 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: karlbonner82
Date: 2010-05-17 09:07
I'm curious if anyone has experience with extending the clarinet range down an extra semitone by "cheating;" that is, making the bottom note a semitone flat? Could you do it by partially covering or muffling the bell? And how much sound could you get out of something like that?
I seem to remember a saxophone fingering chart that included low A and instructed you to put your foot in the bell while fingering the Bb (seriously!).
And I have actually seen the low E in a few alto recorder parts, suggesting that this note is supposed to be attainable while still sounding loud enough to contribute to the overall ensemble and harmony structure.
Has anyone here experimented much with this idea?
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2010-05-17 09:52
That's what some cor anglais players do when playing Mahler (and a £20 note will work as well) - most cors only go to low B, though Mahler writes for low Bb in several instances.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: Ed
Date: 2010-05-17 11:26
I found out (completely by accident!) that the pack a stand
http://www.packastand.com/clarinet.html
clarinet stand, which stores in the bell, lowers the E perfectly to an Eb on my instruments. If you give it a little push it will stay snugly in the bell. I have used it successfully in performances.
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Author: karlbonner82
Date: 2010-05-17 12:38
I'm pretty sure I have one of those! I'll get back to you as to how well it works.
You said you stumbled upon the trick completely by accident. What were you doing that led to you playing the low E with the stand inside the bell?
Post Edited (2010-05-17 12:40)
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2010-05-17 12:57
John Denman could force a low E down to Eb, at least when playing jazz with a soft reed and an open mouthpiece. I saw and heard him do it. He did contortions with his jaw and tongue. but it worked.
Ken Shaw
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Author: karlbonner82
Date: 2010-05-17 13:25
I guess if the shoe fits, wear it.
Another interesting thing to ponder is if it's actually possible to artificially modify the KEY of the whole clarinet, and do so in a manner that is quick and easily reversible. It doesn't sound very feasible unless you find some way of putting several more joints into the tube, so that the spacing between the holes can be micromanaged. But perhaps there is a way to change the sizes of the open holes to drop the key a semitone.
Probably wouldn't be a two-minute chore, but perhaps if you were patient enough to put on all the little attachments that shade the holes....
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Author: William
Date: 2010-05-17 14:45
I've read stories of how a string dangled down the bore of a Bb clarinet can lower it's pitch to that of an A.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2010-05-17 14:59
I don't think the string thing really works, it's an old wise tail. The only problem with making your low E play an Eb is that then you can't play an E natural or the 12th higher, B, in the same passage. ESP http://eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2010-05-17 15:25
Ed Palanker wrote:
> I don't think the string thing really works, it's an old wise
> tail.
Easy enough to prove, don't you think, rather than just labelling it "an old wive's tale"?
I did, it does, it's stuffy, and it seems to be somewhat ad-hoc in general tuning.
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Author: karlbonner82
Date: 2010-05-17 15:43
What would you do with the string at the very top? Wouldn't it interfere with the reed? Or do you have to drape it out over the top of the barrel and then put on the mouthpiece in order to pinch it into place?
Sorry but about the only practical way I can think of to stuff a string into a clarinet bore is to use the top joint as a fastener. If there's some trick to pulling this off, I'd love to know
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Author: SteveG_CT
Date: 2010-05-17 16:00
karlbonner82 wrote:
> What would you do with the string at the very top? Wouldn't it
> interfere with the reed? Or do you have to drape it out over
> the top of the barrel and then put on the mouthpiece in order
> to pinch it into place?
>
> Sorry but about the only practical way I can think of to stuff
> a string into a clarinet bore is to use the top joint as a
> fastener. If there's some trick to pulling this off, I'd love
> to know
At one time I believe you could actually buy an insert that would frop into the top of the barrel and would suspend a calibrated length string in the center of the bore rather than down the side or at least there are references to such a device in one of the books I have. You could easily make one by forming a piece of wire into a ring and having one end project into the center that the end of the string could be glued to. Might be an interesting experiment if you are bored but I wouldn't expect too much from it.
