 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Eoin McAuley
Date: 2001-05-25 07:55
Wandering down the beach in Greece two weeks ago, I came across a lovely piece of bamboo washed up on the beach. The idea immediately occurred to me to make a clarinet out of it. I brought it home and am working on it at the moment. This process has shed some light for me on the difficulties real clarinet manufacturers face.
The diameter of the bamboo was such that I could slide a standard clarinet mouthpiece into one end. This means of course that the internal bore of the pipe is the same as the external diameter of the mouthpiece tenon, which is much wider than a standard clarinet bore.
With a file, I tidied it up and removed all internal constrictions. The bamboo is about 23 mm internal diameter and about 400 mm long. Next I started to put finger holes in it. I will eventually put 7 on the front and one on the back so that it will play like an F major scale in the lower register of a standard clarinet.
What I've found is that this instrument naturally has two different registers corresponding roughly to lower and middle registers of a clarinet. The lower one starts on Ab while the upper one starts on Db, not Eb as you might expect. THey are not a "twelfth" apart but only an eleventh. By putting a register vent ( a very small hole high up near the mouthpiece, I can force the instrument into the upper register quite easily. Covering this, it can play in the lower register with difficulty, often jumping back up into the upper register. This difficulty may be because of the wideness of the bore, I don't know.
Positioning finger holes and enlarging them until I get an accurately pitched scale in the upper register, the scale is totally out of tune in the lower register, every note being extremely flat. I conclude that if I enlarged the holes to make them correct in the lower register, they would all be way too sharp on the upper register.
All this has given be great respect for the pioneers of clarinet making, who surely had to face problems like these before they came up with the instrument we know and love today.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2001-05-25 13:05
That sudden increase in bore from the mouthpiece to the bamboo will mess up your acoustic expectations based on clarinet. Small depth tone holes will have an effect too. Good luck.
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Author: David Spiegelthal
Date: 2001-05-25 14:09
Eoin,
Cool experiment! Good luck, and keep up posted.
By the way, register vent hole placement is very tricky. I've attempted to add an altissimo vent to my Eb contra-alto clarinet (analogous to the l.h. index finger half-hole vent on bass clarinets), and so far have had poor results, with two different locations tried so far. I'm still scratching my head on that......
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2001-05-25 14:52
Very interesting, Eoin, Gordon and Dave, I also have a desire to experiment into the acoustic jungle, but have kept it under tight limits. I just wish to mention that Arthur Benade in "Horns Strings and Harmony" has a chapter X on Homemade Instruments which might help on some problems still existing after 300 years of trial and error plus some science. Much good luck, Don
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Author: bob gardner
Date: 2001-05-25 15:26
my son has had success in making bamboo flutes. I guess they are easier because he is not trying to add a reed mouthpiece.
good luck
bob
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Author: ron b
Date: 2001-05-25 16:32
Eoin - :]
Neat-o !! Creativity, alive and well !!
Please keep us updated....
Fascinating, no?
- ron b -
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Author: connie
Date: 2001-05-25 18:44
maybe once you perfect this, we'll see them on ebay for sale!
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Author: ron b
Date: 2001-05-25 20:43
I can almost picture it, Connie - Eoin's band of hired helpers tramping and rattling through bamboo groves throughout the world, searching for perfect specimens, for the 'one size fits all' of the bamboo crop. Eoin, pencil and clipboard in hand, now standing at the loading dock, in exchange for quiet thoughtful walks along the beach, directing shipments from all over to his central distribution headquarters bound for shipping and handling facilities, working 'round the clock supplying droves of eBay bidders excitedly funneling MoneyOrders into Eoin's Bamclar Works, Ltd.
By 2003 Eoin easily becomes one of the world's top ten richest....
only to have succumbed to the lure of riches in exchange for a business genius mindset... and total loss of his creative musical abilities; there being no time to develop and improve the design of his first models -- they're good enough and so widely accepted they're considered the standard of excellence for the next century. And that's why clarinets switched from 12th to 11ths, so revolutionizing the world of music that nobody could tell anymore which instrument was in or out of tune with itself or anybody else's. But, the fingering system's so dramatically simplified that music teachers have become obsolete. Anyone could do it. Just like the ukelele players of the 50s and 60s. And Eoin becomes just as forgotten as the inventor of the uke.
Personally, back to reality, I hope eBay goes belly up while people like Eoin retain their sanity, sense of exploration - and fun. And walks on the beach :])
- ron b -
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Author: Bob Arney
Date: 2001-05-25 21:03
Send me tickets for the first performance of "The Ballad of the Bamboo Bass".
Bob A
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2001-05-26 14:03
You don't need to tramp the world for bamboo selection. There is an enormous variety, from all around the world all in one location in Auckland in little New Zealand, all collected and (over)grown by a slightly eccentric bamboo fanatic. Buy the plant of your choice and grow your own. I have heard that the bamboos with a groove down one side (i.e. unsuitable) are the succouring, spreading type, but those with a round cross-section are clumping in their growth habit.
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Author: Eoin McAuley
Date: 2001-05-28 07:35
Thanks for all your encouraging comments.
Further developments.
The bamboo clarinet has three distinct registers. The lowest notes of each are Ab3, Db5 and B5. If this were a clarinet with a bottom note of Ab, they would be Ab3, Eb5 and C6. So it is one tone flat in the clarion (middle) and one semitone flat in the altissimo (high).
For two reasons, I have decided to abandon the lower register. 1. It is very hard to keep this instrument playing in the low register. It keeps jumping up into the middle register. 2. It is impossible to position the finger holes to play in tune in two different registers at the same time. To force the instrument into the middle register, I have drilled a small hole about two thirds of the way up, similar to a register vent on a clarinet. What I will end up with will be a clarinet-like instrument about 45cm long with a range of one octave and one note.
There is already a man who makes bamboo clarinets, although he calls them bamboo saxophones. If you do a web search for Xaphoon, you will find it.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2001-05-28 14:43
I used to play the crutch (not that one!) when I had a broken leg. An aluminium crutch. Using the section with the adjustment holes I taped up the holes on one side, used the hand-piece stopper to block the end, blew across the first hole, flute style, and used the next 7 holes for fiingering. Fingerings were strange but I got a full octave in tune with a little lipping, and played "Why are we waiting" in the waiting room of the apparently deserted hospital. Nurses and doctors poured out of the woodwork to investigate and one nurse brought me a container for busking coins. Ironically the nurse who eventually attended me had the sirname "Galway" and did not appreciate the conincidental significance. That really was fun!
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