case, _progress_ always has a down side-- a price for
the convenience enjoyed and the introduction of
a whole new set of problems.

While Caruso was singing into Edison's phonograph (1903) and Puccini
premiered Madame Butterfly (1904), a French
clarinet player named Eugene Van Doren was building a modest, treadle
driven machine that would machine finish
clarinet reeds. 1905 was the beginning of what we now enjoy, reeds
without having to make them from scratch.

As you can imagine, this was welcome news. Gone forever would be those
countless hours of hand carving, sanding
and all the rest of it, just to get a reed to the point where it would
make a sound. This convenience, this labor and time
saving bit of progress has, however, proved to be a mixed blessing.
Without having to serve an apprenticeship in single
reed making, clarinet and saxophone players have left themselves
ignorant of that whole body of information about what
makes a reed tick, or more accurately, what makes it play well. Most
single reed players naively think that what they get
in a box are ready-to-play reeds. With this erroneous assumption we are
now, collectively, slaves to our reeds. If one
doesn't work we simply try another, and another, and another. Welcome to
the disposable age. We have comfortable
clean shaves, thanks to Gillette, and we have easy come, easy go reeds,
thanks to Eugene Van Doren.

The information is out there. Teal's, "The Art of Saxophone playing,"
Keith Stines clarinet equivalent, Oppermann's
book on reed making, Bonade's booklet, "The Art of Adjusting Reeds,"
George T. Kirck's booklet, "The Reed-Mate
Reed Guide." The sad truth, though, is this: unless it can be downloaded
from cyerspace for free, unless it can be spoon
fed to a totally passive generation of couch potatoes, most will not
seek it out. Most will not go to a library and find it on
the shelves. And if literally handed the material, will not take the
time to learn this craft because buying a store bought
reed, whether it plays well or not, is just too damned easy.

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