Klarinet Archive - Posting 000013.txt from 2011/07

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Multiphonic mistunings
Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2011 11:58:08 -0400

Hello all,

Wondering if those of you with contemporary-music experience might be
able to help out with a little irritation ...

Recently I was working on a piece that includes the throat F#-high D
dyad obtained with the regular high-D fingering. Much to my shock and
surprise I realized that the F# was extremely flat, maybe as much as a
quarter tone or more.

I know from experience that multiphonics are notoriously difficult to
tune perfectly, but this was a surprise given that I'm fairly sure that
in times past this multiphonic was well in tune (at least far more
obviously an F#).

A bit of further experimentation suggests that for quite a few of the
multiphonics involving basically an upper-register fingering and an
undertone, the lower note is about 1/4-tone flat compared to the notes
given in the multiphonics appendix of New Directions for Clarinet.

In many of these cases I'm pretty confident that the lower note was not
so out of tune some while back, and I'm wondering if there's anything I
can do to correct this.

Some "what's changed?" thoughts: I've been using the same mouthpiece for
years, but it could be a different type of (softer?) reed at fault, and
could also be different (longer) barrel than I've used in the past,
though I tried with a shorter one and it didn't rectify things. In
general the flatness seems to come from the lowered lip pressure needed
to let the multiphonic sound. (Besides, while barrel length might
affect the pitch of regular throat notes, I'm not convinced it's the
dominant factor in these dyad multiphonics.)

Anyway, any suggestions for some tweaks that I could make that might set
things a bit more to rights? I'm not expecting perfect intonation on
multiphonics, but I'm fairly sure it can be improved from where it is ...

Thanks & best wishes,

-- Joe
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