Klarinet Archive - Posting 000124.txt from 2005/10

From: "Geoff & Sherryl-Lee Secomb" <gsecomb@-----.au>
Subj: Re: [kl] Brad Behn
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 18:47:46 -0400

Walter,
You've written a "keeper." Thanks.
Geoff Secomb.

----- Original Message -----
From: <GrabnerWG@-----.com>
To: <klarinet@-----.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 4:16 AM
Subject: Re: [kl] Brad Behn

> 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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> Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org
>
>

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