Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2016-11-16 20:29
This is a scary subject for me to touch on, because it will or could anger a lot of players and instrument makers.
So I will be gentle as I can be, leaving out names, but I can't leave out countries in general.
In the early days to the present we all want that warm German clarinet Albert clarinet sound. Players like Sabine Meyer sound so great. So what is the secret to this special sound. It's the same piece of wood, the same metal keys, a mouthpiece, and some sort of ligature and the reed of course.
Lets start with the reeds and the mouthpieces, they are narrower. That's it. In fact I've measured a lot of them and the bore and the baffles are shallower than the standard French mouthpieces. so they should play brighter. Right? A shallow baffle/chamber? That usually means brighter. If you are not sure take some puddy or children's clay and put it inside your mouthpiece and it will get brighter.
The bore is much smaller too. So you can stick tape inside the bore and see if it makes the notes more mellow and tune better.
These are simple and very easy experiments to try, but to save you time the answers are the sound will be brighter and the pitch will be all over the place.
So non German companies did something very wrong, because they do not have professional musical ears. They sadly confused the words DARK and WARM. The non German companies make the clarinets with much bigger bores now. After all it makes sense. Tubas have big bores and sound dark and low in pitch, so lets make the clarinet bores bigger too. that will give that dark low pitch. And several mouthpiece companies did the same thing ans tune everything to 440.
The results were dark and dull sounding horns. This is the problem They made the bores and the baffle/chambers too deep. on the mouthpieces and the horns.
The Gernan horns are a shade heavier and the bores are smaller on the horns. But this does come with its own set of problems. Playing jazz it a lot harder. The horns are tight and limited.
So the non German companies made a mistake by mixing up the words dark and warm. I't is very hard to project a sound using a dark sounding setup. You won't be heard very well in a concert hall, however in a practice room you will sound FANTASTIC! That is not the sound you want.
We want that warm sound. That PING to the sound. Up close in a practice room it may sound a shade buzzy to a shade bright to your ears, but in an orchestra hall it rings and mellows out.
This is the difference between Dark and Dead and Warm and Full.
Together as musicians we can get these companies to listen to us. Yamaha is taking us seriously with doing major things such as designing German bores called the CSG clarinet. Please try one. It is a straight bore, no tapers and every note is clean. The CSVG is really close with the leather pad, which warm up the sound, and it doesn't darken the sound. This is why people like John Bruce Yeh with the Chicago Symphony are using it, it's good for jazz and he does like jazz as well as myself. It's not as warm as a Gernam horn, but it is not DEAD either.
Hope this makes sense. I'm sure a lot of people will respond in many ways. But remember change is good. Paying $3000 for an R13 or paying $29,000 for a set of other instruments just isn't right, but lets face it that GREAT clarinet sound is a bit lost right now and there are so many gifted musicians who can get that sound back. I'm referring to Harold Wright, Marcellus, and Gennusa, but there are so many new players who could and should probably sound even better with the right setup. We must let the instrument makers and mouthpiece makers know the difference between warm and dark. There is that happy medium.
My final comment is some of the new mouthpiece baffle/chambers are a 1/32" DEEPER than the old Chedevilles and Kaspars. That is the size of the lower joint of your clarinet where the cork and the wood meet; that wood area. That translates to dark and dead. Deeper is simply wrong. Think brighter and you may find yourselves winning more positions in major orchestras to your local community band.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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