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RE: Buffet Festival Flexibility, Part 2

Author: Peter
Date: 2003-01-28 04:07

Hi Wayne,

If this is a brand new horn, you may not want to do this with it, but as long as you reminded me of this, I'll put it here and maybe it could be of help to someone else with difficult tuning issues due to erratically tuned tone holes.

I have played and owned some old clarinets once used by professional orchestral musicians, and learned one or two tricks they used to balance the instrument's tuning capabilities that, apparently, worked well.

If you have a clarinet that has some notes that play flat, and some that play sharp making it difficult to tune by way of the barrel, remember that if you reduce the size of a tone hole, it will play a flatter note and, if enlarged, it will play a sharper note. (Did I say that right? Anybody?)

What some of these old timers used to do was to glue a small, thin piece of material inside tone holes that played too sharp to reduce the diameter, therefore making the note flatter. (I've seen everything from lackered-over leather to tinfoil inside some of these holes. The trick is for the "filler" to be of a non-absorbent nature.)

It's time consuming, and someone like the Brannens, or David(?) Spiegelthal can actually tune it for you in a more permanent sort of way, but if you want to experiment, and tune the individual notes to your specific way of playing, you can experiment with this.

You can actually even do it with something easy to work with, like small, thin strips of masking tape which you can apply in layers. Masking tape won't last very long, but it will, eventually, be easier to remove than glue and leave little or no residue.

The idea is to make the sharper notes flat enough to match the ones that are already flat, or too flat, therefore enabling you to tune "across" the board" by way of the barrel.

It's time consuming and you have to do it all in front of a tuner, but it can be a fun project and you can end up with a more tunable instrument.

There is a Cuesnon(sp?) presently owned by someone I know in South Miami, that allegedly belonged to someone who use to play for a local symphony orchestra, that has so much stuff glued to the inside of some tone holes that it's surprising it played!

But play it did, and, believe it or not, in fine tune all the way across the registers with the barrel pulled about one millimeter.

I would not advise you to try to enlarge any tone holes. That's much better left to real professionals.

Congratulations on your new instrument and enjoy it!

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