 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Fred Samson
Date: 2000-05-27 21:59
Hello..
I'm the premier player in the clarinet section of my high school Marching band, and I'm tired of broken cane reeds while out on the field.
For the concert season, I use either Vandoren 4s or V.12 4.5s with my wooden horn. For marching season, I need to play loudly and reliably, and tone quality is much less important. So, I use a plastic horn with a stock mouthpiece with a fairly large tip opening, and Vandoren 3 or 3.5 reeds.
What I'm looking for is a good synthetic reed to use on the football field. Essentially, I want something that's more or less indestructible and can function well up into the altissimo register (I sometimes pop up an octave on repeats for added oomph). And, as marchers know, I have to be LOUD.
Does anybody have suggestions? I hesitate to use Légère reeds due to the expense. Would Fibracells be worthwhile? Also, any suggestions for strength? I don't know how S-M-H correspond to traditional numerical strengths.
Thanks!
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Author: Kontragirl
Date: 2000-05-29 19:12
Since nobody's responded, I'll give it a shot. I marched bass clarinet. There again, you need to have a loud sound, and you can sacrifice tone (but not too much). I play a 3.5 Mitchell Lurie on clarinet, and I bought a cheapo ($3.00) plastic reed. I bought soft because it's easier to wail on a weaker reed. I actually sounded really good and loud. I don't recommend this for clarinet, I've heard wonderful stories from fellow clarinet players that worship their Fibracells.
A medium reed is about a 3, but if you want volume, you're going to want a medium or a soft. Just guess, it worked for me
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Author: Allen Cole
Date: 2000-05-29 19:26
Bari plastic reeds are popular and long-lasting. For the setup described, I'd advise using the "Hard." Avoid cheapos like Fibercane. As Contragirl points out, there is a lot of difference between Bass Clarinet and regular Clarinet.
Legeres may also be a bit brittle at the tip--particularly outside in the cold. Most students in my town use the Bari brand with okay success.
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Author: Doc
Date: 2000-05-30 00:05
Breaking it down... on clarinet I don't know if you ever tried but go and get some soprano sax reeds. I, myself am a student marcher and am known as the woodwind nazzi since I'm the section's leader. Get soprano reeds in fibracell, they behave exactly like cane, they give you more brightness and a bit more edge, depeneding on the music it should be fine. I actually use wooden sop reeds on clar, cause I play mainly jazz. If you do fine with your clar reeds keep it up, I'm a sax player and I like more meat to a reed... So go pick up some fibracells, they make them for Bb soprano clar.
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Author: paul
Date: 2000-05-30 13:46
I have a Fibracell, medium strength. My pro tutor custom shaved it with an extremely sharp knife to get it to behave better than straight out of the box. I personally found that Fibracells are very tough, hard to play on, and have poor sounding tone. Perfect for a beater plastic horn in the field. Not a bad idea at all for your conditions.
Legeres are expensive, but they are tougher than many people think. Get a 2.5 or 3 reed (equal to Vandoren's strengths) and check it out. On this soft a reed, you should be able to heard very well in the stands on your horn. Just make sure you care for the reed as best you can like you would a cane reed and see how long the Legere lasts. The sound from a Legere is quite good, but not as good as customized natural cane. Highly skilled players can make it sound extremely close to cane, but many novices like me need more skill to close the performance gap. I bet the Legere reed lasts much longer than cane.
Personally, I had very cheap Rico reeds on my plastic beater horn 20 years ago when I was in marching band (third row seat). When I opened up the case about a year ago, those Ricos were still there. Absolutely poor playing on the horn and those reeds was expected, so I wasn't disappointed with the horn's performance when I checked it out. But, even after all of that time in the attic, the beater horn still played on those highly abused and very cheap reeds.
So, if money is an issue and performance is not, try these alternatives and save your good cane reeds for orchestral performance.
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