Klarinet Archive - Posting 000867.txt from 2000/12

From: "Karl Krelove" <kkrelove@-----.us>
Subj: Re: [kl] moving up a reed strength
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:10:26 -0500

Terry,

What follows hasn't been said explicitly on Klarinet for a long time (and
generated some heat when last it came up). I will put it in "for the record"
not to criticize you at all, but to put a little bit of perpective on the
kind of situation presented by your post and others of the same sort.

The kind of question you've asked may not be answerable by anyone on the
list because we can't hear the problem that resulted when you made this most
recent increase in your Legere reed strength. Or, at least, it can't be
answered with any certainty, leaving you open to the possibility of great
confusion as you consider and try different suggested solutions. It may be
that the reed is too stiff for your mouthpiece. It may be that your
embouchure approach needs some adjustment. It may be that you need to
develop more strength in the facial muscles that form the embouchure. There
may be a problem elsewhere in your instrument that can be easily overcome
with a reed that's too soft, but when a more resistant reed is added to
unwanted resistance in the instrument, the setup becomes unplayable.

As you can see, there are several (and I haven't exausted the list by any
means) possible reasons why this last 1/2 step increase is making you
uncomfortable. The expedient of moving the reed down (did you really mean a
couple of millimeters? - that sounds like a cavernous distance where
mouthpiece measurements are concerned) works if you're making very small
adjustments, but it quickly reaches the point where you're leaving a
significant gap between the tip rail and the reed tip, which will allow a
lot of unproductive air to "whoosh" past the reed, accounting for the "hiss"
you mention.

You don't say (maybe you did in an earlier introductory post) whether or not
you are currently studying with a clarinet teacher. The bottom line of all
this is that some questions can only be answered with any real reliability
by a clarinet teacher who is physically listening to you and whose
suggestions you can try immediately and hear a result, whether good or not.
If the first suggestion doesn't work, the "onsight" teacher is in a better
position than any of us to hear and see whether the fix didn't work because
it didn't really get at the problem or because you didn't get the fix
exactly right on the first try. A teacher can try your equipment to make
sure you aren't wasting a lot of energy trying to do something that can't be
done. If, for example, your method of increasing reed strength in stages
could work indefinitely, we would all eventually be able to play on tree
limbs. But there are practical limits to how stiff a reed we can play on
_musically_, and part of that limit is set by the rest of the equipment,
particularly the mouthpiece. Any of us on Klarinet, and there are some very
accomplished players and teachers here, can make sugestions based on your
description of any given problem, but nobody here can tell from an email
with any certainty what the source of the problem you're describing is. Your
premise that stiffer reeds will add "depth to my playing" is itself one that
has only limited truth.

There may well be no cure for the problem you've described because there may
actually be no problem. It may very well be that you've simply reached the
limit on reed strength imposed by your mouthpiece. If you want the best shot
at a meaningful answer to your question, find someone near you who plays
clarinet well and ask him or her. If the solution turns out to involve your
learning a new way of doing things, a professional player/teacher might be
able to guide you through it in a few sessions. If it's purely an equipment
problem, it wouldn't take even an entire lesson to discover it, and you
might pick up even more information than you were expecting. If it's some
combination, a teacher can help sort it out and prevent a lot of frustration
on your part that can come from trying a lot of partial solutions on your
own and never really finding the result you want because you may not have
put them together in the right combination.

If you _are_ studying, give your teacher a chance to help.

That's probably more than 2 cents worth. I hope ultimately it's helpful.

Karl Krelove

----- Original Message -----
From: Sterkel Terrance-W15462

> Ok,
> I just bought the Legere, and it works great.
> here is my question:
>
> I purposefully went up 1/2 grade in stiffness to
> get more depth in my playing. I have been doing this in 1/2 steps every 3
> weeks starting at 1 1/2 when I re-started the clarinet 2 months ago. This
> last step seems to be unusually problematic. What do I do to "fix" my
> embouchure to compensate. As a temporary fix, I am moving the reed down
> from the tip a couple mm. This
> increases "hiss".
>
> Suggestions?
> thanks,
> terry
>

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