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Re: Bad workman or bad tool?

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2010-10-11 17:26

I think you need to stop the reed for an very small instant one way or another to get the reed and vibrating air to slow down - drop the air pressure for an instant as you make the leap or tongue lightly (which is, I suspect, the most common way to do it). At the risk of showing off my scientific ignorance, as I understand it from high school physics (a more sophisticated explanation would be welcome), it's a problem of inertia - the system is vibrating at a multiple (harmonic) of the tube's frequency and wants to keep vibrating in that mode. Something has to force it to slow to the fundamental mode, or probably in this case stop it completely for some very short time so the whole system can restart at the fundamental. Eventually, of course, the forces set up by the unvented tube overcome inertia and the pitch drops on its own, but not quickly enough in this context. Again, I would enjoy reading a better explanation of the physics involved.

BTW, I think slackening your embouchure is probably making the interval harder to play. It basically gives up control of the reed. Keeping a steady, firm embouchure may be more helpful, although opening the inside of your mouth a litte while maintaining control of the reed may help produce the lower pitch.

For what it's worth, a quick check of three different editions I own shows that none indicates a slur between Eb and F#. In one very old German edition there is a slur connecting F# to G with a long slur *from Eb to near the end of the G*, which may have been meant by the editor to be more a phrase marking than an actual legato (slur) articulation. The other two, including both versions in the Henle edition, separate the two notes.

Karl

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