Klarinet Archive - Posting 000816.txt from 2002/03

From: Alexander Brash <mactrek@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Time for an outraged response
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 21:33:48 -0500

bravo Dan!
whiners, back to the practice room!

~Alexander

> From: Paul Harris <pwharris@-----.net>
> Reply-To: klarinet@-----.org
> Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 17:31:34 -0800
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: Re: [kl] Time for an outraged response
>
> Obviously you haven't sat down at a trade show or dealer and tried many
> samples of the various models and makes of clarinets available today. There
> certainly are deference in color, response and intonation. One or another
> instrument may be perfect and the next one junk, and since it is you making
> the judgement and the test with your own mouthpiece and reed the result will
> be unbiased from your stand point, and you will see differences and make
> judgements, your sciences be dammed.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Daniel Leeson" <leeson0@-----.net>
> To: <klarinet@-----.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 12:51 PM
> Subject: [kl] Time for an outraged response
>
>
>> 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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