Author: Tom Puwalski
Date: 2017-08-04 22:33
I'm not anti gear, we play clarinets, you can't be a clarinetists without a clarinet, a mouthpiece and a reed and you will need a way to hold the reed on the mouthpiece so you either need a piece of string or a ligature. What I am against is people trying to fix fundamental problems in tone production and playing technique with a barrel, bell, ligature or any clarinet costing 2-3x what they're already playing.
When I was an active participant in the Clarinet Industrial complex, I would work the booths for various different vendors. And many times I saw people spend hundreds of dollars to buy something that they were convinced was going to "make the difference". And many times, to my ear at least what they really needed was a $.35 piece of sandpaper to adjust their reed.
There was many a time when these people were students there with their parents and trying to convince them to spend the money to buy. I would go over to the student and give this advice. "Go buy the Ridenour ATG reed system watch the DVD and take that shoe box full of old reeds and make half of them play"
I recommended the ATG not because the tool was rocket science or that you couldn't get the same results with a reed Geek or a knife, but because it came with a really good DVD that explained exactly what to do to a reed to get it to play really well. Chances are if you're reed is well balanced, you can use a less "intrusive" embouchure, your sound will be better, your intonation will be better. And maybe, just maybe that mouthpiece that you're so convinced is holding you back maybe pretty damn decent after all. Unless you figure out how to adjust a reed for the mouthpiece you're playing, you're buying mouthpieces based on the reed that you're using working better on a different facing. You may luck out but in 5-10 days when your body starts rejecting the new gear. You will be wondering why you spent the money.
What really was funny when at these Clarinetfests, when I gave this advice to players they would laugh at me. They would assure me their teachers had taught them "all about reeds". If that would have been true you wouldn't be trying to spend $600 while playing a crappy unbalanced reed. The one think I learned from years of working the fests was this, no knowledge of reeds runs from beginners to some professionals that I heard play. I think you stand a better chance of finding out about sex in a high school locker room then you do about reeds at most music schools. ATG costs about $80, an inexpensive fix to the major problems in single reed playing. Mine payed for itself in the first 50 reeds I salvaged from the shoe box. Hey 20 years in the Army I never bought reeds when I retired those things were way to expensive to purchase and pray. I know a lot of college Profs who "hunt and pray". But it's not fun or sexy to spend $85 on knowledge. The handful of people who over the years heeded my advice ended up with "game", the others probably had that gear up on Ebay.
So from my point of view, if you don't know how to adjust your reed, you probably won't be able to make an informed decision about a mouthpiece. If you're playing on an "unbalanced reed, that's also too hard', do you really think a ligature is going to make that reed play? Not to mention any of the other pieces of gear that are out there. So I'm not "anti gear", I'm anti " I really don't know how to make an informed decision about gear"
Tom Puwalski
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