Klarinet Archive - Posting 000201.txt from 2000/03

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Falling in love
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 20:44:13 -0500

Kevin Fay quoted Gary:
<<>>

Kevin Fay wrote,
>>Lord, yes: trumpet players must be the worst. >>

He describes some of the many equipment options available.

>>Ever see a trumpet mouthpiece catalog?>>

I've been reading the Trumpet Players' International list lately, and have to
admit that trumpet players are at least as obsessed with their equipment as
clarinet players. Those trumpet mouthpiece arguments run on at least as long
as ours. Still, I have the impression that trumpet players do less
day-to-day tinkering, just because once the trumpet is set up, there's not
much to do except oil and swab -- though, come to think of it, I do recall a
lengthy recent discussion about what type of oil to use, with much discussion
of *scented* valve oils! (A lot of them don't bother with swabbing -- I
bought my cornet used, and what I scrubbed out of the lead-pipe rivals the
filthiest clarinet mouthpiece I've ever seen.) Still, the reed, the ligature
and the number of keys on a woodwind add up to a whole lot more stuff to fool
around with at every practice session -- and much of the fooling around with
the reed isn't optional. The trumpet is a fundamentally less complex
instrument.

There's another group of wind players that's got us all beat, though: the
pipe organists. On the Pipeorg-L and Pipe Chat lists, almost every time
someone writes about a gig or even a church service, the report includes a
run-down of what parts of the organ didn't work this time. Those guys tinker
or die.

Imagine dealing with the intonation problem in a 4,000-pipe rebuilt 18th
century tracker, with everything from 1/8" dog-whistles to 32' sewer pipes,
on a freezing day when somebody forgot to turn on the heat in the building
early enough to warm the entire old wreck to the same temperature. Organists
are, by necessity, far more adaptable than we are. They might argue until
Doomsday about the correct registration for a particular piece of music, but
when it's time to sit down and put the pedal to the metal, they make drastic,
last-minute decisions about what stops to pull, and therefore what tone color
to use, based on which ranks happen to work today.

Just this week, someone reported on an organ that caught fire in the middle
of a performance. Besides electrical and mechanical adventures, they've got
major vermin problems. They find carcasses of animals that died in the
pipes, termites eating the wind chests, rats honing their teeth on the
footings, bats living in the swell box, pipes stuffed full of nuts by the
squirrels and all kinds of other stuff that we never have to think about.
(At least dealing with a vermin problem in a clarinet doesn't involve
scaffolding.)

Organists have their wish lists the same as clarinetists, except an organist
can forget about setting up the instrument just as he or she likes it or or
even setting up the best possible maintenance schedule, because the condition
of the organ is totally at the mercy of a budget committee. A whole new
organ of any impressive size costs anywhere from US$250,000 to well over US$1
million. We gripe about the cost of new pads and corks. Restoration of a
deteriorated old organ can easily run into tens or even hundreds of thousands
of dollars. If the budget committe fails to come through, of course,
there's always "Midnight Organ Supply." Conventional wisdom among organ
builders is that a third of all organ pipes have been stolen at some point.

Kevin Fay wrote,
>>One of the nice things about comparing your obsession to the slavering
hounds in the back of the room is that you end up feeling so normal . . . .>>

Who's "we," Borg?!

BWWWAAAAAAhahahaha!

Lelia
(unworthy of assimilation)

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