Klarinet Archive - Posting 000752.txt from 1999/05

From: Fred Jacobowitz <fredj@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: [kl] re: blow out
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 18:07:58 -0400

>
> 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.

C'mon, Dan. By the same reasoning, one could make an analogy about any
disease. If someone got sick and died didn't mean that that someone got a
disease. If a phenomenon occurs, it exists. The exact disease may be
unknown but the fact is the person died from hemhorraging and heart
attack. Well, the clarinet got blown out: It had all the symptoms. It
might have occurred because of too much playing, poor wood, poor
maintenance, etc. But it happens.

> 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.

See my statement above: If it looks like a duck...

> 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?

Of course he experienced it. Why do you think he now does that????

> 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.

Just because something cannot be immediately explained (the
manufacturers say it doesn't exist because they can't explain it) doesn't
mean it can't exist.

> 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."

No, this is a flawed analogy. The proper inference would be that
since all the people are dead, that PEOPLE DIE! Well, clarinets blow out.
Not all of them. Not at the same time. Not necessarily for the same
causes.

Fred Jacobowitz
Clarinet/Sax Instructor, Peabody Preparatory

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