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Neck Straps and Throat Tone Fingerings

Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2014-12-03 22:05

Whether it’s from too many hours practicing or living, or maybe a little of both, wearing a neck strap, particularly when playing my “A” clarinet, can often come to the rescue of long practice sessions or bad weather days: either of which being able to cause my right forearm, and as a result its fingers, to tense up.

It’s not a condition for which I think therapy, surgery or even OTC (let alone prescription) analgesics are indicated.

The problem, I guess, is that my neck strap’s (a BG) connection to the clarinet comes in the way of a 2” leather strap that attaches at one end to the base of the thumb rest , and at the other end to the hook of the neck strap. With this setup, I have found that despite my playing the clarinet with proper angle with respect to the mouth and body, and with fingers pretty much as close to the instrument as possible short of affecting sound, when not otherwise covering holes or levers, that my left palm still bumps into the neck strap’s cord on notes like the occasional throat G#/Ab. It’s not a “high speed, prevent the note from playing” collision, but it’s annoying just the same.

Years ago BG use to bundle with their neck straps a metal ring lyre of sorts, similar to those used by players “on the go” (e.g. marching bands.) Instead of a removable steel rod coming out of the top surface of the clarinet (on top of which music was attached), at the middle of the clarinet's length, this rod came out the bottom surface. Attachment points to the neck strap at the end of this rod furthest from the clarinet guaranteed minimum distance between the clarinet and the straps attachment point to the instrument. And none of the aforementioned collisions happened not only by virtue of this offset design, but as a product of connecting to the clarinet at a point closer to the mouthpiece than the thumb rest, thereby opening the angle formed by the clarinet and neck strap.

BG no longer sells this lyre/ring attachment device, which at least in my experience found the steel ring suffering metal fatigue at its forked ends on 2 occasions: designed that way to allow a screw to pass though the middle of
the fork. (A visual may be hard, and probably isn’t needed.)

So—with that all said, does anyone else use this neck strap and have my collision problem? Does anyone know of neck strap makers (exception and cudos to Stephen Fox for his products) that allows offset between the strap’s attachment point to the clarinet, and the clarinet itself? Or does anyone think this is happening because I could benefit from changes to clarinet angle with respect to the head/body, or finger position, especially when affecting such a throat G#.

Although we all could improve, I do believe that if you stood watching my play, that neither my finger/hand positions, nor the angle of my clarinet with my head/body would seem of issue to you.

Thank you.

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