 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Rick2
Date: 1999-02-11 19:07
Well, just got my exchange from 2.5 to 2.75 in the mail today. Only had time to run through a chromatic scale and play a little bit between jumping back and forth between clarion and altissimo. If you recall, I had problems overblowing in the upper clarion register.
I did end up overblowing occasionally in upper clarion this time, but the increased stiffness has helped dramatically. One thing that I discovered is that the flexure properties of the Legere reeds is different than cane. This seems to have the effect of making Legere reeds a bit more sensitive to the bad habit of pinching the reed, especially in the higher notes, with the ultimate symptom manifesting itself as overblowing the upper clarion register.
In my opinion, this is a good thing. It's a very difficult problem to detect with a cane reed, especially on your own. With the new Legere reed, I detected a very slight pinching in my emboucher and when I concentrated on not doing that, the problems in the upper clarion vanished and the tone was great. Correcting with Legere will probably transfer back to the cane reed but I'll let you know in a few weeks.
Conclusions:
1) The Legere reed tends to run a bit softer than the same rating of Rico Royal reeds, and they are probably closer to Mitchel Lurie reed stiffness. They probably run a full half strength under Vandorens, but I have no experience in ratings 3 and over, so I must leave that evaluation to others.
2) Teachers, if you have a student that pinches, make them practice on Legere reeds to eliminate the problem. Pinching in upper clarion will cause overblowing on Legere reeds where it will only thin the tone on cane. This appears to be due to the different flexure properties (how the reed bends when pressure is applied) of cane and the Legere plastic. With a correct emboucher they play and sound pretty much the same. With an incorrect emboucher, the Legere provides feedback so the player can correct it, where cane does not do that.
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Author: paul
Date: 1999-02-11 19:46
I have to agree with your opinion of the Legere reed being a good training reed. I also agree with your assessment that the Legere reed strengths below 3.0 tend to be a bit soft, softer than my Vandoren regular and Vandoren V-12 reeds.
I've personally found that the Legere has been a very good reed for learning how to correctly play in the altissimo register, while giving ample room for the clarion and the chalemeau registers.
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