Klarinet Archive - Posting 000078.txt from 2008/01

From: Jonathan Cohler <cohler@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] warm-cool/fast-slow
Date: Sun, 06 Jan 2008 11:45:36 -0500

1. The air temperature does NOT change based on its speed.

That's another example of why metaphors in teaching music are often
the source of misunderstandings and confusion for students.

People say that the air is cooler, because if you blow on your hand,
for example, a fast air stream feels cooler than a slow one. But
that has nothing to due with the temperature of the air.

It has to do with the fact that a fast air stream causes evaporation
of moisture on your hand, and the evaporation causes cooling. This
is often known as the "wind chill" effect in weather reporting.

2. The notion of using fast or slow air is largely misunderstood and
misused. First, the aperture into the instrument is basically fixed.
It is the space between the reed and the mouthpiece. You can make
that space smaller by pressing the reed in, but that's it. The speed
with which the clarinet flows into the instrument will be determined
by three parameters only: (a) the pressure in your mouth, (b) the
pressure inside the instrument, and (c) the size of the aperture. As
with any fluid flow, in a constricted region the rate of flow is
faster. So you can increase the airspeed inside your mouth by
constricting the space using your tongue, for example, but the speed
at which the air moves inside your mout is irrelevant. What matters
is when it moves into the instrument through the reed/mouthpiece
aperture.

3. What DOES matter about your oral cavity shape is the following.
Arthur Benade (probably the most famous physicist in the field of
musical acoustics) proved the following 30 years ago. If your oral
cavity is shaped so that it has a resonance peak which is an integral
multiple of the frequency of the note that you are playing, then two
measurable benefits accrue:

a. The note your playing becomes more stable.
b. To a lesser, but noticeable, degree the harmonic content of the
note is enriched.

In other words, what many people call "voicing" is a valuable skill
to learn and every note on the instrument requires slightly different
oral cavity (i.e. tongue, throat and soft palette) shape to produce
the most stable and resonant sound possible. As a practical matter,
you can find these optimal positions by playing a note while moving
your tongue and throat around until you achieve an optimally resonant
and stable sound. Then it's a matter of practice to be able to
reproduce these positions without too much thought.

So the moral of the story is...

forget about warm/cold, fast/slow
blow harder to play louder
blow less hard to play softer
learn how to "voice" each note on the instrument

--Jonathan

At 7:32 AM -0800 1/6/08, Audrey Travis wrote:
>Keith
>I've also heard this from many musicians and do it myself- round out
>the inside of the mouth and blow air slowly. Somehow, I can do this
>and blow lukewarm air or I can think about blowing warmer air and it
>actually warms up to hot for softer dynamics. In general, the
>faster the air flow, the cooler the air.
>Audrey
>
>On 6-Jan-08, at 12:49 AM, Keith Bowen wrote:
>
>>Well, you do blow harder to make it loud! But how did you say you make the
>>air from your lungs colder?
>>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------

--
Jonathan Cohler
Artistic & General Director
International Woodwind Festival
http://iwwf.org/
cohler@-----.org

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