 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-02-28 19:34
A student e-mailed me a few weeks ago and asked me if having a little noise in his tone was a problem. He said some of his fellow students criticized him for it but the conductor in his school orchestra said he sounded good and did not hear any “noise”. He also said his teacher; he did not want to mention his or her name, agreed with the conductor. He said he didn’t want anyone to know who he was so he wanted to write me directly instead of post it on the clarinet board. This is what I answered him.
I’ve heard it said that Daniel Bonade told a student, when asked why he had some extraneous sound in his tone, that he doesn’t play for the second clarinetist, he wants my job anyway. He said he plays for himself, the conductor and the audience. I’m not sure how true it is that he actually said it but it makes sense to me if he did. (Let me know if anyone knows if this is true or not). I believe if your tone is absolutely pure or clear to your ear chances are it will sound smaller and thinner 20, 50, 100 feet away. Tone quality diminishes as it carries through the air, I think Bonade realized that.
Modern commercial recordings are different of course; you have the mic placements and studio acoustics to enhance your tone, adding vibe if and when necessary and including splicing and do overs . One can do magic with recordings today and that includes our orchestra recordings as well. Just listen to a recording from 50 years ago and a recent recording. That is not meant to imply anything about any recording artist, many if not most, sound just as good in a live performance.
There are two great players I’ve had the privilege of playing with that had very different concepts. Iggy Gennusa, who had one of the most beautiful tones you can imagine when I sat near him on stage, it carried pretty well too because it was so full and big. I wouldn’t say it had “noise” in the sound but I could hear a vibration in his sound, and I don’t mean vibrato, it had a little something. His predecessor in the BSO in the late 60s and early 70s was Frank Cohen, principal in Cleveland now, and by comparison his tone was less than clear on stage, but always sounded full and rich when I heard him in the hall. Both very different tone qualities, both, in my opinion, excellent.
You have to find the tone that you love and want to hear. You’re the first person that has to be satisfied or no one else will ever be either. You need to find the right combination of equipment, mouthpiece, reed, ligature, barrel and clarinet that give you the result you’re looking for. The mouthpiece is probably the most important piece of equipment in conjunction with the way you voice it of course. That’s why I stock about 20 different types and makes of mouthpieces for my students. Of course your physical make up is very important as well, embouchure, throat-tongue position, lip thickness, teeth formation etc. are all fundamental in achieving a good tone quality.
I’ve changed mouthpieces about five times in my playing career, always trying to find the sound I’m looking for and that has changed over the years. The exception was when my dog chewed up one mouthpiece; luckily for him I couldn’t catch him at the time. The last time I changed was about 20 years ago when I heard someone play on the radio, his sound haunted me so I spent the next three months searching for a mouthpiece and reed combination that allowed me to get the sound I was searching for. I don’t think I actually sound just like that player did but I love what I’m hearing. You can’t please everyone so please yourself first, I do and I love it, you can do too. ESP www.peabody.jhu.edu/457
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Author: NBeaty
Date: 2009-02-28 22:25
Ed,
I enjoyed reading your post, and have heard that same quote about Bonade.
Sometimes players use this quote as an excuse to play with junk in their sound, by way of either air leak or excessive air leak (most any air leak is a nuisance IMO). I'd like to think that air leak and hard reeds are not required to project well (and has been my experience, as well as most symphony players I know\have known).
I think most people want to hear the sound of the clarinet, rather than the sound of the air that didn't quite make it into the mouthpiece!
Illya Shterenburg (San Antonio Symphony) once told me that it's better to be on the side of a "small" sound with density and focus, than a large one (seemingly louder up close) but dissipates quickly in regards to projecting into a large hall.
Thoughts?
-Nathan
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Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2009-02-28 23:22
Ed, I always enjoy reading your posts, and this one is no exception.
Nathan, you brought up some good points, similar to ones I was going to point out.
