Klarinet Archive - Posting 000097.txt from 2002/04

From: "Gary Smith" <asemsi@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] A few newbie questions
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 21:37:17 -0500

Terry

Hello, welcome -- we seem to be beating our brains out at the moment, but
don't let that worry you, as we're always doing that... a few brief answers
to your questions:

First, congrats and condolences to your daughter on having had to deal with
the usual case of a band director who allows him or herself to get a badly
imbalanced band, then starts forcing students to change instruments because
how his or her band sounds is more important than the happiness or musical
progress of the student. As a private teacher, I deal with more than my
share of these cases. I hope such band directors end up in the same circle
of hell where the ones who dictate what mouthpiece and reed their students
will use go.

Anyway, if your daughter is in junior high, I wouldn't worry about buying a
"pair" of clarinets just yet unless a) you're independently wealthy and b)
until she is playing in some fairly serious engagements with orchestra, as
opposed to band. The "pair" being alluded to is one in Bb (the usual band
instrument) and one in the key of A. With these two instruments, one can
cover most of the orchestral literature(particularly if one is willing to
let our heroine, authenticity, be run over by the 5:45 express only when the
gun of necessity is held to our heads, but that's another debate for another
time). I know our local youth orchestra pretty much gets by with the
clarinets always on Bb because many youngsters don't own both. But if she
plays in college, especially as a major, she will indeed need both at some
point.

Transposition. Oy. We have an ongoing debate about this. I wish Mark would
set up a list called klarinet/transposition/composer's intentions. But the
long and short of it is that the skill to do so is a good thing, and most
serious clarinetists can at least read a concert pitch score (such as a
hymnal) on a Bb instrument. There are of course other transpositions that
could come up - play an A part on a Bb, vice versa, reading bass clef if you
play bass clarinet is a necesssity sooner or later -- I would agree that the
*ideal* thing is to play the parts on the instrument the composer picked, if
indeed one was picked. Whether this is always humanly possible, economically
feasible, or even makes any difference are questions that you will be
exposed to a variety of opinions on if you stick around long enough.

>From: "Terry B" <tbroyles99@-----.com>
>Reply-To: klarinet@-----.org
>To: <klarinet@-----.org>
>Subject: [kl] A few newbie questions
>Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 18:08:17 -0800
>
>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
>
>
>
>
>
>
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