Klarinet Archive - Posting 000080.txt from 2008/09

From: bernie_ml@-----.uk
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: Warm Air / Cold Air
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 06:28:07 -0400

> Today in my copy of "American Recorder" was a "scholarly" description of
> using warm
> air to create the best tone for low notes, medium air for the middle
> notes, and
> cool air for the high notes. Would the collective wisdom of the list care
> to
> comment on this? I fail to see how an individual can effect change in the
> temperature of exhaled air at will. Someone please enlighten me with
> a "reasonable" explanation.

Nancy,

I assume that you are not meant to take this literally as the temperature
of the air, but rather the "way of blowing".
Certainly I have heard people refer to air control for clarinet and
saxophone as being cool and warm respectively, where the intent is that
cool air is an airstream more similar to that used for e.g. cooling down a
spoonful of hot soup, and warm air is more like blowing on glasses to fog
the surface for cleaning.
Maybe it would be helpful to think of it in terms of how focussed the
airstream is (narrow jet vs. wide dispersion).

In practice I think of this as a combination of how hard you blow (already
mentioned by Keith), but more importantly your oral cavity shape, and the
way you use your tongue. You may not want to reduce the breath support to
achieve warmer air (at least on clar/sax), but rather you change your
tongue position to create less constriction in the mouth. Like squeezing
the end of a hosepipe without changing the flow from the tap - smaller
constriction gives a faster and narrower water jet ("cool air"), and no
constriction gives a slower and more spread out flow ("warm air").

As ever, when describing what is happening in the mouth, this is only what
I assume is happening based on how it feels - I've never seen what I, or
anyone else, is actually doing ;-)

Does this make any sense in the context of the original article??

Cheers,
Bernie

------------------------------------------------------------------