When I was in college in the early 70s, there was a clarinet professor at my university who had a monumental air leak. This professor has been mentioned on this board from time to time with nothing but the highest respect, and I would prefer not to mention the name here. Needless to say, the leak drove me nuts. I remember attending a solo recital, and I sat quite a distance away in the balcony. I could hear the air loud and clear, and I thought it really detracted from an otherwise nice recital.
Many of this teacher's students also played with a loud air leak, as did many students of another professor that I studied with for a couple years (this second professor also had a leak). I was determined not to play this way, and for the most part, I didn't. Later on, I studied with a clarinetist who was a member of a major symphony orchestra. He also had an air leak.
I remember discussing this with someone many years ago, and the response I got was that leaking air isn't heard over an orchestra. Perhaps this is true.
Nathan, you mentioned hard reeds. As I've said in other posts, I think many people think of it as a badge of honor to play reeds that are too hard. Perhaps as a way to "handle" these reeds, they leak air. As I mentioned in another post recently, I now play on no. 3 Rico Reserves.
They are the right hardness for me and they give me a sound I like, although I don't perform in a symphony orchestra.
Perhaps it all comes down to the type of playing that you do. I suppose that if you perform in an orchestra, especially one in a large hall, you might want a powerful sound that can project over the group. You might not worry about little noises that are heard close-up, and you might not worry about leaking air. On the other hand, if you're performing a solo recital in a small recital room, this kind of playing would be out of place. You'd probably want a more pure sound with absolutely no extra noises.
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Author: elmo lewis
Date: 2009-02-28 23:45
I think your student needs to record himself both from close-up and from far away and in a practice room and in an auditorium. The reaction we have to the sound we hear while playing is very subjective. The recordings would give him some objectivity and might help suggest if some changes need to be made.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-03-01 01:46
elmo lewis wrote:
> I think your student needs to record himself both from close-up
> and from far away and in a practice room and in an auditorium.
> The reaction we have to the sound we hear while playing is very
> subjective. The recordings would give him some objectivity and
> might help suggest if some changes need to be made.
That's a good suggestion, although it's very easy to sound bad on inexpensive recording equipment (like portable cassette recorders) such as a high school student might have access to. So it's possible you could sound much worse on tape than you do in real life.
For instance, recently I found that I sound much better on my camcorder than my portable cassette recorder (which was designed for voice taping).
But at the same time, I also found out--the hard way--that most camcorders (and probably a lot of other equipment, too, if I bothered to check) have something called "automatic gain control" or "AGC," which is a type of circuit (normally found in AM radios) that adjusts the level of the signal so that the average volume is approximately the same at all times. You need this in an AM radio because loudness is directly proportional to signal strength in AM signals and you don't want stronger signals to be significantly louder than weaker signals (they might be very painful in earphones, for instance). In a camcorder or tape deck, AGC keeps you from having to manually adjust a recording level (which is nice for point-and-shoot home movies, but terrible for recording music). Anyway, to make a long story short, this little feature basically wreaks havoc with your ability to demonstrate proper dynamic contrasts in a recording. Apparently you can turn this off on certain camcorders, but on most you can't.
In the video I made (of orchestral excerpts), it was quite difficult (nearly impossible, to be honest) to tell the dynamic difference between an excerpt played pianissimo and the forte passage that preceded it because of this; also, certain notes sounded more heavily accented than they actually were because of the slight time delay in the camcorder's changing recording levels from high (for virtual silence) to low/medium (to adjust to my sound level). As for the hairpins, only very quick decrescendos/crescendos were perceptible on the video.
Anyway, my point is that you might get a better idea of what you sound like by playing in a "live" room, where the sound everyone else hears is reflected back to you, than you do from making a recording. I usually practice in a room with a tile floor because of this. I seem to remember Jack Brymer in his book "The Clarinet" advocating this practice, even going so far as to say categorically that the clarinet is an instrument that sounds better at a distance than it does close up.
