Klarinet Archive - Posting 000055.txt from 2000/02

From: Neil Leupold <leupold_1@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Re: Why?
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 21:47:46 -0500

--- Mark Charette <charette@-----.org> wrote:

> I now play a Selmer 10G (I "inherited" that from
> my oldest son, too - I get the cast-offs :^)

Do you feel continuously blessed every time you take out
that professional-level Selmer horn and start practicing?

I've mentioned once or twice on the list that my very first
clarinet was a used Artley. I started when I was 9 years
old and taught myself to play it over the course of the
following 9 years. I had my first private lesson shortly
after my 18th birthday. It wasn't until I arrived at col-
lege and borrowed one of the university's instruments that
I realized exactly what I had been working against for those
previous 9 years. The university only had Selmer Series 9's
to lend, and these things were dogs by my current standards,
but holy cow did they open up a new world for me. A full 50%
of my difficulties and deficiencies on the clarinet had been
caused by the innumerable design and mechanical flaws of the
horrid little plastic Artley, which I had only just stopped
playing two weeks earlier. Two *years* later, I took the
plunge, borrowed $6,000 from the U.S. government,and pur-
chased my current set of Buffet Prestige clarinets. Ten
years after that purchase, I still can't assemble my beau-
tiful instruments without feeling extremely fortunate and
grateful for whatever inspiration led me to borrow the $$
in the first place. I guess the shock of recognition, about
the source of my struggle and agony for those first nine
years, never went away.

Gee, I guess this makes another pretty good case for the
value of a private teacher when you're first learning how to
play. Such a person might have spared me the stress of those
years by burying my clarinet in soft peat for three months and
recycling it to make cigarette lighters in its next life.

So Mark, when I envision you assembling your Selmer 10G and
blowing a trial note, I can't help wondering if you get a
little shiver of gratitude for that instrument in contrast
to what it must have been like in to play the Vito as your
first instrument.

> I wish I could progress faster, but I don't put as much time
> in practicing as could.

Wow, you really *have* learned a lot from this list. You sound
just like the rest of us! ;-)

-- Neil
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