Regardless, there is a reason that nobody uses this technique today as it wrecks the tone quality and causes tuning problems as Mark noted above. If you want to play both Bb and A clarinet parts on one clarinet then you would be much better off finding a full-boehm Bb with the Eb extension. Such an instrument would give you the full range of an A clarinet although you would need to transpose whenever you wanted to play a piece written in A.
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Author: karlbonner82
Date: 2010-05-17 16:14
> Regardless, there is a reason that nobody uses this technique
> today as it wrecks the tone quality and causes tuning problems
> as Mark noted above. If you want to play both Bb and A clarinet
> parts on one clarinet then you would be much better off finding
> a full-boehm Bb with the Eb extension. Such an instrument would
> give you the full range of an A clarinet although you would
> need to transpose whenever you wanted to play a piece written
> in A.
Apparently clarinetists are more particular than hornists when it comes to tone. Up until about 1850, most hornists used valveless instruments and for them, muffled tone via the hand in the bell was a small price to pay in order to get extra notes to sound.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2010-05-17 16:30
karlbonner82 wrote:
> Apparently clarinetists are more particular than hornists when
> it comes to tone. Up until about 1850, most hornists used
> valveless instruments and for them, muffled tone via the hand
> in the bell was a small price to pay in order to get extra
> notes to sound.
But hornists have a hand free for frivolities like these. With a clarinet or a sax this is getting more cumbersome. Foot-in-bell may indeed one of the few possibilities we have. ;-)
--
Ben
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Author: karlbonner82
Date: 2010-05-17 16:43
I was being a little jokingly sarcastic. Of course horns can alter the pitch more easily! That's because all the air and sound comes out at the same point no matter what the tube length is.
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Author: Barry Vincent
Date: 2010-05-17 20:23
Concerning the 'hanging' of a piece of string inside a Clarinet here's what is written in Anthony Baines Woodwind Instruments and Their History Page 51.
"Should one for any reason be obliged to use a sharp-pitch instrument in a modern orchestra, the following desperate procedure must be resorted to:
Clarinet: a method adopted by theatre clarinettists in the old mixed- pitch days in the lack of a flat-pitched instrument , was to hang a length of thick string down inside the bore, having first frayed the end so that will catch in the mouthpiece socket. This lowers the pitch uniformly by the requisite amount (apparently because in effect it narrows the bore and increases 'end-correction' under the holes, ect ) but it makes the instrument rather tiring to blow and much of it's brilliance is lost".
As far as getting a low Eb out of a standard Bb Clarinet you can play around with various lengths of toilet roll inserts ( the cardboard centre) but of course you lose the low E. In fact I've played around with this and you can get even lower notes , down to a D sounding C but the instrument is very very stuffy and heavy to breathe (blow) into. Interesting though.
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2010-05-17 20:40
A bit off-topic, but in the baritone sax world one can obtain an excellent low "A" out of an instrument with the (formerly) standard range to low Bb, by placing in the bell a tube of 4" diameter material exactly 6 inches long, and playing the low Bb. I have been doing this for years on the low Bb baris I've owned. Originally I used a length of PVC plumbing pipe, but in the size needed this was a heavy part and I stopped using it after I once dropped it on the foot of the tenor sax player sitting next to me (he told me it hurt, in no uncertain terms.....). Now I use part of a small 4"-diameter coffee can, hacksawed to 6" in length, with a foam gasket glued around the outside at one end to hold it inside the bell of the sax without scratching the lacquer.
Of course, one can only use it when there isn't a low Bb note to play shortly before or just after the low A note.
For once I'm not kidding.
