 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 1999-09-23 12:02
By experimenting with mouthpieces & ligatures; however, the 10G was <i>engineered</i> to be brighter sounding than, let's say, a Buffet. What we call brightness and darkness has to with a property called "cutoff frequency" - AKA "low-pass filter". Frequencies about some point are drastically attenuated. This point moves as we finger & play different notes, but in general the 10G lets more high frequency sounds pass unattenuated than other clarinets.
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Author: Dave Spiegelthal
Date: 1999-09-23 14:37
Mark's advice is spot on, as usual. You might also experiment with different reeds, for instance, I've found that reeds such as Vandoren (regular cut), Rico Grand Concert Thick Blank, and Marca tend to sound 'darker' than Mitchell Lurie, Zonda, and Vandoren (German cut). As always, your mileage may vary, and past performance is no guarantee of future results.
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Author: David Blumberg
Date: 1999-09-23 16:06
I really doubt that Gigliotti the designer of the 10G ever intended it to sound brighter then say a Buffet. I studied with him for 7 years, and never heard any statement like that. His goal was for beter intonation especially for the A Clarinets.
David Blumberg
http://www.mytempo.com
Custom Piano Accompaniments for Woodwinds on Audio CD
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 1999-09-23 16:44
David Blumberg wrote:
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I really doubt that Gigliotti the designer of the 10G ever intended it to sound brighter then say a Buffet
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Then he must have done it by accident - it is provably "brighter" than a Buffet if you look at the bandpass characteristics. I'd like to think Gigliotti did it on purpose - or he'd have used a different instrument as a starting point.
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Author: paul
Date: 1999-09-23 18:14
I'd like to ask a question on general tone production on clarinets and how it could fit better into two sometimes radically different styles of music. So, here goes...
Dark sound: Is this typically what's wanted in most classical music? i.e. Buffet's R-13 and related family being recognized marques in this portion of the live music industry (not meaning to inadvertently disparage any other horn, just using a single model as a widely recognized example)
Bright sound: More desired for jazz? i.e. Big bore Selmers being similar marques in this portion of the live music industry (ditto comment above)
I'll have to agree that this is a very long stretch for the sake of discussion, but I'd like to get much better qualified and expert opinions on the subject.
Opinions? Comments? Flames? Go for it. I'll learn from it all. Who knows? Maybe if I behave myself and save a few nickels and dimes every now and then, perhaps I too could afford to have a small collection of diverse clarinets to make an informed opinion on this subject. Until then, I'll keep playing my only clarinet, which happens to be a member of the Buffet R-13 family.
...and yes, I'd also like to hear opinions from LeBlanc and Yamaha, and Rossi, and Peter Eaton (etc.) owner/players, too.
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Author: Mario
Date: 1999-09-23 22:24
Hum!
Where should we start. For one thing, talking about jazz is too broad. Over time, what is considered a good jazz sound has evolved substantially, from the original New Orleans stuff to contemporary jazz derived (more often than not) from the jazz composed between 1946 and 1949 where new fundamental aesthetic in jazz basically stopped evolving (hard bop and cool with jazzmen essentially altering the patterns invented just after the war - but I digress).
Let me make a wide generalization. As jazz evolved, it became more formal with a precise way of playing the music, repeated patterns, etc. A modern jazz musician has to learn a big body of style, knowledge, technique, repertoire, etc. in order to join the club. Some jazzmen are even allowed to try new things. As a side effect of this, jazz sound has come closer to classical sound in all instruments since the fundation of jazzmenship now require a solid classical training. Hence, jazz sound is becoming darker in all instruments (including the clarinet). Brightness is associated with popular, folk music; darkerness is associated with formally studied music. As a matter of fact, bright sound is often the result of poor equipment and poor training, since technique and technology (in all instruments, not just the clarinet) tends to wash out the noise (i.e. the high partials). So, here we have it: If you want to play leading edge jazz, get first the best classical sound that you can get, and then work from this basis. Soften the reed, pitch the lip, think thin and bingo: your beautiful dark sound is now tolerable for "popular" music. But try the other around (try to darken from a bright platform) and you are finished.
Dark is beautiful. Let's never forget that.
