Klarinet Archive - Posting 000750.txt from 1999/05

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: [kl] re: blow out
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 17:59:22 -0400

> From: MX%"klarinet@-----.74
> Subj: RE: [kl] re: blow out

> To All And Sundry:
> YES, BLOWOUT EXISTS. IT HAPPENED TO MY CLARINET!!!!!!!!!
>
> The symptoms are: 1) A brightening of tone to the point of being shrill.
> 2) The troat tones going radically sharper, along with
> all the other notes also going somewhat sharper. (at first I thought I
> could fix it with a longer barrel but that didn't help the throat tones
> much).
> Wanna hear the difference? Come and hear it compared to my
> pressent clarinet (they are both R-13's.
> If it were just me I would think that, alright, I am either nuts
> (yeah, yeah, I know - I **AM** nuts) or that it was a fluke. However, too
> many other players, like Stanley Drucker (who replaces his horns every ten
> years to prevent being saddled with a blown out horn) have also
> experienced it.
> As has been said, don't disbelieve something just because you
> haven't experienced it.

C'mon Fred. Don't believe something to be true because you think
you have experienced it, either. From a specific case of a series
of problem in one particular clarinet, you then make a mightly
leap across the canyon and declare a generalization of the phenomenon
to be a scientific certainty.

I don't know what happened to your clarinet. You don't either.
If you believe that it became unsuitable, I accept that. But you
go to far when you make broad general statements about clarinet
diseases based on the example you gave.

If Stanley replaces his horns to prevent being saddled with one that
he asserts will become blown out, how does he know the phenomenon
exists? He gets rid of the instruments before the phenomenon
asserts itself. How could he, as you assert, have experienced it?

And your invitation that some of us might like to come down and
hear how the situation is on the now unhappy clarinet is kind of you,
but even if all of us arrived (and you have to feed us - it's
protocol), and all of us agreed that this clarinet is now in terrible
shape, what would that establish? How would we know that this
terrible condition is caused by an action that no one has satisfactorily
shown to exist in some universal sense.

It is as if you were a physician and examined a patient and found
a ruptured aorta that caused the patient's death. And, as you
take the deceased to the cemetery, you see thousands of other graves.
So you say to yourself, "You see. All of these people had their
aortas ruptured, and this must be true because, like my patient, they
are all dead."

>
>
> Fred Jacobowitz
> Clarinet/Sax Instructor, Peabody Preparatory
>
> On Fri, 14 May 1999, Edwin V. Lacy wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 14 May 1999, Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu wrote:
> >
> > > I have an opinion too. Blow out is a phenomenon suggested to exist by
> > > musical instrument manufacturers for the purpose of selling
> > > instruments; i.e., it is a sales tool which has come to be accepted by
> > > the clarinet-playing community as a whole.
> >
> > My goodness, Dan! You certainly are have your cynic's hat on today! ;-)
> >
> > Well, I have an opinion, too. It is that blowout does exist. However, I
> > have never been told this by an instrument manufacturer or salesman. I
> > have two sources of information on which I base that opinion. The first
> > is my own observation, based on playing some grenadilla instruments, very
> > old, but in very good mechanical condition, and then comparing them with
> > some newer ones, also in good condition. The second is from technically-
> > oriented people in the field of materials science, who know about and have
> > described the phenomenon known as "depolymerization," and who have
> > observed its effects under the microscope.
> >
> > > The evidence for the non-existence of this problem is copious.
> >
> > What is that evidence?
> >
> > > The evidence for its existence falls in the realm of urban legends.
> >
> > I have a hard time regarding the knowledge and experience of the entire
> > field of materials science as "urban legend."
> >
> > > And the last way to win a technical argument is to suggest that "xxx
> > > says so!"
> >
> > Then, you will be pleased to learn that, while I remain willing to be
> > convinced that blow-out is only an urban legend, I won't make that
> > intellectual and philosophical jump based on the fact that you say it
> > doesn't exist.
> >
> > Ed Lacy
> > el2@-----.edu
> >
> >
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>
>
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=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
=======================================

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