Klarinet Archive - Posting 000120.txt from 2005/10

From: GrabnerWG@-----.com
Subj: Re: [kl] Brad Behn
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:17:34 -0400

In a message dated 10/12/2005 11:26:45 AM Central Daylight Time,
Tom.Henson@-----.com writes:

<< Just think where we might be if Frank Kaspar or Everett Matson had left a
detailed notebook of everything they had ever learned with detailed
Explanations of cause and effect. Just think what it would be like in
college if you had a class on making reeds along with a class on
making/refacing mouthpieces.>>

As a mouthpiece craftsman, I will tell you quite frankly that sometimes you
just do not know, why some technique or measurement works, or why something
that ALWAYS works does not. Every craftsman has a drawer full of "failures"
that will never see the light of day. (The biggest difference between us and the
"stock mouthpiece" manufacturers, is that we catch and STOP our flawed
mouthpieces, the manufacturers put them in a box and let the buying public find
them!)

The other thing that bugs me is the public fixation on measurements and CNC
controlled tools, as if that is going to solve every problem.

Any acoustician will tell you that internal edges and surfaces affect tone
critically. That is why you see the CNC people still doing hand finishing. It's
the quality of the surfaces and the edges that the air flows across that
can add the final "nth degree" of perfection to a mouthpiece.

ALSO:

Somehow, somewhere, there floats in the air the fantasy that if we could
only find Robert Marcellus', or Harold Wright's mouthpiece and put it through a
Star Trek Replicator, that we would suddenly, magically have the "perfect
sound."

To even think that diminishes the career and accomplishment of these (or
other) great clarinetists, who spent a lifetime working diligently to perfect
their art.

I AM a mouthpiece guy, and an equipment guy. BUT - sometimes you just have
to take what you have and practice, and work, and sweat, and listen, and
compare, adjust, change. not just hope that the next piece of equipment that comes
along will provide the magic.

Sometimes, we have to find the magic within ourselves.

Walter Grabner
www.clarinetXpress.com
World-class clarinet mouthpieces

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