 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2012-05-17 06:01
Seriously though, the one who is doing the 'blowing' should realize after awhile what a crock "voicing" is.
We should all have this opportunity at least once in a career.
..................Paul Aviles
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2012-05-17 10:04
Paul Aviles wrote:
>> Seriously though, the one who is doing the 'blowing' should realize after awhile what a crock "voicing" is.
We should all have this opportunity at least once in a career.>>
How do you make that out?
Tony
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2012-05-17 11:07
Well it's my old contention (with which you're not particularly happy) that your hippopotamus can play the clarinet perfectly well despite the fact that it's oral cavity is so big compared to ours.
As long as the airstream is steady, the notes are happy to come out no matter what vowel shape of the mouth you may "think" you want for the moment.
This becomes obvious when someone else is fingering the notes as you blow.
................Paul Aviles
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2012-05-17 11:38
I listened to this (before reading any of the comments) and was immediately struck by the thought that this proves how necessary it is to "voice" notes on the clarinet! Weird how Paul came to the opposite conclusion.
To me it was obvious from listening that if the blower isn't quite ready for the note change, even if only by milliseconds, some notes either pop out or don't speak properly. These two chaps did very well, and a less coordinated duo would have had far less satisfactory results. But their connection between notes is still much more awkward than a single player would have been able to produce.
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2012-05-17 11:51
I agree with Liquorice -- the last four measures displays the lack of coordination between the two of them perfectly.
James
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2012-05-17 15:32
cl90 -
For your next concert, I suggest switching the top joints on your Bb and A clarinets, making two (approximately) B natural clarinets. That way, it's twice the fun, and twice the pain. When I did this in high school, it brought the band director on the dead run within 15 seconds.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2012-05-17 16:07
Paul Aviles wrote:
>> Well it's my old contention (with which you're not particularly happy) that your hippopotamus can play the clarinet perfectly well despite the fact that it's oral cavity is so big compared to ours.>>
I think that this remark shows that you misunderstand the point about the hippopotamus.
The hippopotamus (or artificial embouchure) can play the clarinet quite well, but initially extraordinarily better than a beginner, BECAUSE its oral cavity is so big compared to ours. The 'walls' of the space surrounding the reed are so far away that reflections from them interact only weakly with the behaviour of the reed, and so the interaction doesn't need to be changed as the frequency of vibration of the reed changes, following the changing tube length. Another way of saying this is that the body of the clarinet, via the length of the effective tube, DOMINATES the situation.
WE, on the other hand, with our much smaller mouth cavity, need to be careful not to interfere with the reed vibration. So, a beginner needs to learn how to modify their oral cavity in order to execute intervals smoothly. The bonus is that as we become expert, we can also change tone colour, and indeed the nature of our legato, to some extent -- which the hippopotamus would be forever unable to achieve.
>> As long as the airstream is steady, the notes are happy to come out no matter what vowel shape of the mouth you may "think" you want for the moment.>>
Your use of the word 'think' here suggests to me that you imagine that a conscious decision is involved. Whereas rather, the movements of the tongue are largely unconscious -- as they are in whistling, or, indeed, in speaking. We have learnt how to employ them in each of these disciplines by long practice, listening carefully to the results we obtain.
So, I claim that you personally DO use voicing, to an extent to which you are unaware, when you are playing the clarinet 'well'. (I think Liquorice has put his finger on the heart of the matter.)
My further claim is that when you are playing the clarinet 'excellently', you are using a further refinement of voicing -- the details of which, again, are largely unconscious.
Tony
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Author: Ed
Date: 2012-05-17 16:55
Just because you CAN do something does not necessarily mean that you SHOULD!
;-)
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Author: Buster
Date: 2012-05-17 23:07
Paul,
There seems to be a key concept that you are over-looking:
It's not just That the reed is vibrating while playing, it's also the space in which the reed is vibrating---the oral cavity/vocal tract. (Thus it can be said that the sound waves generated by the clarinet are also generated in our mouths.)
In the hippo model, the large "artificial oral-cavity" does not interfere with the reed's ability to vibrate at the proper frequency due to it's large size. The high impedance of the bore is able to control the vibration of the reed and "select" the correct frequency of vibration without proper behavior of the "artificial oral-cavity." Control of note selection is more stable- But, the ability to fine tune the sound is lost.