As for the 'string/shoelace inside the bore' trick on clarinets, I tried it a couple of times and it didn't work for me.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2010-05-17 20:43
Mark, just so you know, I did try it and it doesn't work with my instrument. It does something to the pitch and tone but I would hardly say it made it a half tone lower and it was far from uniform. Maybe you use a better quality string then I did but I'll stand by my comment. Making a Bb clarinet into an A clarinet with a piece of string is an old wise tale. ESP
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
Post Edited (2010-05-17 20:45)
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-05-17 20:48
I've also tried the dangling string, with several types of string and different ways of dangling it. The most successful, on a plastic clarinet, was to tape one end of the string inside the top of the barrel, but after experimenting with several different types of strings, I couldn't figure out a way to get the note to play in tune. Also, I got wolf tones, squeaks and intonation trouble on other notes. Not worth the hassle, imho. If I want lower notes, I'm much better off getting out the alto clarinet.
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: Ed
Date: 2010-05-17 21:35
karl asked:
"You said you stumbled upon the trick completely by accident. What were you doing that led to you playing the low E with the stand inside the bell?"
I had one of those stands in the bell of my clarinet in my case (as they are designed to do). I assembled the instrument and began to warm up. As I began to play the warm ups and scales I was shocked that my clarinet was playing a low Eb instead of an E. Upon investigation, I found the stand sticking in the bell.
As Ed P mentions, you lose the E, so if it were a scale type passage, it won't work, but for various chordal or melodic lines it works fine.
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Author: SteveG_CT
Date: 2010-05-17 23:12
Here is what David Pino has to say about it in his book "The Clarinet and Clarinet Playing":
"The most amusing attempt of all to make a combination clarinet occurred in the early 1900s. Someone got the bright idea of simply dropping a length of string down the bore of a B-flat clarinet, hooking it onto the shoulder of the barrel joint with two metal hooks, and ending up with a clarinet that blew so "flat" that it played in A. The string was about 15 inches long and had the approximate thickness of the average rope-type clothesline, and it did indeed lower the pitch of the clarinet a half step.
When I was in high school, my band director gave me a string-tuning device which he had had for a number of years, as a sort of curiosity, I still have it and to this day it occasionally affords me and my students a good laugh. As might be expected, a clarinet with a clothesline in the bore blows like, well, a clarinet with a clothesline in its bore"
Incidentally, this is a very interesting book and I would recommend it to anyone learning more about the history and development of the clarinet.
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Author: bmcgar ★2017
Date: 2010-05-18 00:37
I once had to play Sibelius's "Valse Triste," which goes to a low Eb on a Bb instrument, when my A clarinet wasn't available for a few weeks.
What I did was to take a piece of PVC pipe (later painted black so it wouldn't stand out) glue an O-ring to the top so it wouldn't damage the bell when I shoved it in, and then shortened it until it gave me the correct pitch.
Then I attached it at an angle to an alto sax stand with hose clamps so that, when I had to go for the low Eb, all that was necessary was to move the clarinet to stick the pipe in the bell. (No chance to move the fingers off of the clarinet to do this.) With a little practice, I manage to do it quickly enough not to have a nasty blip between the Eb and the note before it, and the tone quality wasn't seriously awful.
B.
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Author: RoBass
Date: 2010-05-18 11:20
I lower my lowest E a half a tone - by using my Eb-key... ;-)
Without joking: You can use your embouchure and a weak/soft reed to lower the tone a quarter up to a half. But this tone comes so instable and grunting. That's not the right way.
The rest like with Ed's comment stated: Buy a clarinet designed for full Eb or loose your highe notes instead. Both -low Eb AND high notes- is not possible the same way well on a standard Bb instrument.
Sometimes the right MPC and reed could help to produce tones more "out of tune", but every time you loose quality in other fields...
kindly
Roman
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Author: Kalakos
Date: 2010-05-18 20:16
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Ha! Back in my "early" days, I wanted an "A" clarinet. A friend of mine found the "Howard Tuner" device and bought it for me. It goes between the mpc and the barrel joint (there's a metal "springy" thing that hooks on the edge of the shelf there). It narrows the bore, bringing the tone of a Bb (mine was Albert system) down to an A. It does work; the tone is compromised somewhat though.
Interesting device.
