Author: Brad Behn
Date: 2018-02-24 09:32
Hi Donald,
As I recall you were and most likely remain a fine mouthpiece refacer. Your students are no doubt lucky to have you as a teacher, as you understand the playing experience both from your insights as an extremely fine clarinetist and also as a fine mouthpiecer as well. Mouthpiecing is a very tedious skill requiring the right frame of mind, which is backed up by good hand-eye skills and an artistic understanding of the nuances of the playing experience. You have all of those things I am certain! Well done my friend.
Regarding your question, I have several thoughts regarding different parts of a facing- all of which influence how a mouthpiece responds, blows through, and resonates.
But before I go into details I would like to share my observations of how Vandoren facings are cut into a mouthpiece. While I haven't toured the factory so I can't speak from personal experience, I have however made many mouthpieces and so I project my understanding of typical manufacturing processes onto my thinking here. In evaluating a Vandoren mouthpiece's table, one can witness radial cross-cut texturing on the table. When reviewing the facing's table for flatness, convexity, or concavity, one will witness that typically Vandoren tables are relatively concave. And I further observe that the concavity is on both axiis. This indicates to me that Vandoren uses a cutting process by which a turning, round, planar cutter is used - at an angle non-coincident with the table. Furthermore as the facing's curve is drawn out by the cutting process, the angle relationship between the spinning cutting "disk" grows more obtuse, making the rail-tilt which is subtle at the break, more significant at the tip. So when one analyzes the Vandoren mouthpiece's tip it is actually concave on its horizontal axis, or in other words, there is a slight trough which runs all the way down the table, and extends all the way down the facing and into the tip. This 'tip-dip' adds resistance, stuffiness, and impedes resonance. This is what causes a mouthpiece which has been machine faced in such a way (tip-dipped) to play as if someone stuffed a sock up the clarinet's bell. That may be an extreme analogy, however it isn't mine. It is something I have heard oftentimes by colleagues when describing some mouthpieces and their playing experiences.
You can imagine that indeed larger mouthpieces - ones with wider windows such as Tenor and Bass Clarinet, have very large tip-dips, and when that flaw is faced away, the playing attributes of the mouthpiece in question are greatly enhanced. By enhanced, I mean: Resonance, Response, Ring, and Vitality.
Issue could be however that some players have come to rely on this flaw, and its dampening characteristics. They prefer the duller sound, the darker timbre, and the greater effort required to both get the mouthpiece resonating, and to get it responding. Needless to say, I don't like those elements in a mouthpiece.
So Donald, while you weren't actually facing out the tip-dip flaw, why you may ask did the mouthpiece improve. Well, I submit that a facing with a PROPER concave table can play with improved warmth, flexibility, reed longevity, and tonal buoyancy, this is a very nuanced and delicate thing to properly implement. AND when the concavity is too great, the sound becomes more difficult to manage, and the sound will lack point, resonance, and tonal ring. So when you semi-flattened the table, you reduced the concavity, brining in more ring, improved response, and you preferred its playability. However you most likely shortened the facing and closed it down a touch as well. And YES that was undoubtedly an improvement as well. Why? Well in my opinion, Vandoren made facings which were too long for their tip openings...especially during that timeframe of which you speak. So by shortening it, you made the response better, and by semi-flattening it to a better level of concavity, you improved its sound and response as well.
Indeed everything influences everything?
So there are three important things relating to one another here...
1. Table concavity. Flattening things out to some degree helps improve tonal core and response.
2. Shortening the facing brings out more reed snap, and more resonance.
3. Closing the tip down a touch improved embouchure comfort, and aided blow-through.
4. Numbers 1, 2, 3 all reduced the perceived negatives of the tip-dip. Imagine how much better your mouthpiece would play if you adjusted that too!!
Again, everything influences everything. I can say from first hand experience that some people like the concavity from Vandoren mouthpieces left stock. They prefer the tip-dip left alone, and they like the "too long" nature of some of their facings... And they don't know why or how; they simply know they like it. Those folks generally are playing on reeds which are brittle sounding, and lack warmth. They crave a mouthpiece which is free with a long facing to compensate for a reed with a vamp profile that has lots of wood on the back ( thicker vamp). They need something in a mouthpiece to compensate for other shortcomings...sadly.
By the way, I will add another observation. Conventional wisdom seems to dictate that long facings are for players who take a lot of mouthpiece in, and short facings are for players who take less in. Well that isn't necessarily the case in my experience. I find players who use thicker vamped reeds such as V12 prefer longer facings - which are freer farther down their lay. This added freedom is necessary to help get that thick and hard reed vibrating. Whereas shorter facings work better for players on thinner vamped reeds, such as Blue Box. The shorter lay helps solidify the thinner cut reed, providing the necessary balance for the added vibrancy of this superior reed design.
Yes you can reed where my preferences are. Indeed a thinner reed is preferable not only because it vibrates with less jaw pressure, but it utilizes harder cane. This harder cane improves longevity, tonal integrity, response (when properly balanced). And when a thinner cut reed is made with a proper fine-tip-construction, the reed is highly responsive yet stable and reliable as well. It becomes effortless to blow, extremely free and without any unnecessary embouchure pressure as well. A good thinner cut reed wins in my opinion.
Brad Behn
http://www.clarinetmouthpiece.com
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