The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2014-05-18 19:24
This morning I encountered a man painting the pointing – the mortar between the bricks – of a house wall facing directly onto our street. The paint was of various colours: green, gold, blue, silver...and I think he was doing it simply because he wanted to make the street look more attractive. But, I saw that he was using a wooden stick with a leather knob on the end to rest his painting hand on, and never having seen one of those in action, I asked him whether it had a name.
"Yes," he said, "it's called a Mahlstick. I think it's called that after the guy that invented it."
I subsequently found that that isn't true; the word actually comes from the Dutch for 'paint' (like the German 'Maler' = 'painter', as in 'Mathis der Maler').
Anyway, I was reminded of the analogy between 'blowing with support' and 'painting with support' that I made in a post here once; it's the second post in this thread:
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=20&i=1133&t=1132
...and I started to explain a little bit: that I was a clarinet player who'd used 'his' stick technique as an example to explain something about clarinet playing.
And, you know, he seemed to be understanding me, so I went through it to the end.
"So, did you understand all that?" I asked, finally.
"Yes," he said.
"You're a bit unusual, then," I said. "Some people have the most terrible trouble with it."
"Well, I'm a saxophone player," he replied.
Tony
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
|