 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Blackarrow
Date: 2013-10-24 15:41
To begin with, I am 70 years old and have played music for quite a few years. For many years my instrument was an electric bass, but due to horses, motorcycles, and a auto accident I graduated to wind instruments. I have a Leblanc Noblet 45, and she is a beautiful old girl. However after playing for about thirty minutes or so, the tonal qualities seem to go a bit mushy. I am playing #3 Mitchell Lures reeds, which I have been told by a noted mouthpiece maker, that the Lurue reeds get "waterlogged" after a while of p[laying. I am wondering if perhaps the Noblet may be going a bit flat and another barrel might help. Any suggestions?
ddonaldson99@yahoo.com
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Author: kdk
Date: 2013-10-24 16:02
Welcome to the clarinet (and its main drawback - reeds).
To start with, *any* reed will get waterlogged during its first few playing sessions. Every player has a "break-in" routine he or she gets more or less committed to. There are many posts here (search the archive) and pretty much every book about playing the clarinet has a description of how to break new reeds in so they don't waterlog. What all the myriad approaches have in common is limiting, usually quite severely at first and gradually less so, the amount of time you play on a new reed before putting it away and letting it dry.
I don't have any reason to think Luries are any more prone to waterlogging after a break-in process has been followed, but maybe others have first-hand knowledge.
When you say "the Noblet may be going a bit flat and another barrel might help," do you mean the pitch is low? Or is this still connected to the "mushy" sound in the thread title? A barrel might help with a pitch problem, assuming your embouchure technique isn't at fault. But the cause of mushy sound is much more likely to be somewhere else, either the mouthpiece, the reeds, your embouchure approach or some combination of the three.
Karl
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2013-10-24 16:10
Any reed not broken-in will get water logged. So taking a new reed right out of the box and playing a full practice session (or anything for more than five minutes) is NOT a good idea.
Break-in can vary with the person to whom you are speaking, but generally the base line is a variation on playing just a few minutes on a reed each day for about four days or so (more days in low humidity conditions) before committing to any sessions of greater length.
That said, I have found Luries to be a bit lacking in "center." If you look at this reed up to the light there is not a well defined "heart" (middle of the reed, kinda "V" shaped). This area or backbone of the reed will give more body to the sound and help the reed hold up over longer periods of play. I am a Vandoren reed user and you can see a well formed heart on all their reeds, however, there are a number of others out there that also fit this bill quite nicely.
.....................Paul Aviles
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2013-10-25 14:53
Everybody's mileage varies with reeds -- a constant topic here -- but fwiw, I've been using Mitchell Lurie Premium clarinet reeds (3 and 3-1/2, depending on the clarinet and the mouthpiece) for many years now. Some people have complained that the Mitchell Luries don't last as long as some other brands. I don't find that's the case for me, and I've never had a problem with waterlogging (on any reed), but again, people differ so much in how we play, what music we play, what mouthpieces we use and so forth that experiences will range all over the place.
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: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-10-26 00:01
I've found that when a reed gets waterlogged, the tip looks darker and nearly transparent, as opposed to the "wood" look where the cane is thicker.
So the first thing to do is switch reeds. You might try a Legere, which doesn't get waterlogged.
I don't think a different barrel will cure the mushiness.
Ken Shaw
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