 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: BGBG
Date: 2016-09-01 20:44
I think I read that if you twist or rotate mouthpiece to R and L side thus keeping one side of reed from vibrating, then if one side or direction sounds better then you sand the opposite side of reed to reduce the thickness to make it softer.
Is this true or am I missing anything? Anyone care to elaborate?
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Author: kdk
Date: 2016-09-01 23:45
Yes, in its simplest form. That's the essence of Tom Ridenour's Against The Grain (ATG) approach. Sometimes, it adds efficiency to find out by looking further where along the heavy side the extra stiffness is.
Karl
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Author: Wes
Date: 2016-09-02 10:40
It is recalled that Bonade, in his reed notebook, made the reed heavier on one side than the other because of the unbalance of the thumb holding the clarinet unevenly. I'll try to find that document to check the verity of it.
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2016-09-02 12:50
As a reed designer and quality control at Rico I always made the reeds a shade lighter on the right side. Not a lot, we are looking at 0.0005" at the tip and 0.002" at the back of the reed. I did this for a reason. I'm not getting into it, as it's not a secret, but it will take a very long time to explain. Perfectly even measured reeds or reeds that are thinner of the left side don't play as well. With the saxes it's not as critical.
You don't have to twist or turn the mouthpiece, just blow into one side then the other. You should feel and hear the differences. As you learn about adjustments you will find that most of the time the cane quality is at fault and there isn't much corrections that can be made, but sometimes if the cane is good, yes you can turn an average reed into a great reed with just one or 2 strokes of a reed knife. .002" is only the thickness of a human hair. That's how close I try to make reeds now and 15 years at Rico when Rico made about 20 million reeds a year. There was a lot of stress sometimes getting these reeds to measure correctly and more importantly getting average to poor cane to play well. Trust me, I've had many conversations with the Steuer Company regarding this and I've often been pretty forceful with making them accountable for their reed measurements. They very much care, which is wonderful.
My biggest frustrations were when management at Rico would say well give these not so good reeds to the students. My feeling was to give the students the best reeds so they don't get frustrated and stop playing. Another huge problem is getting importing instruments from places like China and the horns leak so badly that the kids only squeak on them.
Hope this helps.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2016-09-02 17:27
When I made my own reeds, for about 20 years before i went back to commercial, I spent some time doing exact measurement on both sides of the reed so I could make the " perfect reed." The idea was to get both sides from the tip to the back to be a mirror image on both sides. After many weeks of measurements and keeping records I was able to make my reeds so they measured that way. Almost none of my "perfect reeds" played well. Next I measured many commerical reeds that I really liked and discovered that I preferred slightly unbalanced reeds, one side being very slightly thicker than the other sides at certian points. So after "making" a new reed I would adjust them as close as possible to those measurements. After a while i learned that because each peice of cane has different density one side could be thicker at some point but actually softer. My conclusion was that the "density" of the cane was more important than the thickness. The bottom line is that as one breaks in your reeds you make slight adjustments based on the reed your using. To answer your question, one way to see if one side is "stronger" than another you can put a little more pressure with your embouchure on one side and then the other to determine which side needs to be lighten up a bit since you can't make one side stronger. I have some good tips on reed adjusting on my website if you're interested.
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: BflatNH
Date: 2016-09-03 16:04
I think I saw a Tom Ridenour video that suggested twisting the clarinet on either side of normal (enough to slightly lift the edge of the reed) and compare the tone when you toot an open G, and move the tip of the reed to have the same tone. For me, balancing the sound (and the reed) by sanding or moving makes playing altissimo much better.
Also, if your high altissimo is harder to play after playing a while, there may be a bit of water under the rails that tend to damp out some vibration.
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