Klarinet Archive - Posting 001052.txt from 2000/03

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Reed's mode of vibration
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 17:09:35 -0500

Tony Pay wrote,
>What is 'normal' or 'standard' depends very much on your point of view.
>Different people choose different setups that have the reed close
>completely for more or less of the time. I outlined the two extremes,
>but obviously there is a spectrum of possibilities, achievable by
>varying the parameters of mouthpiece facing, reed strength, embouchure
>position and quality, tongue position and so on.

>What is 'normal' also depends on which note you happen to be playing in
>a given passage, and whether you want that note to have the quality of
>complete reed closure. As I've remarked here before, the notion that a
>good player plays with just one sound in even quite a simple sequence of
>notes is an illusion. It's the sort of illusion that makes you think
>that there is such a thing as the 'sound' of your own voice. (Just say
>a few words very slowly to yourself, if you don't believe this.) A
>clarinet has nothing like this degree of tonal variation, but excursions
>into what I called 'echoton' occur more frequently than you might
>imagine, particularly in soft passages.

Reading this makes me think that I should record and play back more often. I
probably have no idea of how I really sound. Putting the instrument in my
mouth, where it rattles my brains (if any), must cause all sorts of hearing
distortion and causes the Wishful Thinking Circuit to turn on automatically,
too.

When I was a high school freshman, preparing for my first public speaking
competition, the forensics coach taped my speech. Listening to the sound of
my voice *from the outside* for the first time gave me a sudden understanding
of a scene that had taken place years earlier, when I was nine years old and
moved to a new neighborhood. A neighbor's child, when introduced to me,
squirmed uneasily and then blurted out, "Mommy, why does that little girl
talk like a cowboy?" My reaction at the time (I'd absorbed my family's
fierce loyalties) was something along the lines of, "Hey, kid, you wanna go
out back and play Range War? You be the cowboy and I'll be the FARMER!" And
I knew that whooping cough had damaged my vocal chords -- but still, to hear
a gravelly whiskey tenor with a Dogpatch accent speaking *my words* -- oh,
Saint Toad! At home, I sat down with my father's tape recorder and drilled
myself until I could pass for female and literate. So with all that in mind,
I now have a bad feeling that when I think I hear Mozart, my clarinet is
probably playing the Florence Foster Jenkins version....

Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message.

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