 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2007-05-30 14:25
Bernard Portnoy recomended thin. He argued the cross section of a thick reed, being necessarily somewhat different from that of a thin reed, was not of correct contour in that the conventional mouthpiece and thin reed were designed to be a match. Thus one would need a special mouthpiece design to properly accomodate the thick reeds. He said this was most noticable in the lower register tones. Sounds plausible to me. Comments, please. Thank you.
richard smith
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Author: redwine
Date: 2007-05-30 14:57
Hello,
I recently came to the same conclusion. What prompted my change was rereading Ben Armato's book on reeds "Perfect-A-Reed and Beyond". He argues in the book that we should allow as much of the reed to vibrate as is possible. So, for me, I assumed that a thinner reed would vibrate more. As a result, I dropped a half strength of reed. Then, of course, the reed collapsed on the facing of my mouthpiece. So, and I'm lucky that I can work on mouthpieces, I refaced my mouthpiece going roughly a "swipe" at a time and retesting the reed at each swipe. The result was that when the reed played perfectly for me, my tip opening had changed from a 1.02 (somewhat close) to a 1.17 (rather open).
Clarinetists that I hear that are learning are always striving for that "dark" sound. My theory is that the easiest way to make the "dark" sound is to play a hard reed. In reality, that just limits the vibrations of the reed, thus dampening the high overtones. So, from where one listens to oneself (attached to and slightly behind the clarinet), the tone sounds "dark". From the audience perspective, I would not describe the sound as "dark" but rather as "dull".
For my ear, the sounds with the high overtones in them are the most interesting.
If you can attend the Vancouver clarinet convention (Mr. Armato will sadly not attend the OU show this summer) please do find Mr. Armato and try to glean as much information from him as you can. He is truly one of the gentlemen of the clarinet and of the ilk that is disappearing. "They just don't make them like they used to". If you have the opportunity to play for him, take advantage of it. It will be one of the most memorable lessons you ever had.
Ben Redwine, DMA
owner, RJ Music Group
Assistant Professor, The Catholic University of America
Selmer Paris artist
www.rjmusicgroup.com
www.redwinejazz.com
www.reedwizard.com
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2007-05-30 15:33
Yes.susieray wrote:
> richard,
>
> are you referring to thick blanks vs regular cut?
>
> sue
richard smith
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