 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: MGT91123
Date: 2013-11-15 23:25
Doe anyone own an R5? If so, what is the characteristic, I'm thinking of getting one on winter break if a lighave change doesn't do the more mellow sound, and I have heard good things about the clarinets he makes.
Buffet E-11
Buffet Moening Barrel, 65 mm, Backun Protege 65mm
Vadoren BD5 Mouthpiece
Vandoren M/O series gold Lig.
Gonzala's FOF Reeds 2.5
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-11-16 03:32
Tom's way of playing, which works wonderfully for him, is to play on a mouthpiece and clarinet that have high resistance. He says he leans into the resistance and doesn't have to make the adjustments that he had to make on freer-blowing setups. He also favors a closed tip opening matched with fairly hard reeds. He says that his mouthpieces require very precise reed adjustment, but when the reed is just right, it plays beautifully.
Tom designed the Leblanc Opus and Selmer Signature, which embody his theories.
Tom's products are not for everybody. For me, high resistance gets in the way. I play best on a free-blowing setup, using a fairly open mouthpiece and fairly soft reeds. This allow me to play with less effort and a wider variety of tone color.
The point is that you must play every clarinet and mouthpiece until you find what works for and pleases you. Nobody can make that decision for you. I think my preferences are probably in the minority, but they work for me.
Ken Shaw
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Author: dibble
Date: 2013-11-16 08:27
I feel you. I have a Lyrique and an 1963 R13 Bb and I prefer the r13 for the same reasons. Also, I do feel that hard rubber dampens overtones so the sound of hard rubber, though stable and even, is boring to my ear.
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Author: Barry Vincent
Date: 2013-11-16 09:30
I have both the Lyrique Bb 576BC and the Lyrique C 570C.
I use a Ridenour Eroica mouthpiece on the C which goes well with it , and mostly a Vandoren B45 or B45 dot mouthpiece on the Bb.
To my ears , Ebonite (hard rubber) sounds as good as wood and is certainly not 'boring' in tone. It may, or may not have as good projection as wood but even that is subjective. The Bb Lyrique has a nice 'dark' tone. In that I mean , it has a 'full bodied ' tone like many other good quality Clarinets.
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Author: dibble
Date: 2013-11-16 09:58
I like the way hard rubber clarinets hold the sound in various dynamics. but the tone sounds uninteresting to me, especially in the throat and low chalmeau.
everyone has different ears I guess.
I REALLY want to like the tone because of all the great qualities of the rubber clarinet but I keep going back to wood despite its flaws.
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Author: Barry Vincent
Date: 2013-11-16 10:43
Wood , good quality wood that is , has two things going for it. It looks good and feels good. There's nothing quite so beautiful an object in the wind instrument domain as a good quality Clarinet or Oboe with silver plated keys as well. The downside to Ebonite is that you cannot have silver plated keys owing to the catalyst effect that sulphur has on silver.
Back to the original topic. The only Ridenour MP that I have is the Eroica. I"ve never tried any of his other MPs. As Ken Shaw mentioned, I also noticed straight away , that this MP has a 'resistance' that I initially did not like , but since I got the C Lyrique, this MP (the Erocia) seems to give a more 'focused ' sound on this smaller Clarinet.
Skyfacer
Post Edited (2013-11-16 10:46)
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Author: ruben
Date: 2013-11-16 11:50
I agree with Dibble when he or she says that hard rubber dampens overtones. But, all the more reason to play Tom's Lyrique C clarinet-the dampening of overtones doesn't make it at all squeaky as C- clarinets are wont to be. I prefer it to the Selmer that I used to play on and that cost about four times as much. As far as I know, Tom didn't design the Selmer Signature. The tester, at any rate, was Jacques DiDonato here in France.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: dibble
Date: 2013-11-16 12:14
Nobody can tell me what sounds good to MY ears. I'm sure many people feel the same way. Also,I cannot tell ANYONE that wood, or rubber, sounds better to THEM.
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Author: dibble
Date: 2013-11-16 12:26
Barry, sounds like wood has not just two, but a third thing going for it, which you, yourself mentioned...projection. And I do not think projection is subjective...it either projects over its surroundings or does not (and all in between).
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Author: Tom Ridenour
Date: 2013-11-16 18:11
Ken Shaw wrote:
Tom's way of playing, which works wonderfully for him, is to play on a mouthpiece and clarinet that have high resistance. He says he leans into the resistance and doesn't have to make the adjustments that he had to make on freer-blowing setups. He also favors a closed tip opening matched with fairly hard reeds. He says that his mouthpieces require very precise reed adjustment, but when the reed is just right, it plays beautifully.
Tom Ridenour;
I can't recall ever when I wrote "I lean into the resistance," and I'm not sure what that might mean out of context.
