Klarinet Archive - Posting 000794.txt from 1999/11

From: avrahm galper <agalper@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] THE CLARINET
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 01:25:46 -0500

THE CLARINET

Written by Jack Howard, in the Toronto Star in the style of Anna
Russell, Canadian Comedienne.

First let us put the clarinet into perspective. The average classical
orchestra consists of three sections- Scrape, Wallop and Blow.
The scrape section is composed of stringed instruments. They all are
look the same, except that some are bigger than others.
They sound like something being scraped against something else, which is
predictable, since this is the way they produce sound.

The Wallop, or Percussion section, consists of anything that can be
struck, tapped, gonged, crashed or otherwise physically assaulted.
Most music for the Wallop section consists of sixty-four bar rests,
which enables the percussionists to play poker or go out for coffee
between wallops.

The Blow section is a miscellaneous mess because all the instruments
look different. There are, however, three main divisions -brass,
plumbing and woodwinds.

On brass instruments the sound is not produced by blowing into, but by
placing the lips against the mouthpiece and emitting a Bronx cheer (or
more correctly, a "raspberry")
The sound, which emerges from the bell (known technically as the other
end), varies with the shape, size and the shifting of gears in the
manual transmission with which it is equipped.

The plumbing section comprises flutes and piccolos, which are bits of
used pipes full of holes. By pursing the lips and blowing gently across
one of the holes, it is alleged the musical sounds can be produced from
these pipes.

The woodwind section is a tightly knit group of intimidating black
tubes equipped with reeds.
A reed is a thin piece of wood, especially designed to squeak to or
block up completely during solo passages.
Some woodwinds have double reeds, such as the oboe and English horn.
The English horn, a French instrument, is not a horn, and should not be
confused with a French horn, which is a German instrument and is a horn.

The clarinet is a single reed instrument, and has the greatest range of
any in the orchestra.
This is accomplished by a diabolical appendage, whimsically referred to
as an octave key.
On any sensible instrument the octave key is used to raise the tone by
exactly eight notes.

Nothing this logical, however,applies to the clarinet. When the octave
key is depressed, the tone jumps up twelve notes so that the fingering
in the upper register is always wrong.
Notes in between are produced by stabbing around two or three little
knobs and flappers which are played with the knuckles, so that a
clarinetist with two or three extra knuckles has a decided advantage.

The range of a clarinet varies from a shriek which, regrettably, is not
quite beyond the range of the human ear, down to an obscene hollow honk
reminiscent of a bullfrog in a cistern.

To understand a clarinet one should know what sort of person would play
a thing like that, but unfortunately, the restriction of space and
propriety preclude us from entering into this area.

--
Avrahm Galper
CLARINET TONE TECHNIQUE AND STACCATO
CLARINET UPBEAT SCALES AND ARPEGGIOS
http://www.sneezy.org/avrahm_galper/index.html

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