 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-09-13 02:09
Cool picture of William O. Smith:
<br><a href=http://faculty.washington.edu/bills/published.html><b>http://faculty.washington.edu/bills/published.html</b></a>
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<br>Reminds me of a picture I've got somewhere of Rashaan Roland Kirk.
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<br>Mark C.
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Author: Nate Zeien
Date: 2000-09-13 02:42
Dear Mark, Nifty!! Been there done that. I've even tried three at once, but this is a little hard, as I only have two hands. For even more of a challenge, try a Bb and an efer, or a Bb and bass combo. This is a little more challenging, but can be done pretty easily. Also it is fun to do this and try different chords, for example, tritones. Fun as heck - drives the cats nuts. A friend and I got an idea to try to set some world record doing this, but at the time, couldn't round up enough clarinets. This isn't a good method of tuning, though :-) Nate Zeien
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-09-13 02:46
Nate Zeien wrote:
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Dear Mark, Nifty!! Been there done that.
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Ahhh - I don't think so. Bill Smith can <b>play</b> those instruments that way! Not just noodle around.
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Author: Nate Zeien
Date: 2000-09-13 03:02
Mark, it isn't too hard too believe this guy can get a decent tone(s), but how can he play any meaningful music? About the best I could do was play "Mary had a little lamb" a third apart each. Even when I play it fairly in tune, it's still no impressive duet. What sort of music does this guy play like that? If he's playing jazz duets, I think we should be asking this guy for advice on a few things. What do you think? -- Nate Zeien
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-09-13 03:16
Nate, William O. (Bill) Smith has been playing and teaching for a long, long time. He's a composer (studied with Darius Mihaud) and player (he played with the Dave Brubeck Quartet and Octet). This was during the heady days of Mills College, where musical experimentation was taking place. His awards include a Prix de Paris, the Phelan Award, a Prix de Rome, A Fromm Players Fellowship , a National Academy of Arts and Letters Award, a BMI Jazz Pioneer Award, a BMI Jazz Pioneer Award, and two Guggenheims. His "Five Pieces for Clarinet Alone" are often used as competition pieces for young artists - and by no means are they his most difficult compositions.
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Author: Nate Zeien
Date: 2000-09-13 03:23
Mark, I'm still confused, does he actually write interesting music for 2 clarinets, and one player? Or, is he a just a talented composer of more "traditional" clarinet music that was tinkering around with two? If he does write music for the previous, how can how can he get notes lower than C/G? Does he lip them down to play music? That would be pretty impressive. -- Nate Zeien
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Author: Eoin McAuley
Date: 2000-09-13 11:54
Notice that his right hand is in the position where a right hand would normally be, down at the bottom three holes. I'd say he has the top three finger holes and thumb hole taped over, so that he can play low notes on the right hand while playing higher notes on the left hand. You'd have to confine yourself to the chalumeau register.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-09-13 12:03
Eoin McAuley wrote:
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You'd have to confine yourself to the chalumeau register.
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Not really. You can overblow without the register tube open. I'm totally out of tune if I do. I'll bet Bill Smith isn't.
Nate - I don't really know if Bill Smith ever composed for two clarinets simultaneously or if he just did it during some jazz sessions. The point is that while you can barely play "Mary had a Little Lamb (and I can't do anything at all), there are people who are "on the edge" and can do things that we only dream about with the instrument. Bill Smith is one of those people (as is an acquaintence of mine, Gerry Errante). They push the envelope.
Your "Been there, done that" comment was a bit out of line, since you haven't "done that", only "Been there". You didn't stay there long enough ...
Rashaan Roland Kirk play some tremendous stuff on 2 reed instruments at a time (he invented a number of oddball instruments, too) and continued to play even after injuring a hand. It may be a "trick", but there's a gifted few who actually make music that way.
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Author: Nate Zeien
Date: 2000-09-13 12:56
Wow! I guess I really underestimated what this guy can do. I've seen people do this as a joke, but if this guy CAN play these in an artistic manner, he IS good :-) -- Nate Zeien
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Author: K.S.