Expanding on Ed's excellent post (and in particular the Bonade quote), I'd also like to say that I think sometimes you can get more useful feedback about your playing from non-clarinetist musicians than you can from other clarinet players, because I think we clarinetists occasionally tend to become obsessed with particular clarinet-specific technical details (especially those things that we care about in our own playing). But, as Ed's post suggests, developing your own listening ear is the best thing you can do for your own playing (in all respects, not just tone quality).
Post Edited (2009-03-01 03:07)
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Author: William
Date: 2009-03-01 16:24
A couple of thoughts about tone quality and your own "voice". Bernard Portnoy once told me--at a Mid West Clinic in Chicago--that "no matter whose mouthpiece you play, you will always revert to your own sound after a couple of weeks." And that sound is dicatated by your own oral configurations and what your brain thinks is "good". So listen to other players, listen to yourself and arrive at the best compromise you can between what you want and what your physical makeup plus your equipment will allow.
Back in college, a graduate clarinet major once observed that you should not judge the quality of your sound "up close" where it may sound a bit thin and "airy", but rather "farther away in the audience" where the sound will have a chance to "homogenize" a bit and gain resonance. Up close, her sound tended to be bright and a bit thin, but far away was simply gorgeous. After school, she move to Chicago and became a regular sub with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1960's) so there is some credability to her sound theory. So perhaps the clarinetist sitting next to you is not in the best seat to pass judgement on the quality of your sound.
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2009-03-01 22:11
Timbre is defined in many ways, by many experts. Find your tone by listening to recordings of different players . When you find the one you like, get that tone in your head by much repetition of that one recording. The player is the critical element, not the instrument, mpc, reed, or ligature, but all are significant. The acoustic environment may have had a great effect on his timbre, but what you hear is what you wish to duplicate, and this will change with your environment too.
richard smith
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2009-03-01 22:35
Richard Smith wrote:
"Find your tone by listening to recordings of different players . When you find the one you like, get that tone in your head by much repetition of that one recording."
I'm sorry but that is not a great way to do it. Granted listening to various players and your peers will have an effect on you but copying one particular person is not the way forward. An intelligent person who wants to take music seriously will develop their own concept of sound as they develop their technique, this is what mastering any instrument is about I believe.
Music is about following ones own path.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2009-03-01 22:36
BTW Ed,
I found your post rather interesting and very true.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Caroline Smale
Date: 2009-03-01 22:48
Listening to other players does seem to me to be a realistic way of developing one's own voice, I don't think it can easily be done from isolation (just listen to the clarinet sound in some Indian or Chinese bands).
However the key surely is to listen to many different styles and schools and then select and synthesise those elements found most personally attractive from amongst them into something of your own.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-03-01 23:27
Here's my favorite quote. “Everybody should try to find a sound that really belongs to you. In the end, I think everyone should be different. Good teachers should help a student evolve in a natural way, not be a copy machine.”
Concert pianist Lang Lang while giving a master class in Baltimore, ESP
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Author: Pappy
Date: 2009-03-01 23:44
Fascinating thread! I've found that on my A clarinet (An older Selmer CT) that in MY ears I think I hear a vibration. So much so that I've spent quite a bit of time and a little bit of money looking for the "problem". But when I hear a recording of me playing it - made from quite a larger distance - the tone seems clear and strong with no extraneous noise. Colleagues sitting in the hall could not hear it when I did some playing tests that way as well. I'm sure that the clarinetist sitting next to me might also be able to hear the noise (unless it's "coming through my bones" so to speak).
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Author: Ed
Date: 2009-03-02 00:42
“Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to sound like yourself”
-Miles Davis
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Author: kdk
Date: 2009-03-02 00:48
I think modeling on a recording in this way is dangerous in terms of potentially wasting time and effort. There is often a meaningful difference between the sound a player actually produces (what you'd hear if you sat next to him/her) and what comes through on a recording, at least as much of a difference as distance makes in a large hall. If you spend your time chasing after the sound on a recording, you are in a way chasing after something that isn't real and that may be unattainable in the real, acoustic world.
