 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: Jimis4klar
Date: 2021-08-17 12:01
Anyone knows If Bonade ligature's screws can fit on Harrison ligature? If you don't and you have a Harrison ligature, can you mention the diameter of the screw so I check It? Thanks!
Post Edited (2021-08-17 12:01)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: brycon
Date: 2021-08-18 01:55
I think we've reached peak clarinet bboard.
Throw some Steuer reeds and an adjustable barrel into the mix and I think you'll open up a portal to another dimension... another dimension... another dimension... dimension... sion... sion... (as the first Rose etude, the Baermann returning scale on F#, and Homage a Manuel de Falla play hauntingly on top of one another).
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2021-08-18 02:29
Dear Brycon,
I recall how you opined about how we must avoid harm to young minds with poor teaching approaches. I suppose cybor bullying is ok?
...........Paul Aviles
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: super20dan
Date: 2021-08-18 02:41
i would take the harrison to ace hardware and find out what size and thread pitch and count -course vs fine etc and go from there.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Jimis4klar
Date: 2021-08-18 14:02
Yes, this thought is inspired by Dale's video. I already have a 24K Bonade which eventually is heavy for my setup, so I thought the screws maybe great with a silver plated ligature. I also tried the Steuer reeds both Classic and Exclusive, V12s are way better...
Post Edited (2021-08-18 14:04)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: super20dan
Date: 2021-08-18 15:17
lol dale is a gear junky of the highest order. i must confess i have learned a few things from him on ligatures tho. the bonade standard lig is the most powerfull as far as sound goes. too much sometimes. and the early german silver ones are better than the plated brass ones. gold plated harrison is the bomb!
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: DaphnisetChloe
Date: 2021-08-18 18:26
I have to agree with brycon. And if you are a young student and you are spending more time a day researching clarinet equipment than practising then you should open a museum for clarinet artifacts instead of pursue music. You have to know what you are doing before you look for gear to help you, or get the personalized advice of a great teacher on what equipment (plus copious practise and study of the clarinet repertoire) will help you to improve your playing.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2021-08-18 20:05
Or a decent clarinet (that can tune properly) or pads that seal properly, or regular mechanical maintenance of any kind????
Where do you wonderful musicians draw the line on gear I might ask?
................Paul Aviles
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: super20dan
Date: 2021-08-18 21:13
some of us might be old retired musicians with lots of time on our hands but still cant resist trying new gear and these forms are supposed to be about sharing our accumulated knowledge with others
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Jimis4klar
Date: 2021-08-18 22:50
Well, I'm doing both practicing and trying ligatures. I asked Dale about Bonades and told me that non-inverted gold is better for close facing mouthpieces like m13. This time I'm experiencing BD4 and BD7 and for those recommended to try several inverted Bonades. I play Buffet Festival long time, no problem till now.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: brycon
Date: 2021-08-20 21:05
Quote:
Or a decent clarinet (that can tune properly) or pads that seal properly, or regular mechanical maintenance of any kind????
Where do you wonderful musicians draw the line on gear I might ask?
Figured I'd respond because I have a bit of free time and because the board, perhaps in some form of karmic retribution for me poking fun at silly ligature threads, is currently getting spammed with silly ligature threads.
Paul, you're giving us a slippery slope.
The thing with these arguments, though, is that they can slope both directions. Where, for instance, do you draw the line? If ligature screws make an appreciable difference, what about thumb-rest screws? Post screws? What is more, if a particular choice of footwear keeps my body grounded in a particular way, what's better for clarinet playing: loafers or sneakers?
In the end, there isn't a hard "line on gear" to draw but rather vague categories in which to place things: clarinet quality, sealing pads, regular maintenance, and other clearly important things on the one hand and post screws, thumb-rest screws, and other silly things on the other. Theorists of vagueness use the term "truth-value gap" to acknowledge the lack of a sharp cut-off point between the two categories.
Going back to that "forest for the trees thread" (and ligature screws, to me, are missing both the forest and the trees because you're instead smashing yourself over the head with a fallen branch), you have to keep in mind the "purpose" of clarinet playing, which lies in interpretation and its realization. What matters with equipment, then, is what helps you realize your interpretive decisions in a performance.
This idea that a player's "sound" is the aggregate of all his or her equipment choices ("I'm going to sound great in an orchestra: I'm playing a Kaspar mouthpiece, Golden-era R13, and a Bonade ligature!") is as nonsensical as saying someone's personality is the aggregate of all his or her clothing and movie preferences. No, our personalities don't exist abstractly but through our behaviors and interactions with other people: "We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves." Similarly, our sounds don't exist abstractly, holding out a throat-tone G and analyzing overtones through a spectrogram, but rather they exists though music: the way we shape a phrase, blow our air through a note connection, and so on.
So while someone could make the somewhat credible (or, at least, not entirely silly) argument: "You know, ligature screws don't really affect my sound, but they change the way I interact with my instrument, which in turn affects my sound and therefore makes them a variable worth experimenting with." I would simply point out that a much more important variable, because, unlike the ligature screws, it's at once active and truly palpable for the audience, is how you understand the phrase you're performing: What's the highpoint? What's the air shape you're aiming for? What's the tone color you're trying to achieve? Where are the points of tension and relaxation? What's the rhythmic framework underneath? and so forth. (I wonder if someone fussing over ligature screws could confidently answer this by no means exhaustive list of questions. If not, perhaps some reorganization of priorities is called for.)
