Klarinet Archive - Posting 000096.txt from 2002/04

From: "Terry B" <tbroyles99@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] A few newbie questions
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 21:08:17 -0500

Greetings to the list!

I should first introduce myself; I am not a musician by any definition
of the word. I am the father of two very talented teenagers whom are. My
son is 15, a trumpet player, in 10th grade, plays in his high school
jazz band, (at 6:30am!) and the wind ensemble. He is also in one of the
Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras.
My daughter just turned 13, in 7th grade, has played piano for about 4
years and started clarinet for a while in 6th grade. She started to take
clarinet serious and receive private lessons at the beginning of this
school year. There was a bit of confusion for the first semester, as at
the insistence of her band teacher, she showed up at home with a French
horn. Seems her 7th grade band had 11 clarinets, and no horns. As my
daughter was about 9th chair, but has a great music background, her
teacher thought she would make a great French horn player. She spent the
first semester playing French horn in a beginning band class and
clarinet in 7th grade band. At home, she would practice her horn,
clarinet, and piano, every day, 7 days a week. At the end of the
semester she announced she was done with the horn. She was up to 4th
chair clarinet in her band class, and besides, the horn was dorky and
had boring music parts, (her words) :) She now plays piano in her jazz
band class and is ready to bump off 3rd chair clarinet on their next
chair test. I subscribed to this list to try to learn more about
clarinets for my daughter.

If anyone has made it this far thru my ramblings, I have come up with a
couple of questions since reading the posts the last week or so.

I have seen several mentions have people having "a set of Buffets" or "a
pair of Selmers" Do serious clarinet players need to have more than one?
I asking this partly to prepare myself for when the time comes and she
says she needs a "pair" of Buffet R13's for college. I've seen the
prices of "serious" clarinets and it makes the price of my son's Bach
Stradivarius trumpet look like chicken feed. Are these "pairs" the same
or different keys?

My next question has to do with the recent thread on transposing. I must
be missing something here, as both of my kids transpose "on the fly".
While most parents like to think their kids are the brightest in the
world, I am under no such illusion. :) They both play in church, using a
piano hymnal, and transpose as they play. They also play at home, my
daughter on the piano and my son on trumpet, and he will just read her
piano music, transpose, and play along. I may be misunderstanding the
thread, as it seems many musicians cannot or don't transpose?

I'm sure I will come up with more questions later, but this message has
ended up way too long.

Thanks to all for some very informative posts.

Terry B
The very proud father of Michael & Christina

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