Klarinet Archive - Posting 000047.txt from 2001/09

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Reeds lasting longer, and aeroplanes
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2001 10:32:37 -0400

I want to say something about this business of whether or not reeds last
longer on some mouthpieces than on others, and also something else about
'tolerant' mouthpieces.

It seems to me that reeds obviously do last longer on some mouthpieces
than on others, and that the explanation is simply in terms of two
well-known facts about reeds and mouthpieces.

The first fact is that some mouthpieces are more tolerant of differences
between reeds than others. You can get an acceptable result from quite
a few reeds in a box on one mouthpiece, whilst only one or two will work
with another mouthpiece.

The second fact is that reeds change gradually over their lifetime. So
a more 'tolerant' mouthpiece will have the characteristics of the
changing reed within its wider 'window of tolerance' for a longer time.
So the reed 'lasts longer'.

In other words, it's not that the mouthpiece *makes* the reed last
longer. Saying it that way round makes it sound a bit weird!
Nevertheless, the effect is that reeds do last longer with that
mouthpiece.

There's a tricky bit in the above, of course, to do with what is meant
by the phrase 'an acceptable result'. The fact is that there's a
tradeoff with tolerant mouthpieces. By and large, a mouthpiece that
produces an acceptable sound with many reeds exhibits less flexibility
with any one of them; whereas a mouthpiece that can work really well and
flexibly with its best reed may require some search for that reed, and
considerable playing expertise to make it yield the required results.

An excellent mouthpiece, for a given player, is one that offers a good
compromise between tolerance and flexibility. This may depend on the
ability of the player.

There's an analogy with aeroplanes, in that a 'tolerant' mouthpiece
behaves in some ways like an early aeroplane, and an 'intolerant'
mouthpiece like a modern aeroplane.

Consider how aeroplanes have changed over the years. It used to be the
case, in the early days of flight, that if something went wrong with an
aeroplane -- say, the engine failed -- you could glide to a landing.

But modern aeroplanes, of which the extreme case is a high-performance
fighter, aren't like that. If the *computer* fails, you can crash. A
modern aeroplane is unstable, and kept in the air by a highly
sophisticated control system, in order to optimise its performance. And
you can do much more in a modern aircraft, precisely because it is
nearly always in this unstable situation.

So, instability implies the possibility of control. Which suggests, in
the analogy, that a more 'dangerous' mouthpiece, played by an expert
player, may give better results.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN artist: http://www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339

...... Even if you're not, be brave, no one can tell the difference.

---------------------------------------------------------------------