Date: 2000-09-13 17:05
I have an eefer and a Bb, so I indeed noodled around last five minutes to see its potential. I was a bit suspicious about overblowing, since, though, I'm quite adept at that ( I play extreme altissimo on my soprano sax ), we only have one tongue and one air stream inside our mouth, so how can we create one fast air stream for the overblowing horn, and the other for non overblowing one?
The result is, it is possible to switch to a higher harmonic on one horn while maintaining drone on the other! With practice, I believe, it is also possible to simultaneously switch to higher harmonics on both horns, or climb up on one while descending on the other etc. The possibility seems endless.
I do see, for me, it's a long way away from anything resembling an artistic performance, but I can believe somebody creating a beautiful piece music out of this!
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-09-13 17:54
K.S. wrote:
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<br>The result is, it is possible to switch to a higher harmonic on one horn while maintaining drone on the other!
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<br>Yup, and not even maintaining just a drone note but playing the other horn(s). Please listen to Rashaan Roland Kirk - he did it <b>all</b> the time on his reed instruments. I've got absolutely no idea <i>how</i> he did it, but I remember him doing it live - and mean, furious, heart-stoppingly fast jazz licks. Sounded like 6 instruments at once (for all I know, he was blowing multiphonics at the same time!). Check out the pictures at <a href=http://www.cosmik.com/aa-march99/kirk.html>http://www.cosmik.com/aa-march99/kirk.html</a>.
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Author: ron b.
Date: 2000-09-13 18:26
Mark,
I remember listening to Roland Kirk, many years ago, and was very impressed at that time that he was playing *serious* stuff, not a gimmick. My memory isn't the greatest but, don't I recall that he played three(!) horns simultaneously, at times anyway? I also seem to recall 'stritch' and 'manzello' as names of instruments - did Mr. Kirk invent those??? That was a long time ago, Mark... I'm sure people like that come along occassionally just to tantalize us - and add some more zest to life in the music world.
ron b.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-09-13 18:34
ron b. wrote:
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My memory isn't the greatest but, don't I recall that he played three(!) horns simultaneously, at times anyway?
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Yup - the pictures show that.
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I also seem to recall 'stritch' and 'manzello' as names of instruments - did Mr. Kirk invent those???
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Those and a few more :^)
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Author: ron b.
Date: 2000-09-13 19:44
Amazing... I didn't realize he 'invented' those instruments. I thought (or someone may have told me that ' ..blah, blah.. ', you know how it goes(rumors and such). Anyway, I *thought* they were 'found' horns, something odd that never caught on, curiosities, but Mr. Kirk decided to do something with them. (Boy, did he ever). Do you have any more info, or a source to find it, on those instruments? About Roland, the person. Just curious. A musician/inventor. I had no idea - pretty amazing :
ron b.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-09-13 20:09
Ron,
The link I gave above will get you to a summary of his accomplishments. Just go to Google and type "roland kirk" for a huge number of references.
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Author: ron b.
Date: 2000-09-13 20:15
Just found out there's tons of stuff available. Type in the name (search?) and up comes oodles of places that would take hours and houurs to visit. Shows how far behind the times I am... What an astonishing age we live in. :|
ron b.
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Author: Bob Sparkman
Date: 2000-09-15 11:34
Hey Mark - May I suggest that incredulous payers be referred to Bill Smith's earlier "conventional" recordings for a point of reference. I understand "Near Myth" by Dave Brubeck has just been reissued and is available on CD. Also, I personally believe "The Riddle" represents the finest "modern" jazz clarinet ever recorded, and a diligent hunt for the LP, long out of print, would be extremely rewarding to anyone finding a copy. I'm still trying to digest Buddy DeFranco, Eddie Daniels and Ken Poplowski (I'm an old phert). If anyone caught Woody Allen's movie tribute to Django Rheinhardt (Sweet & Low Down) there's a CD out with stuff additional to the sound track which has some extraordinry Poplowski playing on it -- truly dazzling! Keep swingin'!
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Author: Tim2
Date: 2000-09-19 00:53
And I thought all I was going to get from this post was a good picture of William O. Smith. I like seeing what these composers look like. Thanks for taking us down another avenue of musicianship, Mark.
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