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2009-03-02 15:28
I like the idea of individual sounds.
I dislike the idea that all of the clarinets playing together should be indistinguishable from one another.
When listening to a duo concerto, for example, I want to know who's playing each part.
Bob Phillips
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Author: Rivers
Date: 2009-03-02 16:46
Ed:
As a BSO season ticket holder I have always admired Steve Barta's sound. It is usually the first thing I hear when I arrive at the Meyehoff as Steve is warming up and testing reeds. Do you know what his setup is? His tone is so focused and rich I think it is one of the best
Thanks
Rivers
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-03-03 12:54
I like the Miles Davis quote as well as Steve Hartman's statement. My feelings exactly. That's why I titled this "your" tone, not someone else's. It's not the equipment someone else uses, it's what works for you. ESP
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Author: classicalguss
Date: 2009-03-03 13:49
I think that Ed put all this exactly right. I do believe that students should hear other players, particularly if they can hear them live. Recordings are valuable to hear great players from the past, but one can't imitate any sound because we all have differing mouths, throats, etc. BUT, to have a concept of who YOU like can be invaluable.
Also, Ed, we met years ago when you did a clinic for my HS orchestra. You were terrific and a pleasure to talk to. It was right after Anthony Gigliotti passed and we discussed how much he would be missed.
Best Wishes,
Roy Gussman
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Author: Ed
Date: 2009-03-03 14:24
Ed P says
"That's why I titled this "your" tone, not someone else's. It's not the equipment someone else uses, it's what works for you."
Great point. You will find that there are players who play on a mouthpiece, barrel, ligature, reed, clarinet, etc, because that is what some highly revered player uses or endorses. While that may be a good starting point (you can't argue with success), it may not be right for you. It may be possible to have great success with something else.
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Author: Chris Hill
Date: 2009-03-03 14:51
Steve Barta plays on a Chadash clarinet, and a Chadash-Hill 104 mouthpiece, with handmade reeds.
Chris
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-03-03 23:36
Of course Chris Hill is right, he sold it to Steve. Rivers e-mailed me so I answered him that way instead of doing it over a post. His mouthpiece is a high quality mouthpiece as many others are. I have a student playing one now and Steve has many, if not most of his student, play one but neither my student or any of his gets the same quality sound that Steve gets. I keep one or two in my stash of mouthpieces for my students to try. Sometimes one sounds good on it, but many times they sound better on one of the others I stock. Like I always said, you won't get the same sound as someone else just because you use the same equipment. I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record. I know many players that sound terrific but none of their students sound like them even when they make their students use the same equipment, it just doesn't always work. We're all built differently. ESP
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Author: Chris Hill
Date: 2009-03-04 15:12
I do have to say that Ed is correct: different people need different equipment. I just wanted to answer a direct question.
Ed's pet peeve of people trying to play certain equipment due to a specific clarinetist playing it is my pet peeve as well. That is why I, as well as other makers, custom fit mouthpiece to players. The mouthpiece that I would make for one of Steve Barta's students is not exactly the mouthpiece I would make for Steve. I have stopped by the booths of Greg Smith and Ben Redwine at conventions, and they were both able to fit me with something that was good for me. My choice for me was probably not their choice for themselves. (BTW, they are both fine people, as well as excellent craftsmen and clarinetists.) I'll sometimes reface a mouthpiece that I can't even test, because someone requires something so different from what I need. I learned this the hard way: I tried to get sound out of a resistant mouthpiece that a client wanted me to copy. I ended up in the doctor's office, and couldn't play for a week.
Keep sounding like that broken record, Ed! (For those of you under 25, you can look up what a record is on google.)
