Klarinet Archive - Posting 000764.txt from 1998/12
From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Hippopotami blowing clarinets
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 00:44:43 -0500
On Sun, 20 Dec 1998 17:58:03 -0500, charette@-----.org said:
> Both sides of the reed are resonating cavities, not just the clarinet
> side.
A couple of years ago I saw and played around with a very simple yet
striking setup that allowed you to play a clarinet 'remotely'. It
consisted of an airtight box containing an artificial embouchure (just a
piece of plastic mimicking a lip) that you could push against a
reed/mouthpiece setup. You blew (or pumped) air in through a tube, and
could finger the clarinet outside the box, as below.
Notice that the box is very large, compared with an actual mouth.
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(I haven't shown the artificial embouchure, because I got fed up trying
to draw it. There is also a tonguing device.)
It was built a friend who is doing some research into mouthpiece design.
What I found extraordinary was how *good* the results are. (In fact,
this is an understatement: I was completely flabbergasted.) The sound
is really acceptable, and -- something I would never have believed
possible -- you can easily play in all three registers of the
instrument, with no embouchure variation at all, just blowing with
varying pressure down the tube. I almost got up to a top C''''! (This
an octave above C''' above the stave!)
My question is: Why do *we* find this so difficult? It's very rare for
a beginner to get anything like these results.
It's pretty clear from experience that different mouth shapes (different
tongue positions) affect the blowing of the clarinet. I can bend the
top C''' on a clarinet down more than a fifth just by changing the
position of my tongue. So certainly there are waves travelling back
from the vibrating reed into the mouth that get reflected, and affect
the reed's behaviour in certain circumstances, just as the reflected
waves from the body of the clarinet do. (I would say that this is
beyond doubt, even though I'm told by some people that it cannot be so,
because these waves can't be detected directly by measurements taken
inside the mouth. This is why I said that the effect of tongue position
is controversial in some quarters.)
Anyhow, look at it the other way round. Is it possible that we find
playing the clarinet difficult to start with because our mouths are *too
small*, so we need to have the cavity match the note in some sense,
whereas a hippopotamus wouldn't, because the reed is completely
dominated by the clarinet? In other words, is it possible that to learn
to play well is to learn not_to_interfere_too_much with the clarinet's
behaviour, and that the very subtle ways you can then modify the sound
of the instrument are a sort of second order modulation of this
necessary 'non-interference'?
Of course, however they are achieved, these modulations are essential to
really good playing, just as patterning of resonance is essential for
speech.
So if what I've said is right, it would seem to argue against the
possibility of true hippopotami virtuosi on the clarinet. The effect
of changes of mouth cavity on the reed would be really negligible,
because the walls are so far away. So what is an initial lack of
difficulty for the hippopotamus ultimately is a limitation. Instability
implies the possibility of precise control, stability implies the lack
of it.
(Might be good enough for Opus Number Zoo though:-)
Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339
"'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own."
... 90% of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.
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