 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: ruben
Date: 2013-11-02 10:14
I am interested to know what our readers think of the use of vibrato on the clarinet (in Classical music). When I was a youngster, my teachers looked upon it with horror. Yet some of the top British clarinetists of the past: Jack Brymer and the great John McCaw, used it to beautiful effect. It seems to have virtually disappeared from the British school of clarinet playing. Also, how do you produce it? -with your lips, throat or breathing?
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: BobD
Date: 2013-11-02 10:50
Even among classical musicians, I guess, the clarinet is likened to the human voice, and since the human voice inherently produces vibrato I've always found the disdain for it in clarinet rather strange. It' s probably the unintentional or excessive use that is objectionable. I still like the sound of Brymer and Kell and evidently lots of people liked the sound of the guitar Whammy bar and the B3 with Leslie speaker, both of which produced vibrato.
Bob Draznik
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-11-02 13:10
BobD wrote:
> and since the human voice
> inherently produces vibrato
Not strictly true - listen to recordings of plainchant or other pre-18th century music and you hear little if any vibrato. I don't know when it became accepted vocal convention, but probably not until the 17th century or so.
> I've always found the disdain for
> it in clarinet rather strange.
This has definitely changed over the past 50 years or so in the U.S.. Even back in the 1960s players like Harold Wright and Anthony Gigliotti ere using vibrato, though Wright, at least during the one lesson I had with him, refused to call it that. I often now hear clarinet vibrato in Philadelphia - but it's much more subtle than Kell's or even Stolzman's. It doesn't record as clearly, so you probably don't notice it so much in recordings.
Karl
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Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2013-11-02 13:35
Interesting topic, Ruben!
I would imagine that it would be a jaw vibrato, similar to the way it's done on the saxophone. In Larry Teal's The Art of Saxophone Playing, he has a good chapter about woodwind doubling. He mentions that vibrato isn't often used on the clarinet, but he adds that a jaw vibrato is used in "dance work."
There's a chapter in his book devoted to sax vibrato, and Teal mentions four types: jaw, lip, throat, and diaphragm. He points out that jaw and lip vibrato are sometimes confused, and he recommends jaw vibrato.
I'm really not sure why clarinet vibrato is viewed with such horror (although I don't use it), but David Pino devotes a couple pages to it in The Clarinet and Clarinet Playing. When Pino mentions the types of vibrato, for some reason, he omits jaw vibrato. He probably speaks for many when he says, "The general absence of even-numbered partials in the clarinet's harmonic series means that clarinet tone is much more sparsely populated with overtones than are the harmonic series of other instruments. Vibrato necessarily alters that sparse tonal spectrum in too great a way for the player to maintain his full beautiful tone."
(p. 112)
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Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2013-11-02 13:49
Karl, I think I know what you're talking about. Could it be thought of as a very slow vibrato (if that's the right word), and very subtle?
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Author: BobD
Date: 2013-11-02 15:07
Recorded vibrato can come from the recording process itself or from the performer. As a result what one hears from older recordings is not proof that the player was doing it.
Bob Draznik
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Author: ruben
Date: 2013-11-02 16:53
Dear Clarinet Guy,
I don't quite understand Mr. Teal's distinction between lip and jaw vibrato. It would seem to me that if you move your lips, this will make your jaw go up and down as well. Maybe we should ask oboists what they do. I feel the altissimo register on the clarinet needs a little vibrato to make it more appealing. It can sound very screechy indeed. Artie Shaw said the very high notes on the clarinet sound like a pig squealing and that the only way to make them tolerable is to add vibrato.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2013-11-02 17:30
Larry Teal wasn't a fan of the lip vibrato, but here's what he had to say:
"The lip vibrato, which is often confused with the jaw vibrato, is produced by moving the lips in something like a 'wah-wah-wha---' motion." He adds that when using this type of vibrato, "the listener hears more vibrato than tone." (p. 55)
This might have been the type of vibrato that was often heard in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. The Little Rascals' theme song comes to mind.
