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Re: How to select a new clarinet

Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-10-22 19:26

First I do a quick suction and positive pressure test to make sure that pads are sealing well. If they are not ideal, no worries as long as the horn is playable. Realize that a better seal will only make it better. The same goes for spring tensions.......that can be adjusted all you want once you've found the right horn.

I do start of with a known mouthpiece/reed combo on MY horn just to have a 'starting point' for the room acoustics and how I am playing at the moment.

The basic premise is to find a horn you ENJOY playing. So the first thing is to just play a little on the horns in front of you and find the ones that you find fun and easy to play. This is the fun part. Just noodle, use excerpts you know and love etc.

Now that you have the one's you like to play selected you have to 'go to work.' Pull out the tuner that you brought (or have the store loan you one for this) and start the process of finding all the quirks of tuning of each 'good' horn. You need to test all registers and all the vulnerable areas such as throat notes, altissimo notes, low E (for example). The one that has the easiest tuning irregularities to deal with is YOUR HORN (all clarinets are a series of compromises in tuning). You DO NOT want a horn were the note to note tuning is hard to adjust on the fly. This will usually always remain a problem and that's just what you want to avoid.

Enjoy!!!!

..................Paul Aviles

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