And in the end, ligature screws aren't going to help anyone shape a phrase a particular way. So sure, your mileage may vary. And you can collect thousands of bells, ligatures, and screws of all sorts in the same way someone might collect stamps: things to have simply for the pleasure of collecting. But if you're serious about clarinet playing, it, like other forms of collecting, can quickly become a pointless time suck.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2021-08-20 21:27
Dear Brycon,
I appreciate the point. Certainly the actual interpretive aspect of music making is paramount. However, EVERY part of what we do (loafers not withstanding) plays SOME part in the big Picture. I would (while still being serious) point out that once you get to interpretation there are even BIGGER and more gritty disagreements amongst musicians, hence the need for conductors in the classical realm. There was post by Tony Pay in which he spoke of sharing his dissertation on the interpretation of Brahms and Mozart with his then conductor Simon Rattle. Unfortunately, it was (according to Tony) met with a less enthusiastic response than he had hoped. NOT surprising. We ALL connect with music in unique ways. All we can hope for as educators is providing a good foundation of what one can use to get there: short/long, fast/slow, silence/sound, louder/softer.......and hope students have the tools they need.
I would only add:
I would eat a dead cat if...........
I would eat a dead cat................
long pause
I would eat a dead cat if you guys could be respectful of those who do want to occasionally talk about gear
Maybe I phrased that better this time
....................Paul Aviles
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Max S-D
Date: 2021-08-21 00:53
As a contributor of a recent ligature thread, I'll say the same thing I used to tell my (mostly enthusiastic high school-aged) students who would ask me about ligatures:
Nobody has ever changed between two functional (holds the reed on securely) ligatures and gone from having a bad sound to having a good sound. There can be a difference, especially to you, the player, but it's never THE difference. If you have a few bucks burning a hole in your pocket and want to experiment, don't let me stop you, but go in with your expectations set appropriately.
This is why I still like to keep a mental inventory of quality equipment available at a low price and why I started my own silly ligature thread.
Sometimes a shiny new thing is fun and few of us can honestly say we aren't above that. Whenever I get a new piece of equipment in the mail or from the store, the first thing I do is go practice. I will freely confess that many of those times I was probably not going to practice or was not going to spend as much time on the clarinet/sax as I ended up spending.
If you can afford it and it's fun and makes you want to play, then do it. If it's not fun for you or doesn't make you want to play, don't do it. If you can't afford it, don't stress it. If you're in a deep anxiety spiral about which ligature has the most positive effect on your tone, to the point that it is interfering with your time spent thinking about matters of musical expression, probably step back for a bit and reevaluate the situation. Not accusing anyone else of that, by the way. That's a personal experience.
I'm sure if I handed Sabine Meyer or Martin Frost or Don Byron (or most working professionals) a basic $2 two-screw ligature like you'd see in band rooms around the world, they'd all sound better than me. But I still like my toys.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: brycon
Date: 2021-08-21 21:22
Quote:
However, EVERY part of what we do (loafers not withstanding) plays SOME part in the big Picture.
The deal with a lot of equipment--ligatures, key platings, etc.--is that it doesn't affect "your sound." Rather it affects the way you feel and interact with your instrument, which perhaps has an affect on "your sound" or perhaps not. So while I was joking, at the same time, why couldn't the same argument be made about footwear?
The point I was making about the big picture is that, no, the big picture isn't the aggregate of all your equipment choices. "Your sound," as it's used here, isn't real, it isn't perceived by an audience. Your sound exists only in time, what professional theorists would call the diachronic rather than the synchronic domain.
If, for instance, I gave someone all Harold Wright's exact equipment, had him or her use the exact same double-lip embouchure, put the exact same amount of mouthpiece in the mouth, etc. but at the same time had him or her play a piece in a completely sostenuto way, such as Karl Leister, that person would sound much less like Harold Wright to an audience member than someone playing Karl Leister's setup but using Wright's vibrato, his expressive legato connections between notes, his changes of color, and so forth.
The changes of ligature screws and the subsequent changes to the way you interact with the clarinet are much lower on the threshold of perception than, say, crescendoing through a note. Indeed, an audience doesn't perceive 1.) a player's "sound" and then 2.) that player executing a crescendo, rather the crescendo is part of that player's sound because, again, we perceive "the big picture" through time.
So apologies if I came across as the gear police: live and let live! But when it gets to the level of ligature screws, it's a complete fools errand, from both a logical/philosophical and practical point of view.
Quote:
All we can hope for as educators is providing a good foundation of what one can use to get there: short/long, fast/slow, silence/sound, louder/softer.......and hope students have the tools they need
This bit is simply untrue. Just giving them the tools is bad teaching, and I'm sure you yourself don't teach this way, Paul.
An appoggiatura, for example, often gets played with more tension on the strong beat and more relaxation on the weak beat. Moreover, you've probably told your students as much. So you've explained to them how to interpret one bit of music and they can apply this knowledge to other things, that is, you've given them tools and helped shape how they think about music so that they can use their tools.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2021-08-22 01:21
Sorry for being a bit mean spirited above. I did assume a slight since there was no hint of negativity in the thread until there was the introduction of the idea that the thread was itself pointless.
I think it may be more helpful instead of the example above of using all of Harold Wright's equipment, rather to think of giving Harold Wright a Spriggs Floating Rail ligature in the middle of his recording of the Schubert Octet and seeing what if any difference it makes to him or the remainder of the recording. But we'll never know.
As for my mention of the ONLY parameters we have to convey sound, I did leave out that, yes, we do describe and or play examples of what common practices are, but I wanted to get the main bit out without coloring it in any way. I once suggested that we as interpreters of music can take without too much exception that an unmarked phrase can be interpreted as getting louder as the notes get higher and getting softer as the notes go lower (think of most operatic moments as performed by the singers). But that was met with instant derision. So I left the interpretive side out this time.
..............Paul Aviles
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