Chris
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2009-03-04 17:23
I've found my own tone, I sound like myself;
I've settled on MY way to play.
Unfortunately though, the rest of the world
heard my sound and ain't willing to pay!
GBK, you're up...........
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Author: GBK
Date: 2009-03-05 00:18
Everyone wants that great sound,
Which is full and harmonics abound.
But, after hearing Morales
At a concert in Dallas.
There's no need to look further around.
...GBK
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Author: Dawne
Date: 2009-03-05 05:16
Well, I thought recording himself and listening to it was a good idea since we all know we sound different when we hear ourselves talk on our message machines than what we sound like to ourselves inside our own heads....but I guess from reading other posts that that won't work, and it's just all too subjective, and depends on this and that.....and blah blah blah...MY GOSH! We just can never win! Or are we just too OCD?
Dawne
Dawne Morgan
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-03-05 14:11
Dawne wrote:
<<Well, I thought recording himself and listening to it was a good idea
....but I guess from reading other posts that that won't work, and it's just all too subjective, and depends on this and that.....and blah blah blah...MY GOSH! We just can never win! Or are we just too OCD?>>
All I said was that clarinets are hard to record. (They often sound tinny and nasal on tape) So if the person who asked Ed the original question decides to tape himself with home equipment and is displeased with the result, he/she should not necessarily assume that it's because they have a bad tone. I see nothing pathological with that. (If anything, it should come as a relief to realize this--even audio engineers can find clarinets challenging to record.) Trust me, I don't sit there obsessing about how I sound--I like my sound.
The problem (at least one of them--another is directivity) is that all microphones have some tendency to boost certain frequencies at the expense of others. Since one's tone is determined by the relative levels of certain harmonic frequencies compared to others, if the microphone you're using doesn't have the right frequency response (and a lot of them don't if you're talking about recording clarinets), the recorded tone will be *noticeably* different than the original. Mark Charette has more experience with this kind of stuff than I do, so he can probably elaborate on this.
There are plenty of good reasons to record oneself, even on a handheld cassette recorder. However, it's helpful to realize that there are limitations to what these machines can do as far as representing one's *tone quality*. And I feel like I get more accurate results (with less effort--no batteries required!) from playing in a live room than I do from tapes.
However, on the topic of OCD, I think you could probably argue that all good classical musicians (especially clarinetists) exhibit some behaviors that resemble OCD. We practice stuff over and over again until we feel comfortable and strive for perfection. We have strange ritualistic break-in procedures for reeds, etc. So it should come as no surprise that the writers of Monk made Adrian Monk a clarinet player! 
Post Edited (2009-03-05 15:04)
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2009-03-05 14:14
mrn wrote:
> Mark Charette has more experience with this kind of stuff than
> I do, so he can probably elaborate on this.
Not much more experience than you do, I'm afraid ... but let me see if I can get a professional recording engineer (and both sponsor and clarinetist!) to post here.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-03-05 14:57
Many of my students have recorded themselves with less than "professional" equipment to send for auditions and contests. When they do it in a room that has decent acoustics and they place the mic at a proper distance, done by trial and error, the result is usually pretty decent. I always encourage them to place the mic far enough away so they don't pick up any slight extraneous sounds or too many high overtones in the upper register but close enough to produce a good quality. I think you can be reasonably successful if you experiment with the placement and play in a decent room. Obviously the quality of the mic and recorder will have something to do with the final result. ESP
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Author: Ed
Date: 2009-03-05 16:23
I have been able to hear prominent air leaks in concert halls, even with larger ensembles.
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Author: Ralph Katz
Date: 2009-03-05 16:59
Air Leakers Anonymous
Leaking air can be a terrible distraction, especially in chamber music. Lots of people think they can get away with it because other people do it, but they are just kidding themselves.