However, when we play the instrument ourselves, we have to micro-manage the quite small space in which the reed is vibrating to ensure correct clarinet behavior.
But as a nice side-effect we find that we have Far more control on the pitch/harmonic selection, tuning and tone coloration fronts. Thankfully so!!, or our playing would likely sound quite poor, monotone and bland....
It seems that the term 'voicing' is perhaps an unfortunate consequence of the English language. Tongue position, oral cavity shape and vocal-tract tuning have profound effects over both pitch/partial selection, tuning AND sound coloration etc... A multi-faceted term indeed.
It seems counter-intuitive, but we have to "tune" our oral/vocal tracts to play the desired note. Yet, we can still alter the resultant sound in our mouths-- -as long as we don't cross the line and violate those "pitch/partial selection rules."
The tongue/oral cavity themselves are playing simultaneous, multiple roles.
Maybe we'd be better served referring to matters without using the term "voicing." Perhaps Note selection and Note Variation would serve better. Though make no mistake, they take place in the same space of our bodies.
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/clarinetacoustics.html Click on Vocal Tract Effects
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/lookup.php/Klarinet/2005/05/000454.txt
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/reprints/ChenetalJASA09.pdf
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/SaxTract.html (Though this deals with the saxophone, the same relationship can be extrapolated.)
-Jason
Post Edited (2012-05-18 01:16)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2012-05-18 05:06
Or perhaps as I like to say: It is the point at which the lower teeth meet the reed (sliding further up the reed as you say "EEEE" and sliding down as you say "YAHHHH") and the ultimate pressure (or lack there of) that produces these effects rather than the position of the tongue.
Perhaps I am not doing this as all of you, but as I CONSCIOUSLY play a note (holding firm to the jaw opening size and pressure... and contact point), I can roll my tongue ALL OVER THE PLACE within my mouth and the note does NOT change one wit. Shouldn't there be SOME change of sound to some degree if the oral cavity size/shape made a difference???
And Jason, you make mention of changing the oral cavity as if it were possible to do in another way besides the tongue. How is this possible (besides allowing your cheeks to expand....... and there are plenty of circular breathers that pride themselves on consistent sound doing this) ??????
If though this would be accomplished by opening the jaw more and just applying more lip musculature, there would obviously be more going on that would make a tonal difference than just the shape of your mouth's interior.
Getting back to the video, I firmly believe that the "oops" moments were triggered by very conscious changes made by the 'blower' which were not only unnecessary but ultimately intrusive.
So, no I don't relegate the enclosed video to a simple parlor trick status.
................Paul Aviles
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2012-05-18 14:04
Paul Aviles wrote:
>> Perhaps I am not doing this as all of you, but as I CONSCIOUSLY play a note (holding firm to the jaw opening size and pressure... and contact point), I can roll my tongue ALL OVER THE PLACE within my mouth and the note does NOT change one wit. Shouldn't there be SOME change of sound to some degree if the oral cavity size/shape made a difference??? >>
There is no doubt that you can make extensive tongue movements without changing the pitch or quality of a clarinet note. Even playing LH thumb high C you can do this.
But, you cannot move your tongue ALL over the place without affecting the pitch of that high C. For example, I can bend it down over a fifth by using another sort of tongue movement.
Consider this: sing a note to the vowel 'AH', and waggle your tongue about. Now, here, because there is no clarinet, and tonal variation is DIRECTLY affected by mouth shape, which, speaking roughly, comes AFTER the larynx in the causal chain, you would expect small variations in sound quality; and indeed, there are.
But now, on the same note, change to singing the vowel 'EE'. You have just made a tongue movement that wasn't included in your previous 'waggle' mode. This has resulted in a very much more radical change in sound quality.
(If you say, well, I moved my lips too, I reply: you can do it WITHOUT moving your lips.)
I said that I can bend the top C down a fifth. Doing so uses a tongue position that, when vocalised, goes even further: it corresponds to no 'normal' vowel sound. (It sounds like a strangled mixture of 'ee', 'y', 'gh' and 'n'.) So it's not surprising that you don't come across it by waggling your tongue about, even when you think you're including 'all over the place'. (When you were singing 'AH', you didn't even get to 'EE', doing that:-)
As far as timbre goes, we can't get anything as extreme as a change of vowel on a clarinet note by ANY physical embouchure or vocal-tract change, because the effect of the clarinet body itself is too dominant. I remember being asked about this possibility by Stockhausen in 1971. He was considering writing a piece for the London Sinfonietta, and was interested in how far a clarinet could mimic the human voice going, say, 'oo-ee-oo-ee….'. We regretfully concluded that apart from fingering changes, which have their own disadvantages, nothing could approach that. (Berio was hoping for similar things -- in 'Agnus', for example, and later in the clarinet Sequenza.)