John
Kalakos
Kalakos Music
http://www.TAdelphia.com
Post Edited (2010-05-18 20:19)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2010-05-18 22:08
Kalakos wrote:
>> It narrows the bore, bringing the tone of a Bb (mine was Albert system) down to an A.>>
Very interesting; I never knew that such a thing had been marketed.
As I wrote in my previous post, the damping effect is more significant than I had thought in my November 2000 message to the Klarinet list -- it's not just the narrowing of the bore that makes it work.
I know this because my nephew Lawrence Dunn recently wrote a piece for six clarinets and almglocken (it won a BBC composers competition last year), and the clarinets were supposed to be pitched variously at A=440, 436, 432 and 427Hz. Various efforts to use plastic rods proved ineffective, and I eventually succeeded with 3 different sorts of shoelace.
However, the piece -- which was provocatively titled, 'Oy':-) -- needed to be very loud and aggressive. The effect of the shoelaces was to suppress that quality more than Lawrence wanted, even though the actual intonation was surprisingly good. In the end, the players settled for pulling out and using tuning rings, accepting the approximate intonation.
You notice that your device is to a certain extent absorbent, being made of some sort of woven material.
Tony
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Author: Kalakos
Date: 2010-05-19 05:35
Tony: Yes! Exactly right! It just sort of "deadened" the overall tone quality (deadened the sound; the volume; it's hard to find the right word). But you are describing what I noticed. It did make my Bb clarinet play as an A clarinet, but the trade off wasn't really worth it. I've kept the Howard Tuner and its original little box as a souvenir all these years.
John
Kalakos
Kalakos Music
http://www.TAdelphia.com
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-06-01 11:53
I've influenced my human staffer to type this for me. The usual method of making the human think she's fallen asleep at the computer works so well that I'm afraid I do resort to it, though it does seem rather rude. At any rate, I found this thread most interesting and therefore I have conducted a scientific study to determine whether or not the insertion of a feline paw and arm (to wit: mine) can provide a clarinet player with an additional low note.
The results so far have proven disappointing, although not entirely definitive, due to a sample size of fewer than fifty experimental trials and also to the fact that I performed this experiment upon an amateur clarinet player (to wit: Lelia) rather than a professional. I shall need a minimum of at least 200 trials (100 with the left arm and 100 with the right) before regarding my results as conclusive. Thus far, however, the insertion of the feline arm does not seem to provide the clarinet player with a usable lower note, though with various stretching and grabbing techniques I have produced a most entertaining assortment of high-pitched squeals. The human appears to regard these as unfortunate side-effects and has discontinued participating in these trials before I was ready to deem them complete, however.
Incidentally, the insertion of a feline head as far as possible into the bell does provide a low note, the pitch of which varies slightly if the feline (to wit: myself) moves her head around, alternates nose-first with ears-first and so forth. It is also possible to produce the entertaining extreme altissimo with this method. Once again, however, my human staffer appears to find these experiments disquieting and has ceased participation prematurely.
I happen to have sleek, short black fur on a slender body. I am unaware of any experiments by larger, heavier and longer-haired cats of numerous different colors, particularly those of the Persian persuasion, to see whether these variables might produce different results. Certain old-fashioned stiff-whiskered bigots on the Afterlife Council have inveighed against such experimentation and thus retarded the progress of science.
Apropos of whuch, by the way, the heresy case brought against me by my former mentor, Professor Shadow Cat, has been dismissed with prejudice by the Afterlife Council, but the pre-trial discovery process made me privy to certain information normally kept secret from those of us currently residing in the breathing world: I already have Permanent Cat status. My reincarnative history is nearly as long as that of Professor Shadow Cat and her threats to deny me Permanent Cat and reduce me to a mealy-bug next time around were nothing but air-hisses with no spit behind them. I flip my tail at her superstitious fulminations against so-called "screech-sticks" and I shall continue my experiments.
Rrrrt!
Jane Feline
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2010-06-01 11:54)
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