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Can You Stall A Reed?

Author: paul
Date: 1999-10-11 01:07

I've studied wing stalls with airplanes where at a certain angle of attack against the prevailing direction of flight, the wing no longer develops lift. The plane can drop from the sky like a rock if the wings stall. Okay, enough of the aeronautical engineering primer. The question is this: Can I "stall" a clarinet's reed so it doesn't vibrate, especially at the proper frequency for the note that I intend to play? For instance, with a particular reed, I cannot change from high clarion Bb to A without having the reed just buzz like a cheap kazoo but not play the A note. Slurring is no problem, but tounging the reed seems to get the bad behavior. Switching reeds seems to help the problem a bunch. Perhaps the particular reed has a "dead zone" of poor peformance where it just stalls out.

Can anyone out there help me understand the reed's behavior and especially how I can avoid the problem with this reed in the future? On the surface, this reed is a very good one and I want to salvage my investment in it. It's a Legere reed and I don't want to ruin it.

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