Author: Max S-D
Date: 2015-08-02 15:15
Others have already made much more eloquent and well-considered posts than I have, but I think my recent adventures in mouthpiece-land are relevant here.
I've been playing the same Hawkins for about 6 years, after my teacher in college gave it to me. I think he really didn't like the Borbeck mouthpiece I had been playing on. The entire process of trying the mouthpiece was slapping a reed on in a lesson and playing through whatever we were working on that day. We both agreed it sounded better and that was it. I never completely loved my sound, but it was working well enough for me. I was practicing hours a day and performing multiple times a week and just didn't have time to think about it. I played on it and got a lot better.
Fast forward a few years out of college, I have a day job and am playing clarinet for a couple of hours after work each day, but not really playing out like I was then. I got the impulse to try out a few Clark Fobes mouthpieces, after quite a few years of loving a San Francisco bass clarinet mouthpiece I bought from him, so I ordered a CF, a CWF and a CF+ and have been going back and forth between the three for a few weeks now.
All three are fantastic. Miles better (for me) than the Hawkins. When I'm playing them alone in my room, one after another, on the same passages of music, the differences feel enormous. I'll think "oh, the CWF is so incredibly dark" or "the CF has the most beautiful ringing tone." And I don't think I'm wrong about those things, but when I actually get out and play chamber music with my friends, there are still differences, but they aren't the night-and-day differences that I perceive when I'm sitting alone thinking about equipment. The mouthpieces make a difference, which is noticeable to friends who I play with a lot, but it's subtle, certainly not earth-shattering.
I'm starting to think that, when we aim to sound beautiful (or whatever your goal is) on the clarinet, 85% of that is technique and 15% is equipment. Breaking it down further, the difference between adequate equipment (something that works for you, but maybe isn't that dream instrument, mouthpiece, reed, etc.) and ideal equipment can't be more than 5% of that total, if that, even. I think I can sound pretty good on a B40, but even better on that CF (or CWF!), for example, but I don't know that most people would notice the difference.
I think we as clarinetists (especially as clarinetists?) tend to get so obsessed with finding the equipment that will close that last little gap, that we lose perspective on the massive gains we stand to make in the much bigger 85% portion. I definitely don't think that this means we shouldn't try to find great equipment. We all want to sound as good as possible. Time spent searching for equipment often seems to cut into time spent with a clarinet in your hands, though, and that's when you have to question the value of it.
Having a hard time choosing between Fobes mouthpieces is a good problem to have, but I think I'm going to have to make a decision this weekend so I can just get back to practicing for the next 6 years or so!
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The Clarinet BBoard
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