Klarinet Archive - Posting 000486.txt from 2001/08

From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] For Ken Shaw
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 21:33:09 -0400

As you read the materials available on the subject, you are going to try
and find one central point that is critical to the entire problem of
multiply pitched clarinets. I suggest that that one point is the fact
that clarinet overblow a 12th whereas other woodwinds overblow and
octave.

And that apparently minor point, that hardly any of us think about any
longer, is the single central reason why we have so many pitched
clarinets in our family of instruments.

>From that fundamental fact, the next step you need to take is what are
the acoustical consequences of playing an instrument that overblows a
12th? It turns out that the main consequence (in the 18th century) is
that for such an instrument it is difficult (or in some cases, downright
impossible) to add keys that play effective notes in both registers.

Now the next step is, since the addition of more keys has a technical
impediment, how does one play in more and more complex key signatures?
The answer to that question will tell you why we have multiply pitched
clarinets.

Hint: if you are in a sailboat and you come to a bridge that the boat
does not fit under, what do you do? You either raise the bridge, take
down the mast, go home, or lower the river. Well that is the same
problem you come to when you have a clarinet that can play, effectively
only in two keys: C and F. (I'm still talking 18th century.) So if you
want to be able to play in other keys, what choices do you have?

Either you add keys to your clarinet, or you stop playing, or all the
other players in the orchestra retune their instruments, or else you do
one other thing. Figure out that thing, and you will understand why
there are multiply pitched clarinets.
--
***************************
** Dan Leeson **
** leeson0@-----.net **
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