 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Bill
Date: 2012-12-29 18:13
Twice in my life I have fallen in love with a particular clarinet sound; OK, three times, but Reginald Kell doesn't count. The first was Benny Goodman in his late 1940s trio recordings. The second time was Harold Wright playing Baermann's Adagio on an old Music Minus One LP.
As someone who has been neither a professional nor even a serious student, the clarinet is my hobby, like golf or the Civil War. Hobbyists can get pretty serious (and I have observed some professionals--after painstaking work--act rather devil-may-care). In my short history with clarinet, I was lucky to achieve a rather nice, "serious" tone quality pretty much from the beginning. I'm not sure where it came from. I adopted double-lip, on my own, very early.
But recreating what I heard in my head as "Benny Goodman's sound" was difficult. I got frustrated one day and took an old, wide-open junk drawer mpc and a 2.5 reed and started tooting and whittling back that reed. The experiment was a disaster, but somewhere in the process I tasted some qualities -- less of sound than of feel, of control and flexibility -- that I liked, and which I had never experienced in my playing before.
That was about 8 years ago, and those experiments have slowly begun to affect my "serious side," the side of me that was as dead serious as a weekend golfer. For one thing, I really learned how to wield a piece of rush a la Daniel Bonade. But the big change was that I lost the willingness to ever have to push an intractable reed again ... as if I were an artist using a brush that was too big, the bristles and the width too large for fine lines and details. As a player with nowhere for my sound to go but my music room, I have allowed my tone to be just firm enough to please me.
Yet, I never get too far from what I hear inside my head of Harold Wright's compact, elegant, fulsome yet somehow articulate sound. Pamela Weston reported that he used #5 reeds, "which he works on, slightly, near the top." My God!
Now when I sit down to play, I sometimes think "What will it be today? Body and Soul or Baermann?" I like both.
Bill Fogle
Ellsworth, Maine
(formerly Washington, DC)
Post Edited (2012-12-29 18:22)
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Author: William
Date: 2012-12-29 18:44
Either Goodman or Wright would be OK by me. However, I gave up years ago trying to sound like Benny or my local idol, Chuck Hedges, and just decided to make my own sound "all it could be", clear, compact and--most important--in tune with whomever I play with. No one has ever complained..........and I'm content. FWIW, my mpc is an original Chicago Kaspar that I have played sincer 1970 combined with a few years on a custom Charles Bay, Ithica model with my Kaspar facing. Reeds were mostly V12s but now are vintage Forestones. The new ones do not play as well for me, but the older ones keep on "keep'n on" and I enjoy not having to constantly do reed searches and other cane maintainance proceedurs. My main gigs are with a local professional orchestra and some very good wind ensembles. Also play sax with a fun group of retired guys, the Retro Swing Band. We play at local elderly community centers for free and have a blast. I play all the saxes and on each horn, I just try to sound my best not trying to be Desmond, Getz, Mulligan or Kenny--just me.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2012-12-29 18:57
The only problem is that, unless you heard Goodman and/or Wright play live, what you hear inside your head is the sound on those recordings, which that far back may not be very reliable. Yes, the basic qualities are apparent, but the subtleties of sound are hard to capture on recordings, even when recorded and played back with state-of-the-equipment.
I have always been struck by the difference between the way I thought a major player sounded based on recordings and the actual sound when I one day heard the player in live performance. I only heard Goodman live once (in a large hall - the Academy of Music in Philadelphia) and Wright two or three times (once sitting next to him at a lesson I took with him when I was stationed near D.C. and he was still in the National Symphony), but the sounds I heard in those performances were much more resonant, more colorful, more alive than the impressions I had built from records.
Karl
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2012-12-29 19:51
Creating a big concert sound is more than just hearing it. For me, I needed some guidance (kinda like learning a magic trick......you can watch Penn and Teller all day long but that will only get you so far).
I found my answer through the use of the air stream. This stream needs to be supported first and foremost. Pushing from the abdomen is essential (clarinet playing and singing are NOT passive activities !!!).
You then must FOCUS that air stream to be thin, compact and steady (this is where the abdominal muscles come in). I always think of positioning the tongue as if I where not thinking. That is, a natural posture of rest is better than most of the ballet type moves I've heard described over the years - just blow!. Leon Russianoff used to recommend an exercise where you stand about a foot from a smooth wall and hold a 6" by 6" piece of notebook paper up against that wall with your breath as long as you can. Again, the point being STEADY air flow. And as far as focus goes, Robert Marcellus always gave the example of a thin, powerful stream of air, as one got out of a particular aircraft valve he would refer to. This valve would tend to freeze over, not because the air coming out of it was cold in and of itself, but because it was so fast that it created a cold effect. Marcellus always spoke of using COLD air (much like blowing on a hot cup of coffee to cool it down).
