 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Simon Aldrich
Date: 2007-03-12 14:23
Today I tried a prototype of a quarter-tone mouthpiece designed at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris.
The mouthpiece is designed to give the player the capacity to lower the pitch of any note by up to a semitone, without changing the fingering of the note.
The modification to the mouthpiece is accomplished by boring a hole (about 2mm across) in the left side of the mouthpiece, about 2 cm down from the tip.
The hole enters the interior of the mouthpiece at the approximate midway point between the baffle and the reed.
Attached to this hole, welded to the left side of the mouthpiece, is a hollow metal cylinder about 4 cm long and 1 cm across.
Inside the cylider is a piston whose base is attached to a cable (not unlike a bicycle's brake cable).
The cable exits the cylinder's base (the end not attached to the mouthpiece) and descends to the floor where it is attached to a foot pedal. When the pedal is depressed, the piston in the cylinder pulls back from the mouthpiece, effectively increasing the inner volume of the mouthpiece, thereby lowering the pitch.
The cable is screwed into the footpedal (therefore detachable) and permanently attached to the cylinder/mouthpiece (if memory serves).
When the footpedal is depressed all the way, the piston in the cylinder pulls back all the way, lowering the pitch by a semitone. When the footpedal is depressed half the way, the piston in the cylinder pulls back half the way, lowering the pitch by a quarter-tone. Of course any microtone between a unison and a semitone is possible if the player knows to what point the footpedal needs to be depressed to produce the desired microtone.
The prototype soprano mouthpiece was a converted Vandoren M30. Since the cable is permanently attached to the cylinder which is permanently attached to the mouthpiece, the whole kit (foot pedal and mouthpiece modified with attached cylinder and cable) comes in a microphone case, a bit smaller than a single clarinet case.
There is a common contemporary music situation which immediately comes to mind in which this mouthpiece is a godsend, namely, where the whole instrument needs to be a quarter-tone low for the whole piece or movement. Without this modified mouthpiece, finding the point at which the mouthpiece, barrel, middle joint and bell need to be pulled out to give you an actual quarter-tone dip on every note can be a nightmare. That point, once found, is still very approximate. Some notes are less than a quarter-tone flat, some are more.
When the part requires the clarinet to be a quarter-tone low on every note, most composers and conductors are content with the player pulling the barrel out all the way and sounding generally out-of-tune. Some composers (like Brian Ferneyhough) insist on every note being a perfect quarter-tone low.
I hope IRCAM will make a quarter-tone bass clarinet mouthpiece. Quarter-tones are much harder to produce on bass clarinet than on soprano clarinet because of the bass's lack of openhole keys.
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Simon Aldrich
Clarinet Faculty - McGill University
Principal Clarinet - Orchestre Metropolitain de Montreal
Principal Clarinet - Orchestre de l'Opera de Montreal
Clarinet - Nouvel Ensemble Moderne
Buffet-Crampon Artist/Clinician
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2007-03-12 15:06
Can they develop a mouthpiece that will put everything UP by a quarter tone?
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2007-03-12 16:15
FWIW - I've seen only one US patent 4.914,001 re: quaarter tone wind instrument, Kergomard [sp?] et al of [I believe] this same research institute. The citations therein are 5 US patents, a FR and an EP. The US's can be viewed [copied?] via Google/Patents or USPTO. It is possible that there are Canadian pats of there inventions. Interesting, Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2007-03-12 17:36
Don -
Do you have the patent numbers?
Quarter-tone clarinets have been made, with full keywork, but I think I'd go mad learning to play one, plus I'd need a small derrick to hold it. See
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/QuartertoneClarinet.jpg/300px-QuartertoneClarinet.jpg&imgrefurl=http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwarttoonklarinet&h=427&w=300&sz=41&hl=en&start=13&tbnid=9sbQtZLFsAwHuM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=89&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dquarter%2Btone%2Bclarinet%26svnum%3D100%26hl%3Den%26newwindow%3D1%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3DSXn%26sa%3DG
Leblanc once made saxophones that played down a half step when you pressed a certain key. I have a fingering chart and blurb somewhere. As I recall, it shifted the mechanism. The concept was dead on arrival, and I've never seen one. To play quarter tones, it would need double the number of keys and pads.
