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Re: Stanley Drucker's Sound

Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2016-07-18 18:30

I've been thinking about Paul King's comments:

>I believe the electronic tuner that arrived around 1965 has had a great influence to do with the new sound. To match the tuner one must relax the embouchure. In my day and before, tone came first and tuning came second.

Paul raises a good point.

I remember my school days on the clarinet in the 60s and early 70s, and there was definitely a focus on intonation-up to a point. Those were the days when teachers preached the tight pulled back embouchure (almost a smile), something I've moved far from. Playing sharp on upper clarion notes (as viewed from a Stroboconn) was almost a badge of honor, and playing flat was an embarrassing disgrace!

Back then, and during my college and grad school days in the 70s and early 80s, I studied with a number of highly regarded teachers. I never heard a single one discuss the flat tendencies of the low E and F. That's just how the clarinet was, we got used to it, seldom thought about it, and never questioned it. It's only in recent years with the development of the correction key that clarinet players began to think about the intonation on these notes.

Going back 40 years and more, the only tuners that were in common use were the Conn Stroboconn (I just read that they came out in 1936) and others like it such as the Peterson. It was very common to see them in band rooms, but they were not items the average person owned. In many ways, these old tuners were far superior to the small inexpensive ones commonly used today-and more accurate too. With the strobe tuners, you could actually see the tuning for the different partials within a note.

I still remember my days as a young band director in the late 70s and early 80s, and was excited to purchase a Korg electronic tuner from Leon Russianoff's business in New York for the super low discounted price of $125!

For those interested in reading more about tuners, Wikipedia has a great article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_tuner

A YouTube trip down Conn Stroboconn memory lane:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_sdNdnaHzs

Post Edited (2016-07-18 18:42)

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Stanley Drucker's Sound new

Exiawolf

2016-07-14 11:10