Klarinet Archive - Posting 000815.txt from 2002/03

From: Karl Krelove <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Time for an outraged response
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 21:33:47 -0500

But, Mark, a great many of these opinions *are* based on "their own
experiences." But those experiences are limited. Someone has played only X
(to continue Dan's style of reference) and has gotten used to what must be
done to produce a particular tone quality. Then (s)he tries Y and the same
physical approach produces an immediately different result. It's not much
of a jump to say X is better than Y because X produces a sound our subject
likes and Y didn't on first trial. With only a few attempts at this kind of
comparison using only one or two examples of each "genus and species,"
anyone might conclude "based on his/her own experience" that X sounds more
beautiful than Y.

I don't think (I hope I'm right) that Dan is going so far as to say that
differences in construction features among different clarinets will not
produce different resistances and different overtone relationships and other
measurable differences. These differences, it seems obvious, will account
for differences in pitch, amplitude, evenness and clarity (lack of "fuzz")
and probably a number of other more subtle playing characteristics that can
make a player work harder or less hard or just differently to produce the
sound (s)he wants. It isn't that there's an inherent difference in sound
between X and Y. But adjustments are necessary in the player's approach.
This can be (in my experience is certainly) true even among individual
specimens of the same "genus and species."

So I guess I need to split the difference and agree with Dan only to the
extent that I doubt there is anything about the instruments that makes it
impossible to sound the same on a Selmer or a Buffet. I play a 10G, have
played Buffets, and I'm sure I sound very similar on either. However, I have
to say that my ear makes me suspect that if I played a tone on my 10G into
an oscilloscope (or whatever the appropriate measuring tool would be) and
then played the same note with, as best I could, the same volume and oral
approach, on my Moennig-rebuilt 1950's Buffet, the measurable overtone
distribution would not be a perfect match. If I made no adjustment inside my
mouth between instruments, the difference would be very noticeable. The
difference is one the ear would interpret as a different "color" or
"timbre." The word isn't important - the sound would be different.

Could I make them sound the same. Absolutely. Is this a Selmer vs. Buffet
issue. No, it's about differences between two specific instruments that
happen to have had different manufacturers. Has Kelly made enough
comparisons to be able to generalize about 10G and R13? I don't know. But so
long as you stay away from words like "warm" and "dark" and "supple" and all
the other nonsense that gets into the advertising hype of every maker of
equipment from reeds to stage shells, I don't see how it's possible to deny
that different instruments make certain goals in tone quality easier or more
difficult to achieve - even if ease is largely a function of what we're used
to doing.

None of the above should be confused with the debate over whether or not the
*material* an instrument is made from (or for that matter a mouthpiece, a
ligature, the keys, or any other part of the instrument) has any
quantifiable, measurable effect on tone quality. We're not talking here
about material, but structural design differences. If these made no
difference in the result of a player's efforts, we could all make our
clarinets in our basements from pieces of garden hose. Bore shapes, tone
hole dimensions and positions, and key clearances are designed for specific
effects. Different brands are designed with different dimensions, and even
sample differences among individual specimens of a single brand can differ
enough to affect the sound coming out of the player's mouth. To that extent
I can't agree with Dan that "Once the air has left the mouth, the character
of that person's sound produced on a clarinet is a closed issue." I think
the position is simply too extreme. That "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" seems closer to truth, but only if
"good or bad" are correctly being used in their broad sense and not as a
judgment of nuance.

To sum up what must be my longest post to Klarinet in quite a while, it is
fallacious, as Dan suggests, to say all X clarinets produce a more beautiful
sound than any Y clarinet or that player A sounds the way (s)he does because
(s)he has an X clarinet instead of a Y. It's certainly silly to say that a
player with only limited skill will sound more accomplished on X than on Y.
But it goes too far to say that the instrument's design has no effect on the
ease with which an accomplished player can produce the result (s)he wants to
produce. And I think this can conceivably be extended to say that an
instrument design could seriously enough impede an individual player from
realizing his/her concept that it is, for that player, a poor match on which
(s)he may well be incapable with any comfort of playing well.

We don't try to perform the Mozart Concerto on our students' YCL20 clarinets
if we can avoid it. It isn't the same level of comparison as 10G to R13, but
if it were true that the instrument has NO effect, the parallel would be
apt.

Karl Krelove

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Gustavson [mailto:mgustav@-----.com]
Subject: Re: [kl] Time for an outraged response

Dan I side with your ire and the problem is that many on this list do not
speak of their personal experiences or aren't able to formulate an
articulate statement about what they have experienced as a clarinetist.
Instead they fall back on old clichés and hearsay. I suggest that everyone
speak from their own experiences and from their heart and not like copy
editors who feed magazines misinformation which the majority seem to
swallow and you unfortunately have to gag on.

Mark

Daniel Leeson wrote:

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

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