Author: fskelley
Date: 2014-08-17 08:43
I searched for "gurgling A key" (because that's what I often get after about 45 minutes of playing) and found this thread, last modified in 2008.
Sometimes I get gurgling, other times my throat A is suddenly just really flat and I immediately know what the problem is. Since this is happening mostly toward the end of my practice sessions...
- sometimes I try to suffer through it until I'm done. I think it's partially gone away on its own a couple of times.
- sometimes I try to blow sideways across the G# tone hole, with mixed success.
Eventually I expect I'll need to deal with this issue in front of an audience. I'm not a very formal guy, even in what should be formal settings (!), so I will not be mortified- I imagine I'll just stop, do whatever to fix it, and play on. But I'll probably need to be talking while fiddling. And talking ABOUT spit in your clarinet is not that interesting, so I'll have to either operate or talk on autopilot, could be fun.
1) Blowing sideways on the tone hole is loud (especially with barrel mic active- maybe whoever is running sound would momentarily kill it) and might require a few tries to get the job done. Not super professional, and not reliable either.
2) I could instead have a can of air (mentioned above). These all contain bitterant these days, as I learned the hard way when I blasted a Legere reed with one (trying to freeze it to recover from too much boiling water- and no that didn't work either). So I'm concerned that squirting canned air anywhere around a clarinet could leave a bitter deposit that might work its way via fingers or however back up to mouth, and I promise you'll be sorry.
3) I could have at it with cigarette paper, or whatever else might soak up the moisture.
4) I could pull off the barrel and swab away, then reassemble and re-tune.
5) I could swap clarinets, or just quickly move my barrel / mouthpiece / reed assembly to another clarinet. Actually this is more appealing than choices 1-4.
Have I missed any alternatives or important considerations?
Any updates on the old contents of this thread?
Thanks as always!
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
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