By the way, if you play jazz, try to invent something new every now and then. One get so tired of the same old thing that jazz produces. The great pieces of the classical repertoire have some much emotional and aethetic depth that they stand on their own and survive even weak performance. But jazz is thin. If it is not done by Masters, it is essentially boring and shallow.
Hum, let's get the flame throwers here.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 1999-09-24 01:47
Unlike Mark's statement, I felt 10G(I had around early 1970s) was really a good instrument to maneuver warm or cool sound. It is clearly shown if you play a simple tune. I think Giglliotti's design target was flexibility.
As to mouthpiece how about trying Selmer C85 115? You can obtain good registance and warm(not bright) tone. And if you try Vandoren 2RV(not available as new), it really emits freer and warmer tone. I do not like the simple wording used by many Americans,'dark tone'. Music is not expressed by such simple word.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 1999-09-24 03:01
Hiroshi wrote:
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Unlike Mark's statement, I felt 10G(I had around early 1970s) was really a good instrument to maneuver warm or cool sound.
... snip ...
As to mouthpiece how about trying Selmer C85 115?
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I've got one. Sounds horrible on my clarinet (not just my opinion. The opinion of 4 or 5 people. It came with the clarinet. It is the brightest sounding mouthpiece on my clarinet that I've ever heard. Downright shrill.
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... snipping more ...
I do not like the simple wording used by many Americans,'dark tone'. Music is not expressed by such simple word.
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As it is not expressed well by your description, either (warm, cool, whatever). However, dark and bright sound has been quantified as cut-off frequency differences by Bonade, and experimental research by him shows that our general concept of dark or bright correlates very well with cut-off.
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Author: Chris Hill
Date: 1999-09-24 04:37
I actually found the 10G's from the late 1980's to be relatively easy to produce a dark sound on. (I had to switch to a Buffet in the early 90's due to other reasons.) The problem with saying that you play on a 10G is that the different vintages played so differently, because they were always working on improving them. Therefore, one can't make too many generalizations. Anyway, to answer your question, I believe that Gigliotti mouthpieces and Matson Selmers worked well with the myriad of 10G's that I've owned. There are still some things that I miss about playing them!
Chris
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Author: David Blumberg
Date: 1999-09-26 02:16
Benade (scientist- clarinetist), not Bonade (who taught Gigliotti)
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Author: David Blumberg
Date: 1999-09-26 02:17
Benade (scientist- clarinetist), not Bonade (who taught Gigliotti)was the guy. I got a dark, yet vibrant sound on my 10G's. Dark was not a problem that I found in the 80's.
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Author: Mike B.
Date: 1999-09-27 16:23
Some problems associated with these type of discussions:
1. The player makes an enormous difference on the tone quality produced, regardless of setup. A bright horn for player A can just as easily be a dark horn for player B, etc.
2. Statistical variance. A sample of one (or for that matter a few) isn't enough data to make a proper decision. Ideally, a large number of horns, mouthpieces, etc. should be sampled before making any sort of judgement.
3. Manufacturing variances and design changes guarantee that any one horn can be anywhere on that theoretical bell curve. Personal anecdote: I have a Selmer SBA alto, as does my friend, both made in the same year. They play very differently from each other.
4. Subjectivity. What exactly does bright and dark really mean? I'm not too sure I would agree that harmonic content is necessarily a good metric. (Maybe it is, but where's the data to support this)?
In general, anecdotal evidence is very unreliable and should be treated as such. That's why people are constantly being advised (and rightly so), to figure this stuff out for themselves. Just try the horn, mouthpiece, etc. and see if it works for you. Similarly, given the wide variance of clarinet tone considered acceptable, just strive for what you like, especially if your income isn't dependent on the result.
As to the previous post suggesting that proper jazz technique implies a move to a more classical sound, this sounds like pure hogwash. In the saxophone arena, there is a constant drive to produce an individual tone (quite the contrary of what is typically required of classical players). Vintage horns are very in, most (not all) players prefer the sound vintage horns make. If anything, over time the sound sax players produce has become brighter and edgier, not darker (classical). As to the comments concerning musical conformity, this also sounds like hogwash. The heart of jazz is improvisation, not rigid adherence to a previous body of work. Enough said.
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