Author: paul
Date: 2000-01-13 18:04
Back a long, long time ago in a land far, far away...
Ok, 20 years ago and about 200 miles away...
The local high school band director had some clarinet reeds, usually terrible Rico student grade reeds, available for sale to most kids and available for free to genuinely destitute kids. The "richer" kids actually subsidized the poorer ones for reeds on a round-robin basis with the teacher buying out of his own pocket a box or two of the cheapest reeds he could find. This was actually a better deal than us kids thought, because the teacher didn't get any money back for the box or two of reeds. It was a courtesy done to keep as many kids playing and active in the band as possible. We had at least 15 soprano clarinets in the band and at least as many flutes, with about a dozen trumpets, three or four trombones, three Sousaphones, two french horns, and lots of percussion. All of the other reed winds could be counted on one hand. So, the rare sax, bass clarinet, bassoon, and oboe players were on their own for reeds.
I also understand the typical policy of having kids playing school owned instruments that most families cannot afford. That's how I could play the bass clarinet instead of a soprano clarinet for two years in high school. My parents could barely afford a $200 piece of junk soprano clarinet, and it was simply impossible for them to afford a $4000 bass clarinet, even on a rental/lease basis. All I had to do was come up with the money for a few bass clarinet reeds every now and then. These expensive instruments were provided by the school, which came out of the School District's operating budget, and were purchased in bulk through very large State-wide contracts. The students got whatever the school had available. Sometimes it was pretty good stuff that was usually old and very beat up. Most of the time, it was second rate student grade junk specifically made for the low bid based bulk contract market.
That's still the way it's done today for rare or expensive winds such as oboe or bassoon, rare or expensive brass (such as french horn), large brass (tuba or sousaphone), most of the rare or expensive strings and keyboards (piano, organ), and most of the percussion.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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