>> Getting back to the video, I firmly believe that the "oops" moments were triggered by very conscious changes made by the 'blower' which were not only unnecessary but ultimately intrusive. >>
I can't see how you come to this conclusion as an experienced clarinettist. You must have encountered the phenomenon of fingering the 'wrong' note -- ie, 'not the note that you imagined you would be playing' -- on occasion, by mistake. What you get under those circumstances, in my experience, is certainly not just a pure version of the note you fingered -- as you would on a piano, say.
The acoustical references (including Wheeler and UNSW) given by Jason are evidence that unconscious tongue movements (fundamental, back of the tongue, not 'waggle') are inextricably involved in clarinet playing -- unless you're a hippo, for which observation I think I can take the credit:-)
I suggest that you do more with your tongue than you know, as I've tried to make more plausible in the 'singing' examples above.
(You can show it to some extent with whistling, too: I can whistle over a range of two octaves, clearly only by using tongue movements; AND I can waggle my tongue a bit on top of that.)
Tony
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2012-05-18 17:23
I would leave it at the fact that 'singing a note' makes the oral cavity a resonance chamber - far different than the function it serves getting the air to the mouthpiece/reed. Same thing with whistling. The oral cavity IS the body of the instrument in this case as opposed to the clarinet being the resonance chamber.
But we do agree to disagree.
....................Paul Aviles
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2012-05-18 18:34
Paul Aviles wrote:
>> I would leave it at the fact that 'singing a note' makes the oral cavity a resonance chamber - far different than the function it serves getting the air to the mouthpiece/reed. Same thing with whistling. The oral cavity IS the body of the instrument in this case as opposed to the clarinet being the resonance chamber.>>
Do you think I don't appreciate that? (Indeed, I said it.)
The whole point of the 'singing' bit was to persuade you that 'rolling' or 'waggling' your tongue around doesn't capture the full spectrum of possibility of your tongue positions. As Wheeler points out, you have no experience of what the back of your tongue does.
>> But we do agree to disagree. >>
I'm afraid I don't agree to disagree.
Please stop posting the nonsense you speak on this subject. You do damage.
Tony
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Author: Buster
Date: 2012-05-18 20:49
Paul,
On certain matters, "agreeing to disagree" is perfectly acceptable.
Perhaps a discussion regarding Pepsi or Coke as the better cola can be tossed into that category.
However, when something can be supported by empirically gathered data, the ability to "agree to disagree" is unfortunately lost.
--It may seem that I have a penchant for endlessly posting "scientific things" on this BBoard, as if I am some bespectacled professor laboring away in some remote lab. But that could not be further from the truth.....
The truth is, sometimes the only way to stop someone from writing and force them to think is to present them something accurate to read and digest. More often than not, they simply refuse to do so. ---Perhaps out of laziness, or the fear of having their thoughts/opinions proven to be incorrect.
In a face-to-face setting, or a one-on-one lesson, other paths can be taken. But that is not a luxury we are afforded in this medium.
---Today, in my morning golf session, I was reminded of a phrase experienced golfers joke about amongst themselves: Feel vs. Real ---Or how what is personally felt, or not felt, disagrees with an observable truth (through motion capture swing analysis for instance.)
Paul, I am sorry, but it is clear that you are not feeling what is actually occurring, deny it all you wish.
If you desire to continue thinking about matters incorrectly, and it works for you, then by all means go forward. You have all of our blessings. But keep those thoughts to yourself, lest people have to waste time trying to stop you from disseminating incorrect "knowledge."
I do agree that you have every right to personally think whatever you wish.
However, I strongly disagree that you have the right to post provably incorrect surmising for others to read. Or that you are not subject to providing merit-worthy evidence of your own when you are called upon to defend your words.
None of us are free from that burden, myself included.
-Jason
Post Edited (2012-05-18 21:55)
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