Klarinet Archive - Posting 000952.txt from 2004/10

From: Adam Michlin <amichlin@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Doubling
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 09:02:38 -0500

At 09:41 PM 10/30/2004 -0700, Nicholas Yip wrote:
>Some articles can be so negative. Unlike judges the author, have time to
>write the articles carefully. Everything in this article is pretty much
>negative.

You are correct, although it is hard for me to fault an author for being
negative. I am guilty of that much too often, myself. The negative tone,
therefore, doesn't really bother me. What bothers me are basic
misunderstandings about the differences.

>Other than the basics, such as on sax, you do not have to worry about
>covering tone holes, and there are different breaks both on sax and
>clarinet, the saxophone I find has a looser embouchure then the clarinet.
>You also have to push more air through the sax to get a better sound out of it.

Interesting. I find the saxophone less tolerant of a tight embouchure
(especially if you are trying to project as a lead alto player in a jazz
band or a soloist with orchestra). I find very many benefits to using a
relaxed embouchure on a clarinet (come to think of it, for the same reasons
of projection).

Tight embouchures seem more acceptable in bands (for both saxophone and
clarinet) because projection isn't as necessary. In fact, band saxophone
players are almost always too loud (loud not to be confused with
projecting) which is why the Larry Teal rubber band embouchure (mentioned
in the article) is so popular amongst even some of the most famous band
directors. The rubber band dampens the middle and sides of the reed, overly
dampening the reed, and thus producing a slightly dead relatively small
(and usually not projecting) sound. Many exceptions exist when you add the
variable of mouthpiece and reed setups. This may even be a preferable way
to play in wind bands, I try not to play saxophone in bands, myself.

As far as air, I try to think more about air support and less about
quantity of air pushed through the instrument. I have yet to find a wind
instrument which doesn't benefit from proper air support. There are
instruments which require less quantity of air (oboe and perhaps bassoon),
but still benefit from the same proper air support.

My experience is that I use just about the same quantity of air on both
saxophone and clarinet, but I'm sure I have naturally chosen setups to
minimize the differences in quantity of air required. This may explain my
preference for closed mouthpiece/hard reed on the clarinet, close
mouthpiece/hard reed on soprano, medium mouthpiece/medium hard reed on alto
and medium open/medium reed on tenor. I never thought about this
correlation. Very interesting.

I do know that I use a *lot* of air all my wind instruments (I should add
that I do not play the double reeds, mostly to keep my sanity).

YMMV,

-Adam

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