Klarinet Archive - Posting 000585.txt from 2000/11

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Fantastique or catastrophe?
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 17:06:11 -0500

Re. dangling a string (or some chicken guts) down the bore to lower the
pitch, Gary Truesdail wrote,
>What would happen if the string contained knots (to increase diameter) at
>selected locations along its length? Would it assist or be counter
>productive to the intended goal, or would it have more/less effect in
>specific locations only?

I had a string of the right length handy because a few months ago I tried
using a Bb as a sort-of A to work on the Mozart concerto. The idea was not
to mess up my ear by learning the notes at too far off the pitch on a Bb, in
case I ever work up the nerve to ask my husband's fabulous pianist if she
wants to go slumming by playing with me. (I chickened out.) Then I bought
an old clarinet in A that sounds better than the jerry-rigging, so - -
anyway, the piece of string was still jumbled in with the reeds and swabs and
whatnot. I tried the experiment today. I took the same type of string (thin
white cotton box-sealing twine, the classic type that cats play with and
people who never throw anything away -- hrrrk -- use to make balls of string
of world record size), tied six fat double knots in it and cut it so the
overall length was the same as my "good" string, which hangs just to the end
of the inside of the bell. Tried them both in the same clarinet where I'd
been using the string previously, a 1937 Buffet.

The knotted string flattened the pitch, but I couldn't quantify how much
compared to the unknotted string, because the knots messed up the shapes of
the sound waves, I think. With the knots, the clarinet got a frog in its
throat. It growled (not a typical clarinet growl -- clarinet pitch, but the
tone quality had a wider wobble than usual for a clarinet growl -- sounded
more like the big, rough sound you get from singing into a tenor sax) on
*every note* south of the break. Most of the notes north of the break
coughed to the larigot. I don't know if clarinetists use the term
"larigot"-- that's an organist's term for the note a 19th above the
fundamental, one of the harmonic corroborating stops on larger organs, which
is why I recognized it. I say it coughed because it wasn't a clean squeak.
It sounded like the cough on a badly-adjusted Bourdon Bass organ pipe, where
you hear the fundamental first, just for a fraction of a second, with a
muffled tone quality, before it grunts ("Ugh!") and hawks up the 19th. Neat
idea for a comic effect, maybe, but not for everyday playing.

For some reason, 4th line D and 4th space E and E-flat didn't cough up --
those notes played approximately the fundamental, but with muffled tone
(silence, unless I blew very hard) and unstable wow-wow-wow pitch. [N.b.:
laughing does nothing to improve these notes....]

Haven't tried chicken entrails yet.

Umm, well, I sure found a new way to avoid really practicing....

Lelia

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