Also, my clarinets do not have high resistance. I just gave a presentation at a college a few weeks ago, and the students there who tried my clarinets commented on the tone emission being easier than their present clarinets, which were among the top models.
To say I favor a "high resistant" clarinet is misleading. What I favor is a clarinet that has what I've termed "balanced blowing resistance." This means the acoustical design either eliminates or significantly reduces the blowing resistance changes players commonly experience at certain places in the clarinets range, especially over the middle break, right hand to left hand clarion, and over the break into the third register. Making the resistance more even makes the response more even and more dependable at a wider dynamic range, and makes legato and articulation much easier to achieve. Playing an instrument that approximates this is like playing a grand piano that has a perfectly regulated keyboard where the drop points are all matched.
Balanced blowing resistance had nothing to do with a clarinet being characteristically resistant or free blowing. Balanced blowing resistance is concerned with the resistance the clarinet does have being as evenly matched as possible.
Regarding the "free blowing" or "resistant" issue, there is one important added concern in phrasing music on the clarinet: stability of pitch, colour, and shape in dynamic changes. So, even if a clarinet is free blowing it can cause a great deal of work from the player by the clarinet not adequately holding the pitch/colour/shape envelop at both higher and lower dynamics levels. For instance, most player play clarinets that blow too freely in the left hand in relation to the right hand. When they play upper clarion pitches softly they have to work very hard to keep the soft tones from grunting or "under toning." When they play loudly, unless they increase embouchure pressure, the pitch/colour/shape envelop begins the rupture, the pitch sags, the colour brightens, and the shape begins to spread and shatter into some amorphous thing, unpleasant to the human ear.
I am of the opinion that these features, common to so many clarinet design are offensive to listen to and place unnecessary burdens on the efforts of clarinetists. To the degree they can be mitigated by intelligent design the player can phrase music with the security, control, nuance and confidence of a great concert pianist or a great violinist.
This is my conceptual goal in clarinet acoustical design.
Finally, it is the height of subjective stupidity to say wood projects better than hard rubber. I have the testimony from many fine players who tell me there is no difference they can discern, and some, who have comparative recordings that show the hard rubber clarinet plays with more "presence" (I personally hate the totally unmusical word "projection"), and the hard rubber clarinet records better. I have never had teachers who has a mix of students playing hard rubber and wood clarinets ever say they can tell a difference. What they do say is their clarinet sections have fuller, bigger presence with hard rubber because the clarinets play more uniformly in tune and with sounds that match. Most people resort to the pathetic argument about projection when they have nothing else--and most have never done a real empirical study of the issue.
What causes a clarinet to carry and to have presence is NOT volume alone, but the concentration, or focus of the sound. Harold Wright proved this every time he stepped on to the stage. His pianissimos could be heard at the very back of symphony hall in Boston-I know, I heard them. And focus is a combination of the acoustical design and the player's concept and playing mechanics. Material has little or nothing to do with it.
And, as Forest Gump liked to opine, that's all I have to say about that.
Ridenour Clarinet Products,
rclarinetproducts.com
sales@ridenourclarinetproducts.com
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Author: Tom Ridenour
Date: 2013-11-16 18:12
Ridenour Clarinet Products,
rclarinetproducts.com
sales@ridenourclarinetproducts.com
Post Edited (2013-11-16 18:13)
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-11-16 18:39
I apologize for attributing the words "lean in" to Tom Ridenour. What I do know is that I am out of sympathy with the way his mouthpieces and instruments play. I would rather use my effort to control the pitch/colour/shape envelope than to fight the setup.
This is the result of a player's anatomy and characteristic way of blowing. Tom believes strongly in his equipment and way of playing, and, as I said, it works for him. It just doesn't work for me.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Tom Ridenour
Date: 2013-11-16 21:36
So, the question here is "When was the last time Ken played my clarinets, mouthpieces and reed set up?" The fact is, Ken has not played my total set up EVER, most especially in the last 15 or 20 years.
I don't recall him ever playing on my clarinet with my mouthpiece/reed set up. If he did today he would see it is nothing as he describes. That reality exists only in his head or his memory. There are many who play my equipment on the BB. Is what I make unmanageably resistant and difficult to play?
The fact is, things evolve. Few things stay the same. If most band directors looked on Yamaha trumpets today the same way they did in the 1960s and early 1970s, they would reject them out of hand for numerous quality issues, including red rot in the brass. Fortunately for them and Yamaha, they continued to watch products evolve, so now, instead of rejecting some of the finest trumpets being made they are recommending them.
That process I have seen among educators, I think, is a commendable process I would like to see emulated more often among clarinet players.
The question is not whether one uses his embouchure, air and other playing techniques to control the clarinet or not. This cannot be avoided. To think or imply as much is to embrace a false dichotomy.
You must control the clarinet by such means. The real question concerns its self with two things: what you're trying to achieve by such control and how much effort you have to use.
