 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-12-17 16:33
I've been hearing the bass clarinet solo from Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker Suite over and over on a TV ad, it's driving me crazy. I'm assuming this is only in the USA, be grateful the rest of the world. I'm not really sure if it's a person playing it with a number 2 plastic reed or an electronic instrument. I hope it's no one that reads this board that played it, it hurts my sense of bass clarinet tone. My wife keeps telling me to get over it, maybe after Christmas. Anyone else hear it? ESP http://eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: JJAlbrecht
Date: 2009-12-17 16:50
Haven't heard it , Ed, but I'm sure it's every bit as bad as some of those lousy TV or radio ads where they use a Melotron to immitate clarinet sounds. Home Depot a year or so comes to mind.
Jeff
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2009-12-17 17:06
Still crackes me up after all these years thinking of Beavis & Butthead singing the bass clarinet part in that.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: Hank Lehrer
Date: 2009-12-17 17:36
ESP,
I hear you with the comment about your wife telling you "to get over it." I hear the same thing from my wife when I crab about so and so sits a few seats away from me and plays so badly out of tune... But she adds "you are such a musical elitist" which I take as a compliment.
HRL
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2009-12-17 18:30
Hank,
My husband tells me I'm "nerdgassing" when I go on about anything I hear that's not right!
Kind of like off-gassing your nerdiness, I guess...LOL!
Katrina
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Author: Chetclarinet
Date: 2009-12-17 22:46
I have averaged 35 performances for the past 30 years as the bass clarinetist with the Houston Ballet Orchestra. I am very happy to say, that it is not me on that recording! My wife says not to shop at the mall during the Christmas season,as horrible recordings of the bass clarinet solo are played constantly! Actually, I still enjoy playing that solo, and with a fine orchestra, as the Houston Ballet Orchestra is, it is still a pleasure to play the Nutcracker. Off to number 18 tonight!
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Author: Alseg
Date: 2009-12-17 23:46
Is it as depressing(sic) as the clarinet (synthesizer?) playing on that Zoloft commercial of a few years ago??
Former creator of CUSTOM CLARINET TUNING BARRELS by DR. ALLAN SEGAL
-Where the Sound Matters Most(tm)-
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-12-18 03:03
Now it's really getting bad. We're doing our Christmas shows, we do ten, and we had the dress rehearsal tonight and I noticed that in a piece I'm tacit, in an arrangement of the same movement, that first a bari sax plays my beautiful solo and a bit later a soprano sax plays it. I'm going to have to put cotton in my ears. Help! ESP
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
Post Edited (2009-12-19 03:27)
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Author: Ebclarinet1
Date: 2009-12-18 14:01
Ed,
I finally resorted to the MUTE button as that ad came on 5 or 6 times during a football game here. Besides having lousy tone they also played the 16th note runs without holding the first of the group a bit longer. As i remember from the part it is marked that way too. The celesta did well though. I chalked it up to a studio musician, probably a sax player, playing on a borrowed Vito....
Enjoyed your piece in The Clarinet. I play 2nd oboe often and your comments about being a good second also apply there too although I've known more primadonna oboists than clarinetists.
Eefer
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Author: Hank Lehrer
Date: 2009-12-18 14:19
I just listened to the Beavis & Butthead Holiday songs on Youtube. While I do not appreciate their brand of humor, one must marvel a little that a 5 note bass clarinet motif is imitated.
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Author: William
Date: 2009-12-18 14:30
Ed, I think you are being a bit over sensitive. A tenor or soprano sax solo can be absolutely beautiful soaring over the sounds of an orchestra. I am sure that the arranger had this in mind and had nothing against the sound of the bass clarinet but rather a specific tonal effect that only a saxophone can acheive. Played well, of course.........:>)
I, too, have had the opportunity to play that little bass clarinet solo from the Nutcracker many times (actually again tonight, Sat & Sun with our symphony) and I never tire of it, nor of hearing it played by others with a variety of tone qualities. For what it is worth--and given that the performance in question was done to create a specific commercial effect--I think that the solo is played appropriately and the tone quality is acceptable--#2 plastic reed or not. I am amused by it and kind of like it.
Regardless, I'll just bet that the bass clarinetist from that commercial made a few more bucks than I will make playing the same notes tonight.
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Author: wrowand
Date: 2009-12-18 14:34
With all due respect I think you're missing the point. If it's the truck commercial I saw this morning, I think the bass clarinet is supposed to remind you how bad the engine on your old truck is running.
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2009-12-18 14:40
Just listen to yourselves... It's like one big WI meeting
Peter Cigleris
Post Edited (2009-12-18 14:59)
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-12-18 16:14
Chetclarinet wrote:
Quote:
Actually, I still enjoy playing that solo, and with a fine orchestra, as the Houston Ballet Orchestra is, it is still a pleasure to play the Nutcracker.
I'll second that. I took my family to see Houston Ballet's Nutcracker a couple of years ago, and the orchestra was fabulous. It was like hearing this music for the first time.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-12-19 03:37
William, I made a mistake and corrected it, it's first played on a Bari sax and I'm not being over sensitive, I'm not even being really serious. The arrangement we're doing is for sax quartet and it's being played by the Capital Sax Quartet, a very good group, they're the featured group in the arrangement, which is why it's being played on the sax and I'm sitting there tacit. Those that know me on this board know I have a sense of humor, sometimes at least, but I must agree with Ebclarinet1 about the use of the mutt button in the ad. ESP
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2009-12-21 14:11
I've heard the ad you must mean. It is pretty thin-sounding. Probably it's synthesized, but who knows? Could be someone told the guy it was going to be broadcast into millions of homes so he added some edge to make sure it projected over so much distance. After all, the acoustics aren't very good over the outside air. :-)
Karl
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2009-12-21 14:22
Sounded like a foghorn to me. Thanks for pointing it out, Ed... not! Now I'm going to notice it every time the stupid commercial plays. Vegemite song, anyone? Hah!
