Klarinet Archive - Posting 000499.txt from 2001/03

From: Rhea Jacobs <rhea-j@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Martin Freres clarinet
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 12:01:24 -0500

"David C. Kumpf" wrote:

>
> ....
>
> The instrument sounds pretty good (my tone is better than I expected after
> all these years, but still not where it needs to be), though it does not
> speak as easily as the R13. Then, after a few notes, it starts jumping to
> the high register when I am playing low E and F, etc....but I don't have the
> register key down. The seller claims it was repadded recently. The pad on
> the register key is cork and the spring is good; nevertheless, the
> instrument keeps jumping to the high register. (More precisely, I finger low
> E and F and upper B and C come out.)
>
>

The problem with not being able to get a low-register note may just have been
the unfamiliar mouthpiece! Or something else.

I've returned to playing the clarinet after a 37-year hiatus, and while trying
out a new ligature, I started having the same problem. My teacher suspected that
the ligature had nothing to do with it and asked me how much I'd been
practicing. I told her that I'd been trying two one-hour sessions a day. She
suggested that my lip wasn't ready for that kind of regimen yet and told me to
take three or four days off to rest it. I did. Since then, I've noticed that I
sometimes get the problem as my lip begins to tire, and I take it as a sign that
it's time to quit for the day.

As for the barrel: I had to replace the barrel on my old Selmer Centered Tone
(to which I am quite attached), because it had shrunk during its 30 years of
disuse so that the only mouthpiece it would accommodate was the one that the
last cousin to use the clarinet in school had used -- a mouthpiece that didn't
suit me at all. I bought a Pyne barrel on eBay. Whether that's the definitive
replacement I don't know: I expect it'll be at least a few more months before I
approach any level of competence (my teacher keeps counseling patience, and I
know she's right) to see, but in the short run it has made the horn playable.
The repair person who overhauled the Selmer for me told me that barrel shrinkage
is fairly common in instruments that go unused for as long as mine had.

Good luck,
Rhea Jacobs
rhea-j@-----.net

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