Klarinet Archive - Posting 000797.txt from 2002/03

From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Time for an outraged response
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 15:51:48 -0500

It's a bad time for me to get myself in trouble with an outraged
statement because I'm leaving town on Saturday to attend the American
Society of Eighteenth Century Studies in Colorado Springs and my ability
to pay attention to any mail responses will be limited.

But Kelly Abraham of New York has changed the picture with her statement
about the Selmer 10G. She said:

> I was told at ClarinetFest in New Orleans in August,
> last year by the Selmer representatives that the 10G
> was being discontinued also. I was asking about geting
> a set with some added features, and was told that
> delivery of 10Gs would be from already-made stock
> only, and production was almost finished in Paris. Too
> bad, as I REALLY love the sound color of those
> instruments!

I don't doubt for one second that Kelly likes the character of sound she
gets from a clarinet, and it is probably a lush, wonderful, pleasing
sound. If I heard it, I'd love it. But this idea that one can get the
character of sound they want from a particular manufacturer's instrument
(even down to the genus and species; i.e., Selmer's 10G) is a snake that
just will not die, even when its head is cut off. You can given tons of
rational counterexamples, and still some intelligent and probably very
competent even expert clarinet player will maintain that what is not
true is very much true. And worse, that same player will transmit these
old wives tales to their students who, in turn, will go out and buy
clarinet X under the belief that he or she sounds better on that
particular one than on any other.

I suggest that Kelly's sound is Kelly's sound on almost ANY clarinet.
Her sound is a function of her teeth, her chest, her sinus cavities, her
body structure, the amount of body fat, her total physical toute
ensemble. And if she gets a sound that just likes when clarinet X is
inserted into her mouth, she will get effectively the identical sound
when X is removed and Y inserted.

The validity of the notion that a particular clarinet is resonsible for
the character of its sound has been battled on this list for years. But
the minute someone comes on who has not been previously involved in the
discussions (or who has been involved but simply choses to ignore the
enormous amount of counter evidence), the first thing we hear is that
manufacturer A makes a clarinet that sounds better than any other
manufacturer. Gag me with a spoon, we're at it again.

Oh, that the manufacturers say so is true enough. LeBlanc is the world
champion in inventing meaningless words that describe the sound
character of model abc as contrasted with model def, but I suggest that
it is all marketing hype, nonsense that causes you to want to buy their
instrument.

Once the air has left the mouth, the character of that person's sound
produced on a clarinet is a closed issue. It will be the same good or
bad character if the clarinet is by almost any manufacturer and almost
any material used to make the instrument.

And while I am getting older as I see these comments on this list, I am
not getting less feisty. It is my intentions to bitch, bitch, bitch
whenever these assertions arise. That is, unless Kelly is able to
describe the physical phenomena deriving from that particular genus and
species of clarinet and which cause what she suggests is a particularly
beautiful "sound color" (whatever that is).

This list is getting a lot less feisty, too. Nobody challenges these
statements anymore. The ones who know are just getting too old and
tired to react any longer. How many times can everyone yell,
"BALONEY!"? People -- good clarinet players too -- make outrageous
statements and no one sets their house on fire or threatens them with
bodily harm.

Some guy the other day suggested a particular bass clarinet mouthpiece
and added that the use of a Rovner Ligature was obligatory to achieve
the proper sound. So I asked how he reached this conclusion, and he
seems to have gone into out space, never to be heard from again. And
I'm not a bigot. I used a Rovner ligature for years. It was nice, it
was not terribly expensive, it held the reed on nicely, but unless the
departed person has some evidence about which I do not know, I was
unaware that only that particular ligature type would produce a
satisfactory sound.

Gag me with a spoon!!

--
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** Dan Leeson **
** leeson0@-----.net **
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