Klarinet Archive - Posting 000594.txt from 2003/01

From: "Bruce McGarvey" <infodev@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] double- lipping
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 19:54:15 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce McGarvey [mailto:infodev@-----.net]
> Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 6:43 PM
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: RE: [kl] double- lipping
> <snip>
> > I am
> > aware of tonal advantages D/L players enjoy
> <snip>
>
> I wonder about these "tonal advantages."

<snip>

> I don't remember who said it--maybe it was Pino, another author,
> or someone
> on the list--but, at least in my case, the statement that, given a
> "reasonable" embouchure, it isn't the lips but the air flow and throat
> cavity that makes the difference seems to be correct.

<snip>

I stopped too short before, and while I was checking Pino's book afterward,
I realized that some things that I should have been mentioned weren't:

The double-embouchure may cause you to change your oral cavity and your
lower lips--especially opening your throat, dropping your jaw, and easing
the muscle tension of your lower lip-- such that there might be a
significant difference in sound. However, it's not the lip on top of the
mouthpiece that's doing it, it's the change in other parts of your
embouchure: your lower lip, throat, and maybe breathing.

I suspect that the reason I, myself, don't sound much different with either
embouchure is that my single-lip embouchure is formed with rounded lips--the
"ooo" embouchure instead of the French-style "smile" embouchure (lips pulled
back, lower lip a tighter band across the reed), so there's not much of a
difference when I go to the double embouchure. But I can imagine that there
might be quite a difference when someone using the smile embouchure suddenly
loosens up on the reed with the lower lip, moves the corners of the mouth
forward some, and opens up the throat more because of the extra meat between
the teeth and the mouthpiece on the top. At any rate, if you really do get a
better sound using the double-lip embouchure, my guess is that it's not the
extra lip, it's other things that are happening that can be "trained in" to
a single-lip embouchure.

I'm in for another two cents.

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