 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: clariza
Date: 2010-11-13 13:08
I have two questions:
Firstly, a perfectly in tune clarinet is obviously impossible. But what is the acceptable variance on individual notes on a professional clarinet? Too many notes on my clarinets are so out of tune that it is difficult or impossible to correct them with embouchure and fingering adjustments . The instruments in question are a pair of Buffet RC Prestige, sn 185 xxx and 207 xxx. Standard buffet barells and Vandoren B40 mouthpiece.
Secondly, who would be the best person to send them to for accoustical optimisation? Location is not all that important; I play professionally in Africa so there is pretty much no expert help available locally so I am prepared to ship my instruments.
Many thanks for all the interesting information available on this forum!
James
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Author: William
Date: 2010-11-13 15:25
When Tom Ridenour was working on my set of Leblanc Concerto clarinets at the Kenosha (WI-USA) factory in the early 90's, he said that being within 2 cents of "perfect" was acceptable. And he was able to do "that" with both my A & Bb clarinet. He now lives in Denton, Tx (USA) and produces his own line of clarinets, but--as I understand--still does custom work on other professional clarinets. IMHO, there is no better accoustician than Tom.
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Author: Caroline Smale
Date: 2010-11-13 15:56
I would have thought that being within 2 cents of perfect intonation on all the notes was not only acceptable - it would be absolutely amazing.
Any top professional can "play" their clarinet perfectly in tune (most of the time) but I doubt that their instruments are inherently anywhere near +/- 2 cents and would require subtle (with practice automatic) adjustments by the player.
The important thing is that any discrepancies are small as possible and evenly spread i.e. no adjacent tones should be widely divergent.
You are going to have to humour the intonation anyway to fit in with your orchestral colleagues.
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2010-11-13 16:41
+/- 2-cents?
My teacher can play fast and keep a Korg tuner's green light on and the red lights off. He's damned good; and his horns have had a lot of attention paid to intonation with some tone holes lined with electrical tape, etc.
My own RC is +/- 10-cents in the clarion and throat tones, and is a heck of a lot better than my previous Buffet R16-1/2.
I briefly owned an R13 A with a slightly too-big bore in the top of the upper joint. It was easily a 1/4-tone sharp in the left hand clarion; and with one particular barrel, it could be turned into a wildly out of tune Bb!
My intonation adjustment concern is to get my Bb and A to be "quite similar" in their scales so that I can anticipate what to do about the intonation of the next note.
+/- 2-cents? Only with the player predicting accurately what's about to happen with the next note.
Bob Phillips
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-11-13 21:12
Playing with anything other than a piano ideally requires on-the-spot adjustments of tens of cents. I tend not to sweat instrumental discrepancies too much.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: clariza
Date: 2010-11-13 22:07
Thank you for all the replies!
It goes without saying that some notes will always need adjustment, and fitting in with colleagues also requires additional adjustment. But at the moment I find that too many notes are too far out of tune. +/- 2 cents seems unbelievably close to perfect equal temperament, what would a more realistic figure be?
Any other suggestions for repair-people? I emailed Tom Ridenour a while back and haven't received a response.
Thanks once again
James
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Author: davetrow
Date: 2010-11-13 22:55
I was impressed by Morrie Backun's attention to detail when he worked with me on my R13.
Dave Trowbridge
Boulder Creek, CA
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Author: Koo Young Chung
Date: 2010-11-13 23:39
+/- 2 cents?
It is impossible on ANY instruments.
When you play fast,Korg meter stays on green,because the tuner cannot follow fast enough for the changing pitch.
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2010-11-14 05:23
You can only determine the pitch/intonation of a specific combination of player, mouthpiec/reed and instrument.
The instrument itself being +/- 2 cents makes no sense. Once you have to pull the barrel (and possibly other parts) out significantly, for example because of weather or any other reason, you are ruining the inherent intonation of the instrument by considerably more than that anyway.
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Author: chris moffatt
Date: 2010-11-14 12:11
Before you send your instruments away try some experimentation with mouthpieces and barrels. I have found on some of my horns that the stock barrels are a real part of the intonation challenge and it changes with different mouthpieces. finding the right mpc/barrel combination may help a lot.
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