The Clarinet BBoard

Re: Crystal Mouthpiece Thoughts

Author: kdk  Date:   2013-11-21 15:06 This is an interesting read, and I certainly won't quarrel with anything you've said - I haven't played on an O'Brien since I was a teenager and at the time wouldn't have known the difference between a #5 and a #15 (and the mouthpiece was in pieces only weeks later when I picked up my unlatched clarinet case to move it and dumped everything, including the mouthpiece, on the floor ). Lots of players use crystal mouthpieces successfully and happily. But I want to make one objection to your post and others about mouthpieces that come up often on the BB. If you're testing a mouthpiece or practicing on it in a normal-sized room at home - a practice studio, a living room, a den - and you're playing by yourself and not as part of an ensemble of any kind, you really can't talk meaningfully about "projection." You have no where to project *to* and nothing to project *over*. Projection is really hard for the player to judge for himself, anyway, because it describes the way the sound reaches a listener who is substantially distant from the player and usually implies an ability to "project over" (or "cut through") an accompanying texture. Loudness at the player's ear is not a reliable way to gauge projection. So, whatever it is you (and others who write about their reactions to mouthpieces) are describing may well be an important quality in the sound, but unless you've played it in a reasonably-sized hall with someone listening at the point farthest away from you, I don't think it can fairly be called "projection." Karl

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