With the jaw vibrato, according to Teal, "the lips . . . become the recipient of changing pressures when the jaw moves. The lips then transfer this change in pressure to the reed, which responds with a change in vibration rate."
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Author: AAAClarinet
Date: 2013-11-02 19:30
Oboists would never use lip or jaw vibrato. I've heard it explained two ways, but some say they are the same. Either the abs or the throat is where the vibrato is produced. personally I've never felt it in the throat, but in my diaphragm. It shouldn't be thought of as an up and down of the pitch but as a back and forth of the sound. It was a hard habit to break when I started playing more of my clarinet.
AAAClarinet
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-11-02 19:46
Yes. Subtle especially compared to normal flute, oboe or string vibrato.
Karl
Post Edited (2013-11-02 19:47)
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-11-02 20:06
BobD wrote:
> Recorded vibrato can come from the recording process itself or
> from the performer. As a result what one hears from older
> recordings is not proof that the player was doing it.
>
My experience with both Gigliotti's and Wright's vibratos was in live performance, not recordings. In fact, I was surprised to hear it in Gigliotti's sound during the slow movement in performances of the Beethoven 9th in which I was singing as a member of the Temple U. choir, so I asked him about it at my next lesson. He described it as a light "diaphragm" vibrato, which, aside from any expressive use, he felt helped increase his breath span (which was from my point of view phenomenal anyway). Keep in mind, though, I could hear it from my place in the choir on the stage behind the orchestra, but I had not noticed it from the amphitheater seats in the audience area of the Academy of Music.
Wright discussed his vibrato a little when I took a lesson with him, but he insisted it wasn't vibrato, but added "intensity" in the sound. He might have called it anything he liked, but it was vibrato to anyone who heard it. I heard him live in Symphony Hall after he moved to the BSO and could hear it very clearly there as well.
Lately, Sam Caviezel, who is the Associate Principal in Philadelphia, has been using a slow but clearly audible (and very beautiful, IMO) vibrato in expressive (slow, legato) passages. I haven't noticed any in Ricardo Morales's playing, although given his basic approach to sound and expressive legato, it wouldn't surprise me.
Karl
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Author: BobD
Date: 2013-11-02 20:10
"It shouldn't be thought of as an up and down of the pitch but as a back and forth of the sound." Vibrato IS an "up and down" of the pitch. "Back and Forth of the sound" is IMO , perhaps, reverb......or echo. I can't imagine me producing vibrato on a clarinet with my abs or throat........maybe singing?
Bob Draznik
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-11-02 20:52
BobD wrote:
> "It shouldn't be thought of as an up and down of the pitch but
> as a back and forth of the sound." Vibrato IS an "up and
> down" of the pitch. "Back and Forth of the sound" is IMO ,
> perhaps, reverb......or echo. I can't imagine me producing
> vibrato on a clarinet with my abs or throat........maybe
> singing?
>
Why would vocal vibrato be any different from instrumental vibrato? Most players who use vibrato would say they are trying to add a vocal quality to their sound.
I would suggest, with all respect, that you are presenting a distinction without much of a difference. Most people - listeners and players - think of "vibrato" as a controlled pulsation in the sound. I'm not so sure that "diaphragm" vibratos, or those which result from changes in the intensity of the air pressure, don't actually cause a variation in pitch as well as amplitude. But, even if the variation is only in the amplitude (volume) of the sound, it still doesn't fit most people's understanding of "echo" or "reverb." It's a pulsation, not a continuation after the sound generator has stopped. So, I think limiting the admissible techniques by limiting what pulsations can be called "vibrato" and what can't misses the point.
Those players who have developed and mastered the techniques produce quite pleasing and expressive vibratos by modulating air pressure in one way or another. Unless, like Harold Wright, you arbitrarily choose not to call such modulation "vibrato" because of the technique chosen to produce it.