I was a terrible air leaker in high school, but so were all my hot-shot friends. Paul Schaller was incredibly blunt. He said to me, "What's that noise?" Once identified, he said, "Do you like that noise? If not, why do you make it?" Getting me to consider this aspect of my sound, and decide whether it was what I wanted or not, was brilliant. Getting rid of the leaking was hard, but still, the next week there were no more leaks. This was a wonderful introductory exercise into analysis of sound production, in my brief time studying with him.
A Personal Sound
There are a lot of musicians whose teachers always stressed what is wrong and not particularly what is right. Lots of teachers seem to stop their students every other bar for some minor infraction, and they never play anything without being beat down. For those who manage to keep playing to adulthood, having grown up trying always to not do anything wrong, may develop "top-dead-center" style, that is also restrictive, inflexible, and at times bland.
Blending is a requirement in many settings. But what do you do when you don't necessarily need to blend? There are an incredible range of desireable clarinet sounds on recordings from all over this big world. It takes an outstanding teacher to get students to appreciate this, while still developing technique and musicianship. And in this age when many universities see the importance of "world music", there are teachers who know how to successfully foster individuality. Bravo.
I grew up with Theodore Baskin, long-term principle oboe in L'Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal. He talked about spending a lot of time listening to recordings of oboists in orchestras from all over the world, trying to find the sound he most wanted to emulate. Having evolved into this sound, he then was assigned at university to a French oboe teacher, who insisted he sound like a French oboe, which ran counter to his selected sound. But he got through this, ultimately being hired in Montreal, probably because he can sound either French or American, depending on requirements.
Looking for that personal sound will always be a growing process, even though you may not be able to use that same sound all of the time.
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Author: NBeaty
Date: 2009-03-05 18:47
Even intermittent air leak can be heard in large concert halls. I heard someone say once (a prominant teacher\performer) "I've never heard someone sound better with an air leak than without one. Air leak is an indicator that something isn't quite right, and when it is fixed the result is always an improvement".
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-03-05 22:00
If the air can be heard more than about three feet away it most definitely needs to be corrected. No body wants to hear more air than tone, even the guy, or gal, sitting next to you. If you're a teacher you need to work with the student to overcome the problem though with some players it is very,very difficult to cure, but you have to try. ESP
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Author: Old Geezer
Date: 2009-03-06 15:17
For tone Morales' alright,
But for beautys' height,
And elegant delight,
Give me good ol' Harold Wright!
The more I listen to his (Harold Wright) CDs, the more I admire his tone. Though they're not mentioned much on this BB, Emma Johnson and Victoria Somes have done a lot for the clarinet by their many recordings of works not available elsewhere and Clarinet Classics is a treasure house for clarinetists.
Clarinet Redux
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Author: kdk
Date: 2009-03-06 16:41
One night at Wolf Trap I heard the Cleveland Orchestra play, among other things, Afternoon of a Fawn. It was very near the end of Robert Marcellus's career as a player and I was shocked to hear, all the way out in the free seats, enough air leakage to obscure some of the softer notes in his solo passages and compete with the louder ones. Of course, in an outdoor venue like that, there were certainly microphones involved, and I don't know where the nearest one was or how much gain the engineer was giving it.
Apart from whether or not the *sound* of an air leak is a genuine detriment, there is the issue of phrase length to consider. Any air escaping around the mouthpiece that isn't producing reed vibration is wasted. If a player normally allows air to escape, he needs to be able to make the extra effort to stop it at will at least for those long, exposed passages where a breath isn't convenient or particularly musical.
Karl
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2009-03-06 17:24
There's a Chicago Symphony Recording of Beethoven 6th Sym where their microphones are really badly placed - at the end of several solo passages the flutist (flutist, not clarinetist) has a really noticable pfsssssst at the tail end of his tones.
Amazing, almost funny and sad at the same time. Was probably Don Peck who's a great player and in Orchestra there wasn't even the slighetest hint of that (I played the Teton Seminar with him back in the late 80's).
All in the Microphone placement.
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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