Klarinet Archive - Posting 000194.txt from 2003/08

From: Erik Tkal <bbtkal@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Mouthpiece questions
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 17:54:36 -0400

At 02:41 PM 8/8/2003 -0700, Ormondtoby wrote:
>Erik, _why_ do you want to play a stiffer reed? I'm not saying that
>stiff is either good or bad. I'm just fishing for the reason that you
>want to play one?

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First off, my instructor said I should play on stiffer reeds. Second, in experimenting with my friends M13 Lyre I discovered that I have a much better tone using that mouthpiece than my B45, but the more closed mouthpieces seem to work much better with a stiffer reed. So:

B45 w/ 2.5 - ok sound
B45 w/ 3+ - not as good sound
M13 w/ 2.5 - not so good
M13 w/ 3+ - much better

So my goal for tomorrow is to go into Boston and try some more mouthpieces playing with 3+ reeds and see what works. When I bought the B45 I had just started (5 months ago) and I couldn't play 3s reliably on *anything*, so the best at that time seemed to be the B45 using 2.5 reeds. However now that my embouchure is developing, it seems that I can get a very good sound on the more closed mouthpieces with stronger reeds. So I'm going to experiment some and see what strikes me.

Erik

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