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RE: "Condensation"

Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2001-04-13 14:24

Don't read this if you are squeemish. I know from servicing saxes that some guys blow heaps of saliva and even quantities of off-white mouth lining down their saxes. I have worked on one with soft solid material perhaps 1/2 mm thick all through the inside, and far thicker in the neck. Some also blow saliva out the sides of their mouth to corrode the mechanism outside the sax, and some even balst from their noses while they play. All these deposits show up more on a sax surface, and sax players do tend often to be less refined about their playing than clarinetists.

However I frequently scrape hard whitish lime-type deposits out of clarinet tone holes, which of course don't get swabbed with regular cleaning. This is similar to what deposits on a mouthpiece, and can only have come from saliva.

Personally I don't think I ever blow any saliva down my clarinet. I collect it in the chamber I keep open just behind my lower teeth and swallow it during rests. Perhaps the players of different musical idioms seldom get a chance to swallow.

If I play in a warm environment the bore hardly gets wet. The amount of condensation depends on the temperature difference between one's hot breath and the inside surface of the clarinet, and the surface area of the effective length of the inside. On brass instruments this is always the entire tube so they get the most condensation.

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