In the case of a clarinet with inefficient, defective acoustical design, you are laboring and spending your mental and physical energies to achieve a minimum of technical integrity. And this is what you call clarinet playing.
In contrast, in the case of a clarinet with efficient acoustical design, since the fundamentals of an even, stable scale are provided by efficient design, you no longer have to labor so much to achieve and maintain the basic orthodoxies of an even response and a stable pitch, colour, shape envelop. This means you can devote more of your energies to create an expressive, artistic vision of the music.
Acoustical imperfection always drains one's energies and robs them of the ability to free their creativity and develop their interpretive sense.
What I'm advocating and have tried to approximate in clarinets is nothing more than what players look for when they do reed adjustment: an even, predictable response in all registers, and a matched, stable tone. A clarinet with an acoustical design following the same concepts make this goal in reed adjustment easier to achieve.
This is what I've tried to approximate in acoustical design with the goal of enabling the player to put more attention and energy into interpreting music rather than controlling the clarinet.
As an absolute ideal this, of course, cannot be achieved. But as a worthy conceptual goal, a paradigm to ever more closely approximate, it is, in my view, the sine qua non in making the clarinet an ever more worthy instrument for artistic expression.
Ridenour Clarinet Products,
rclarinetproducts.com
sales@ridenourclarinetproducts.com
Post Edited (2013-11-16 21:44)
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Author: FDF
Date: 2013-11-17 00:00
Good to read these items. Tom's defense of his work is brilliant, as is the design of his clarinet, as far as I'm concerned. He knows what he's doing and he knows how to explain it, especially when he uses paragraphs!
Ken has a point too, the unknown factor is the individual performer.
Forest
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-11-17 00:38
Tom -
I assume you designed your own clarinets on the basis of what you developed with the Opus and Signature, neither of which plays well for me. If your designs are completely new, please forgive me.
Ken Shaw
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Author: JJAlbrecht
Date: 2013-11-17 00:55
Ken, I don't recall ever hearing that Tom designed clarinets for Selmer. Might you have meant that he designed the Opus and the CONCERTO for Leblanc?
Jeff
“Everyone discovers their own way of destroying themselves, and some people choose the clarinet.” Kalman Opperman, 1919-2010
"A drummer is a musician's best friend."
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Author: Tom Ridenour
Date: 2013-11-17 01:44
Tom did not design any clarinets for Selmer. I'll let him speak to any other matters regarding his designs.
Ted Ridenour
Ridenour Clarinet Products,
rclarinetproducts.com
sales@ridenourclarinetproducts.com
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-11-17 03:18
I remember Tom sitting at the Selmer stand at the 1998 ClarinetFest Congress at Ohio State, talking about and praising the Signature. I assumed that he had been involved in its design. But I've been wrong before and will be again.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Tom Ridenour
Date: 2013-11-17 03:39
Tom does believe the Selmer Signature is a good instrument as it has, in his opinion, a well balanced resistance relationship between the left and right hands. He does not personally own one but.......we by no means believe that we are the only company capable of making a quality horn. If someone produces something praise worthy Tom is quite willing to praise it.
Ridenour Clarinet Products,
rclarinetproducts.com
sales@ridenourclarinetproducts.com
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Author: Tom Ridenour
Date: 2013-11-17 07:34
"I did not have anything to do with the design of the Signature Bb or the A. I simply consider the Signature Bb, in its better examples, to be an excellent clarinet with an outstanding, carefully tuned scale, most especially for the first two registers.
I don't believe we're the only ones who make viable, efficient acoustical designs. Acoustical designs that are acceptably efficient are not fixed to one thing only. They can vary to meet artistic purposes, without gravely impairing efficiency and stability to unacceptable degrees.
At that point, the choice becomes one of either taste or need.
This is intelligent thinking regarding the instrument.
Let's take a lesson from other instrumentalists.
Ask a trombone player what the best instrument is. He'll respond with a question: "For what purpose?"
He'll tell you the best trombone for playing 4th trombone is not the best for playing lead trombone, or bass trombone. He'll tell you the best trombone for playing Bolero is not the same as the best for playing Beethoven's 5th.
Why does he think in such a way? Because he thinks of the MUSIC first, and only THEN he thinks of what instrument makes playing the music the easiest.
Ask any trumpet player what trumpet is best. He'll give you the same response: "For what PURPOSE?" His answers will range from a number of Bb trumpets, to C trumpets to cornets (my favorite).
Why is it so many clarinet players never seem to think in this way? Why is it so many only think in the vaguest and most abstract of ways, and consider there is a "one size fits all" answer to the question, "What is the best clarinet?"
Ridenour Clarinet Products,
rclarinetproducts.com
sales@ridenourclarinetproducts.com
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The Clarinet Pages
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