Karl
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Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2013-11-02 21:20
When we think of vibrato on saxophone and the string instruments, there is an "up and down" in the pitch. It's probably also accurate to say that Reginald Kell's vibrato had this same quality.
I once had a chance to sit in on a session where a flute professional was giving a vibrato lesson to his students, and he had them doing a diaphragm vibrato. I asked him what actually happened during the flute vibrato process: Did the pitch change, or did the intensity of the sound change? He said it was more of a loud-soft change (or maybe a "back and forth"), not an up and down movement in pitch.
I once heard Harold Wright in person, but it was so long ago that I don't remember much. There is no doubt he was a very fine player with a beautiful sound, but in this recording of Schubert's Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, it sounds to me like he was using plenty of vibrato. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgT1aVcFOj4
Here's a link to an interesting discussion of the topic from 1999:
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=8649&t=8551
Post Edited (2013-11-02 21:22)
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Author: BobD
Date: 2013-11-02 22:34
Vibrato is an alternating change in pitch. The pitch goes up and down.
Bob Draznik
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Author: BobD
Date: 2013-11-03 13:36
Thank you Tony for the references and thus the reminder that there is much information in the Archives on this BB. I read all but one reference completely and second the inferred recommendation to read them.
Bob Draznik
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Author: MichaelW
Date: 2013-11-03 18:11
According to Alfred Sous, „Neue Oboenschule“, Vibrato means deliberate and uniform change of pitch, not to confound with tremolo, which means oscillation of intensity without change of pitch. If I remember correctly (it’s a long time since then), for the oboe only diaphragmal vibrato was considered as lege artis. In my experience practicing diaphragmal vibrato helped in developing a feeling for breath support.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2013-11-03 18:56
It is very good to see the erudite and very interesting Mr. Pay back in these pages, where he has a real contribution to make. Here in France, he is everybody's favourite English clarinettist. I find it relevant that musicians and teachers that use vibrato deny it and are even in denial of the word: proof that there is a real stigma and taboo at work here.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2013-11-03 22:05
Ruben wrote: "I find it relevant that musicians and teachers that use vibrato deny it and are even in denial of the word: proof that there is a real stigma and taboo at work here."
Which musicians and teachers are you referring to?
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-11-03 23:00
There are many kinds of vibrato. String players do it all with pitch. To my ears, singers and wind players do too. Kell and Stoltzman use a lot. Wright used less. Drucker used a lot in particular notes in solos. Gino Cioffi said he used a little bit, with the lips only. Of course he played double lip and learned to play with the reed on top.
I listen to everyone not so much to imitate their vibrato as to hear what they do and try to integrate it into my playing. I have trouble doing a lip vibrato, and my diaphragm is too big and too slow to sound good.
Motion picture X-rays show that wind instrument vibrato is done in the throat, even when players think they're using the diaphragm. That would be primarily a variation in intensity. It seems to me that jazz sax players use the jaw and perhaps the lips.
I've read than in his last years in Philadelphia, Marcel Tabuteau lost his ability to make a vibrato and substituted by shaking his oboe. You do what works and sounds right.
Ken Shaw
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Author: ruben
Date: 2013-11-04 10:49
What we haven't discussed yet is what style of music lends itself to vibrato; not Mozart, I should think. Nor does French music, although the French clarinettists of the past were so reedy that their tone almost sounds like it has vibrato in it (Lancelot, for example).
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: BobD
Date: 2013-11-04 12:49
We older players find the shaky hand type easier to do. I'm wondering how long the X-Ray player survived.
Bob Draznik
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Author: Wes
Date: 2013-11-04 21:18
When I first studied flute, the teacher told me to use my diaphragm, but it was not easy and really did not work. Later, I studied with another teacher who said to think of saying "ooh, ooh, ooh, etc" which really worked great, getting the action farther up in the body. It also works fine with the oboe or the clarinet/saxophone in legitimate playing.
