Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2015-04-13 03:07
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=214286&t=214242
Here's one of many useful threads that somewhat translates facing length into the categories of short, medium, and long used within the industry.
There are no hard standards to my knowledge on facing length, and people may differ on whether the ranges cited here are appropriate.
Posters above have done well to explain what facing length IS--which may be all that you're looking, and seemed to ask for, but there's also its practical affect on play, and the "well, how do such measurement's translate into their affect on play" factor.
Take two mouthpieces with equal tip openings, all else equal, (which by the way is almost never the case, as all else is rarely if ever equal in the world of mouthpieces,) the mouthpiece with the longer more gradual facing *may* require harder reeds.
It really depends upon really the facing curve, which as discussed above is measured with feeler gauges, and is the complex curve unique to that facing. The further back from the tip of the mouthpiece the curve causes the reed to seperate from these rails, all else equal, the weaker the reed you can play on. But it also depends, once the facing seperates from the reed, on the extent of its curvature, and where along the facing it does more or less of this curvature. Early curvature will require weaker reeds than late curvature.
So, if all else is not equal, what else is there? There's rail width, and the curvature with which those rails curve to become smaller towards the tip (in other words the sliming of the rails you see looking down on the mouthpiece window, not the aforementioned curve you see when you look at a side view of a mouthpiece), there's the distance between the rails and their symmetry with one another, the size of the window, the materials the mouthpiece is made of, the nature of its internal structure and thickness in various parts, just to name several attributes.
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
