The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2008-04-09 17:05
Jan Swafford, the Brahms scholar, has an article in Slate on How Acoustic Instruments Torture Their Players.
http://www.slate.com/id/2188507/
Being "outlandish" and "messy" is part of playing an acoustic instrument -- maybe the best part.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2008-04-09 18:39
TKS, Ken, what a provocative, interesting, somewhat-true, [sc]ramble about our and other's instruments !! Having "fought" the oboe for some 10 years, it finally won, sending me back to cls and saxes, there's lots of reality in these rants. Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2008-04-09 21:20
I can only quote Leon Russianoff when we talked about tone quality. "Just don't sound like an Oboe". I won't tell you whom he was referring to because he never mentioned names, only orchestra's. ESP
www.peabody.jhu.edu/457
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Author: Copland
Date: 2008-04-09 23:43
That's a pretty good rant... very interesting.
Is it true that clarinetists get receding jaws?
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2008-04-10 11:42
I haven't noticed a lot of clarinet players with receding lower jaws, but it's true that violin and viola players players develop that fiddlers' stigmata on the neck or under the jaw. My husband's got a conspicuous one. He says it doesn't bother him. He's 59 and has played violin since he was five. His mom said the fiddlers' bump developed before he was six. Everyone we know who plays violin or viola has got one.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2008-04-10 11:54
I don't think a receding jaw develops from playing clarinet, but at least a slightly receding jaw seems to help. Bonade, Marcellus and Portnoy come to mind. All of them held the instrument nearly vertical.
Ken Shaw
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Author: caledonius
Date: 2008-04-10 12:09
One unfortunate liability for all orchestral musicians is unfortunately hearing loss. It is usually insidious and likely due to the large numbers of them sitting in school bands, orchestra pits, or proximate to brass sections where they are exposed to >100 dB fairly regularly. Overall, there are as many classical as rock/pop musicians walking into ENT/audiologists offices in their 40s and above getting fitted for hearing aids as there are kids who played their Sony Walkmans too loud back in the 1980s.
Earplugs have come a long way since then, too. All of you who play professionally should seriously look into them before all that Wagner, Mahler, Strauss or Lennon-McCartney rob you of a very precious sense. Earplugs can be molded for comfort now, and they can be made to reduce ambient noise by preset dB levels according to your needs. Most medical schools have ENT/audiology departments capable of discussing this intelligently with musicians, e.g. http://audiologycenter.upmc.com/Musician.htm
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Author: Lann
Date: 2008-04-10 17:43
I have always had an overbite/open bite. It's far too symmetrical to have to do with the fondness I had for my left thumb as a child. Much to the dismay of the several orthodontists I've seen, it cannot be blamed on the clarinet, as I had it before I started playing.
But they all said, "Switch to the violin, and then I'll help you. You've got a gape that fits a clarinet mouthpiece perfectly. If you keep playing clarinet, your jaw cannot be repaired."
So, guess what I never got fixed?
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