Best regards,
jnk
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Author: Alseg
Date: 2009-12-21 17:11
Too bad about the commercial....the automobile that they are advertising is quite good.
Former creator of CUSTOM CLARINET TUNING BARRELS by DR. ALLAN SEGAL
-Where the Sound Matters Most(tm)-
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Author: William
Date: 2009-12-21 22:09
Sorry, Ed P, for taking your statement--"first a bari sax plays my beautiful solo and a bit later a soprano sax plays it. I'm going to have to put cotton in my ears. Help! ESP"--too seriously, myself. It's just that I get a little miffed--as a clarinetist who doubles on sax--when I hear a *serious* clarinetist put the saxophone down as a musiclal instrument. It happens all too often. One clarinetist from my town who has auditioned for the NYC Met (and lost) flatly refuses of learn anything about saxophone because it "might damage his embouchure". At least, his elitist attitude got me hired for a musical to cover the minor sax lines that he could not play :>)
Regarding the "DOTSPF" and my three-beat switch from the bass solo to the second clarinet part, I found my mouth every time and was successful. And everyone seemed to like my sound......maybe because of hearing the commercial so many times.
BTW, also featured on our weekend concert was NYC's electric violinist, Susan Aquila, playing a "funky" arrangement of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", by our conductor, Dr Robert Tomaro. For that number, I played tenor sax--and was listed in the program THREE times for 1) clarinet, 2) bass clarinet & 3) tenor sax. I'm gonna frame that program.
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Author: William
Date: 2009-12-21 22:13
Sorry, Ed P, for taking your statement--"first a bari sax plays my beautiful solo and a bit later a soprano sax plays it. I'm going to have to put cotton in my ears. Help! ESP"--too seriously, myself. It's just that I get a little miffed--as a clarinetist who doubles on sax--when I hear a *serious* clarinetist put the saxophone down as a musiclal instrument. It happens all too often. One clarinetist from my town who has auditioned for the NYC Met (and lost) flatly refuses of learn anything about saxophone because it "might damage his embouchure". At least, his elitist attitude got me hired for a musical to cover the minor sax lines that he could not play :>)
Regarding the "DOTSPF" and my three-beat switch from the bass solo to the second clarinet part, I found my mouth every time and was successful. And everyone seemed to like my sound......maybe because of hearing the commercial so many times.
BTW, also featured on our weekend concert was NYC's electric violinist, Susan Aquila, playing a "funky" arrangement of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", by our conductor, Dr Robert Tomaro. For that number, I played my tenor sax--and was listed in the program THREE times for 1) clarinet, 2) bass clarinet & 3) tenor sax. I'm gonna frame that concert program.
Again, my appologies Ed for not getting the humor of your earlier posting.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-12-22 00:02
William, not a problem, just good for a laugh. As far as playing sax damaging one's embouchure, that's rediculous. Besides that fact that I played sax into my first two college years, when I sold my tenor to buy a bass clarinet, there are so many really fine clarinet players that play sax. As a matter of fact, the famous English clarinetist Jack Brymer played sax and our former 2nd player played a great sax. There are many very fine symphony players that play sax so tell your friend that he doesn't know what he's talking about. As a matter of fact, there doesn't have to be much, if any, difference in the basic embouchure when playing sax and clarinet for a legit player. When I observe our classical sax players their embouchures look pretty much the same as a clarinet embouchure does. The angle of the mouthpiece may be different but the basics are the same. When I've had a student that played sax I would encourage it because it's more oppertunity to find work once they graduated http://eddiesclarinet.com
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
Post Edited (2009-12-22 00:15)
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Author: John J. Moses
Date: 2009-12-22 00:12
Sorry good friends on this BBoard, but I'm the clarinetist you've been hearing on many of those funky commercials!
For the past 30 years or so, I've been doing "jingles" here in NYC, and it has been great fun!
We just finished a "Lucky Charms" spot last week, so listen up, it's me.
I did the "Zoloft" spot years ago, but the latest one is a "sampled" clarinet, no one played it "live".
If any of you are interested, I've done these spots over the past few years:
LUNESTA (I'm the blue butterfly)
NASONEX (I'm the bee)
ACURA
AOL
VERIZON
MASTERCARD
VISA
FEDEX
CADILLAC
KFC
MICROSOFT
LISTERINE
WONDERPETS (I'm the turtle)
and a few more...
So friends, it's not always a synthesized "sample" sometimes, hopefully for a long time, it's a LIVE clarinet player!
Have a Happy Holiday Season and a Healthy New Year !!!
JJM
Légère Artist
Clark W. Fobes Artist
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Author: Ebclarinet1
Date: 2009-12-22 01:37
Actually I pulled out the recording that our symphony did after a weekend of being bombarded by THAT version from the car commercial. After hearing our rendition , I realized even the celesta playing was BAD too. Ours did much better! And I played the bass solo pretty well too!
Eefer guy
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