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Re: Getting a richer, more colorful sound

Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2021-05-06 18:02

There's no simple answer to this because it involves so many factors. Singers are born with their vocal equipment but can learn to use it better but they can't change it. The truly great ones sound great because of their natural, and then trained, resources. Clarinet players also have "natural" equipment in voicing, tongue size, lip thickness, teeth formation, throat and lung size, you get the idea. If everyone was able to sound like another person almost every clarinet player would sound nearly the same. So yes, you have to experiment with tongue position, embouchure and all the other body parts you have control of but in the end you have to have the sound you want in your inner ear so when you do something different you recognize it. That's not as easy as it sounds, or as difficult either. In the end, you also need the mouthpiece reed combination that allows you to help find that sound since you are not born with the voice box a singer is.
A player can only change their natural sound so much, try to accept that but work towards it. I always liked my sound once developed through my schooling but I always tried to improve it never the less. One point in my professional career I heard a player on the radio and I loved the sound and it haunted me for many months trying to match it. I could hear it in my "inner" ear and one day going through my mouthpiece draw of "rejected MPs I played one I had put away a year or two ago because I could not get my reeds to play on it comfortably and went, wow that's it. Made some reeds for it, yes, back then I made my own, and the rest is history. I've played that MP for the last 30 years, even when I went back to commercial reeds. And I still love my sound and still hear what I want. Even in retirement.

ESP eddiesclarinet.com

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