At the 1980 Clarinet Congress in London, Jiri Kratochvil played an Albert system quarter tone clarinet that sounded nauseatingly awful. (However, he was way past his prime, and sounded almost as bad on regular clarinet.)
Our own Mark Charette made an almost usable A clarinet by putting a string down the bore of a Bb instrument. See the links at http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=60560&t=60454
It would probably work better for quarter tones, since the stuff in the bore would be smaller.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2007-03-12 20:38
Hi Ken - Mia culpa, ugh, wrong pat #, Kergomard 4,714,001 , cited refs, Ferron ** 4,575,060, Ihara 3,783,732 [sax?], Christensen 2,957,414 [ dbl reg keys] , Stover 1,802,791 and Parkinson 1,767,998 [latter 2 nv pert?]. Have had only a brief look at these, but 060 and and 732 are worth looking at, depends on specific interest prob. I worked with a Kratochvil, an EE, he taught me Elect, I taught him Chem. I'll look at your refs [Wikopedia's] and may have a comment or 2. Just wanted to answer ASAP. REgards Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Wes
Date: 2007-03-14 05:09
In the middle 60s, I was influenced by Don Ellis and his quarter tone trumpet. So I made a mouthpiece with an extra chamber on top that could be operated by a key on the tenor saxophone lower the pitch a quarter tone and I demonstrated it to him at a lesson he gave me.
Later, he talked to Vito Pascucci about it and Mr. Pascucci called me about it. By that time, I was less interested in it and i did not pursue it further. As far as I know, Leblanc did not pursue it the way they did the quarter tone trumpet, which was dropped from their line soon. Don seemed to be the only person really interested in it. It is still in my mouthpiece box.
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2007-03-14 15:32
OK.
I'll bite.
Why would one want a 1/4 tone instrument?
Unless you can find a piano with white, black and grey keys ...
Bob Phillips
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Author: Simon Aldrich
Date: 2007-03-14 15:54
Bob asked, "Why would one want a 1/4 tone instrument?".
Many composers these days write for a clarinet tuned a quarter-tone flat (having found out that you can't tune a clarinet a quarter-tone sharp). I would even say it is becoming a la mode.
My contemporary ensemble has in its repertoire a violin concerto by Phillipe Leroux which calls for a clarinet tuned a quarter-tone flat. We just played it a week ago, for about the fifth time.
In France recently I played a clarinet quartet, the 3rd soprano part being for an instrument a quarter-tone flat (luckily I was not playing that part).
The composer Brian Ferneyhough was there and someone had given him the measurements of how far to pull out the mouthpiece, barrel, middle joint and bell to get a quarter-tone flat all over. The measurements did not produce perfect quarter-tones, as you can imagine, and the player had to adjust a lot.
This new quarter-tone mouthpiece solves that problem.
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Simon Aldrich
Clarinet Faculty - McGill University
Principal Clarinet - Orchestre Metropolitain de Montreal
Principal Clarinet - Orchestre de l'Opera de Montreal
Clarinet - Nouvel Ensemble Moderne
Buffet-Crampon Artist/Clinician
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2007-03-14 17:28
Hungarian music uses lots of quarter tones. Bartok used them extensively in his Sonata for Solo Violin. So did Kodaly in his Sonata for Solo Cello, and the Hugarian cellist Janos Starker plays them perfectly in his recording.
In middle eastern music, the octave is divided into far smaller intervals. I once read (but can't find the reference) that a famous Oud player went to another player's performance and left in a rage after the performer used the wrong microtone in his scale.
Steve Fox makes a clarinet with an alternative scale that divides the just twelfth (a 3:1 frequency ratio) into thirteen steps. http://www.sfoxclarinets.com/bpclar.html.
In his famous TV series, Leonard Bernstein said that jazz "blue" notes are really quarter tones. A pianist can't play them and so must play the upper and lower surrounding notes simultaneously. Lenny may well have had a piano with one note tuned to the quarter tone to demonstrate. What he said certainly made sense.
Ken Shaw
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