Klarinet Archive - Posting 001002.txt from 2004/10

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Doubling
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 22:06:06 -0500


Adam Michlin wrote,
>I use the same embouchure for all the clarinets
>and saxophones. I do change my embouchure
>for styles (jazz vs classical and various jazz styles).

I'm a 56-year-old amateur, doubling on several beak-mouthed winds (various
sizes of recorder, clarinet and sax). My experience differs from yours. I
try to keep my embouchure steady on clarinet, but I do loosen up for the
lower octave, especially the lowest half octave, on sax. The larger the
sax, the less pressure I put on the reed.

On BBb bass sax, I use a true bass sax mpc, not a bari sax mpc. This
mouthpiece, by itself, dictates a change in embouchure, because the
clarinet embouchure isn't physically feasible on a mouthpiece as huge as my
old Buescher 2. (The sax is a 1926 C. G. Conn and the mpc was probably
purchased with it or soon after.) The equipment dictates a difference,
simply because on bass, my throat and mouth have open a lot more than for
any clarinet, just to get that monster beak *in* there, and the position of
the tongue has to change, too, because there's not a whole lot of room for
it!

The only embouchure that works for me in the lower register of the bass sax
is *no* embouchure, beyond closing my lips around the beak just enough to
keep air from leaking out at the corners of my mouth. Bending the pitch is
marvelously easy (or dangerously easy, depending on one's point of
view...), but any real lip pressure gives me accidental altissimo. To go
above the break, I do need to tighten the embouchure, though not a lot.
Even above the break on bass, I use an embouchure so loose that if I used
it on any clarinet I've ever played (including EEb contra-alto), I'd be
grossly flat and unable to play above chalumeau. The whole time I'm
playing bass, I'm reminding myself to put a lot more mouthpiece in my mouth
than seems reasonable, and relax, relax, relax. If I'm too nervous to
loosen up the cheek muscles and the lower lip, I can't play that sax worth
a wet honk.

Since I've been playing bass (since 1997), I've noticed that what I do on
bass is just a grossly large example of the adjustments I make on all wind
instruments. On a soprano sax or an Eb clarinet, the adjustments are so
tiny that I probably wouldn't notice them if I hadn't tried switching back
and forth between my smallest horns and my largest ones, just to see what
would happen. I try *not* to adjust, consciously, between registers on
those small clarinets, because they react in an exaggerated way -- but the
fact is, I do adjust, all the time, on all the instruments. I can't
imagine not adjusting, to the point where I find it hard to believe that
some people don't adjust.

Lelia Loban
America can do better: Kerry and Edwards in 2004!

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