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Author: BobD
Date: 2013-11-04 21:45
I guess we come face to face with the question of whether we are playing for our own pleasure or an audience. If you're playing professionally for an audience you have to give them what they want.
Bob Draznik
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-11-04 22:08
BobD wrote:
> I guess we come face to face with the question of whether we
> are playing for our own pleasure or an audience. If you're
> playing professionally for an audience you have to give them
> what they want.
>
For a great many professional clarinetists, that's not the question at all. Not everyone who uses vibrato does so just to please some part of the audience (there will always be another part that feels as you seem to about vibrato). It's a question of a player's personal sense of taste and musical conception of the material being performed, neither of which ideally is dependent on listeners' opinion.
Karl
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Author: BobD
Date: 2013-11-05 10:48
scarlet: I agree with your director. The clarinet section of a concert band has to sound coherent and one player using vibrato will stand out like a sore thumb.
Now.....if all the members played with vibrato the effect would probably be disastrous. IMO clarinet vibrato is a Solo thing.....
Bob Draznik
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-11-05 14:01
BobD wrote:
> Now.....if all the members played with vibrato the effect would
> probably be disastrous. IMO clarinet vibrato is a Solo
> thing.....
>
Well, it seems to work pretty well in string sections. And sax sections in big bands play both with and without vibrato. Of course, there are only generally five sax players, so they can pretty much match their vibratos to make an ensemble effect.
As for band clarinet sections, I'd tend to agree that the effect would probably be disastrous, though not because, as Bob says, vibrato is exclusively a solo effect. The problem would be more that most clarinetist students aren't taught from a young age to do vibrato in a musical, controlled way. So the chances of getting every member of a middle or high school clarinet section to do a controlled, tasteful vibrato would be pretty much nil, and the ad hoc attempts that each would make, combined with the players who would simply ignore the issue (the conductor can't really insist on it from everyone by watching the players) and play with a straight tone would likely as not sound pretty unattractive.
That's not to say that a skilled clarinet section practiced in producing musical vibrato might not sound very acceptable and, for some contexts, even more expressive than a section playing without vibrato. I've never heard a real attempt at this. I'd be interested to know if anyone else here has actually been involved in such an experiment in a high level band where the individual players knew what they were doing.
Karl
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Author: personwithaclarinet
Date: 2013-11-07 01:36
The clarinet does not "need" vibrato to sound good the way some other instruments do because of the type of sound it produces. Vibrato on clarinet both sounds odd and is more difficult to do than on most instruments. However, I think in moderation it can produce a wonderful effect and I think people should certainly teach it, if even as a side topic, to intermediate clarinet players. (I would never have been encouraged to learn vibrato had I not studied the oboe temporarily, and my teachers always discourage it.)
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Author: BobD
Date: 2013-11-07 16:59
"Vibrato on clarinet both sounds odd".......Sez who?
Bob Draznik
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Author: John Peacock
Date: 2013-11-07 19:46
Brymer's book has a great deal of distilled wisdom on this topic (p204-207). He stops short of saying explicitly how he did what he did. He distinguishes 3 different types of vibrato: pulsations of jaw and of lips, which change pitch (the latter in effect a more subtle version of the former), and diaphragm vibrato (which changes intensity but not pitch - or at least not necessarily pitch). This is "exactly as practiced by singers". Brymer assigns jaw vibrato to the world of Jazz (not in a snooty way: he was an able jazz player), and states "many excellent players use a combination of the lip and diaphragm vibrato". Hard not to feel this is a personal confession.
There must be someone on this board who had lessons with the man and discussed the subject and his advice on it?
Brymer is explicit that it "should not be used all the time", but is a device for heightening expression. I was delighted to hear Martin Frost do exactly this in his recent recital disc "Frost and friends". It's a rather different effect to what Brymer did, but satisfies Brymer's artistic criteria very well. When it's done tastefully like this, it's hard to see how anyone could possibly object - or indeed why we wouldn't all want to have this as an option.
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