I say all of this because I find that a big sound is NOT for the super talented (that's called musicianship), a big sound can be achieved by ANYBODY!!!!
............Paul Aviles
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Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2012-12-29 21:42
Interesting choice of players, especially as they both made major changes to their approaches at pivotal point in their careers--and both for double lip embouchure.
Of the two, I think Wright's progression to a double lip embouchure was more natural, or at least more logically sequential. By this I mean that Harold Wright's playing seems to have followed a strong trajectory towards an ideal sound, which he acheived finally through a double lip embouchure. There is a real difference in tone between his first recording of the Brahms sonatas and his second--and embouchure was, I think, part of that difference. Still, I'd be willing to bet (without having seen pictures) that Wright's basic approach to embouchure was very close to the same before the switch--there is a logical similarity of approach and progression.
Benny's switch was more drastic and more radical. I've often wondered why he would change at all, and beyond his apparent obsession with Reginald Kell, I can't hear any good reason why. His embouchure in the late 1930s, especially, was radically different than his later double lip embouchure, and so was his tone. In my opinion, there is no question that his sound and approach was better before the switch than after it.
His first recordings of Body & Soul (for Victor) present a sound that can't, in my opinion, be achieved by his later approach, and yet he did make at least one classical recording (the Debussy Rhapsody in 1940 with the NY Phil and Barbirolli) that seems to justify this early approach in a classical setting. This is, to me, a historical quandry: why did a man with an approach to the horn so effective in both realms abandon it? It's almost as vexing as why Artie Shaw packed up the horn before recording more of the classical repertoire (which he certainly could have managed--I'd trade half my classical recordings to hear what Artie would have done with Brahms or Schumann).
After many years of working in both worlds, so to speak, I do think there is a decision to be made about embouchure approach. If one wants to walk into Benny's old world, the player needs to make a commitment to playing the horn a certain way; developing the habits so as to make it second nature. This is no less true of Harold Wright's world--it takes a single minded type of dedication, before any other concerns like talent level, etc., are even mentioned.
My one big criticisms about those who do Benny Goodman tribute albums* (or cash-in albums, whichever they might be) is that they don't dedicate enough time to understanding the timbral language Benny so brilliantly created--they use more or less their classical tone and embouchure concept. There is a tremendous amount of subtlety lost if we don't listen careful to Body & Soul, and realize that Benny gave us a masterpiece, as nuanced as any classical recording, and demanding similar rigours.
[ * one major exception to this criticism is Eddie Daniels's album with Gary Burton, which is a mature statement in its own right. ]
Eric
******************************
The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
Post Edited (2012-12-29 23:01)
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Author: Bill
Date: 2012-12-30 03:58
Fascinating responses all! Thanks so much.
Bill Fogle
Ellsworth, Maine
(formerly Washington, DC)
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Author: Ed
Date: 2012-12-30 13:10
This is the first that I have ever heard that Wright changed his embouchure. It was my understanding that he was a double lip player all along, studying with McLane as such.
Wright had a very supple and flexible sound. His choice of reeds would depend on his facing and the ease of his mouthpiece. I am sure that a resistant set up would not allow him to play the way he did. One can easily hear the freedom in his playing. He is not fighting to get the reed to respond.
I believe that the reeds of that era were not as hard. For a number of years I had a stock of the older #5 Vandorens from the 70's. I could play them very comfortably. When I tried any of the recent #5 reeds they were hard as a shingle.
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Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2012-12-30 15:28
Ed,
I'm no expert on Harold Wright's embouchure--all of my info on his "switch" is anecdotal. For what it's worth, the story goes that he switched from a single lip embouchure to double lip during his tenure in DC, and that by the time he moved to Boston, his double lip was set.
This was "common knowledge" among many folks I've known over the years...but it doesn't mean it's true! Maybe a Wright student reading this can help us out by confirming or disproving this one?
Anyhow, I've always accepted it uncritically, as the difference in tone quality of his Brahms Sonatas from the time he was supposedly a "single lip" player to the later recordings is, to my ear, drastically different, though obviously from the same musician (caveat: it's been may years since I listened to Wright's first recording of Opus 120).
Having said that, Leister's recordings of the Brahms Sonatas are also drastically different in tone quality, and I've never heard that he made a big embouchure change in between. Who knows? Sometimes a mouthpiece change or just aging makes the bigger difference.
Eric
******************************
The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
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Author: kdk
Date: 2012-12-30 15:49
MarlboroughMan wrote:
> Who
> knows? Sometimes a mouthpiece change or just aging makes the
> bigger difference.
>
> Eric
>
Or different (better) recording technique and improvements in production of the distributed product.
Karl
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