The Clarinet BBoard

The Clarinet BBoard The C4 standard

New Topic | Go to Top | Go to Topic | Search | Help/Rules | Smileys/Notes | Log In

Previous Message | Next Message

Re: How to choose a suitable mouthpiece?

Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2019-11-30 03:14

In short you did the right thing. You found the one YOU liked the best.

Beyond that, it is a bit of a process and one that you should go over with your private teacher. I admit that over the years I picked mouthpieces that were great "in the moment" but then found too many negatives down the road.

Once you find one you "like," the next most important thing to check is pitch (and I don't just mean your concert Bb that you use to tune in school). So bring (or borrow ) a tuner and use it both with generated sound as well as meter. You could start with an open G, which is a good indicator of where pitch is in the middle of everything and without any strain one way or the other (that is trying to make it play higher or lower.....in the middle). Then check notes in other ranges: your tuning note, other notes up to the C two ledgers above the staff, then altissimo notes, finally low E and low F. Those will always be a bit low particularly when played with some force so you just want to make sure that the mouthpiece doesn't make them even lower.

The other big thing is articulation. You want to make sure that the mouthpiece you fell in love with, and that plays in tune can do crystal clear, clean articulations throughout all three registers.

More detailed than that is just finer points along the same lines. But you've gotta like it FIRST!

................Paul Aviles

Reply To Message | Avail. Forums | Flat View

Newer Topic | Older Topic

Topics