 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-05-17 16:17
Dear friends: Have any of you tried -or play- a clarinet made of mopane wood? The firm I loosely work for sometimes makes clarinets of mopane. The characteristics of this wood: 1. just about as solid and dense as African blackwood and isn't prone to warp. 2. a softer, smoother tone than rosewood or ebony 3. more volume than boxwood and a lot more stable. 4. a wood that has long fibers and thus resonates very evenly through the so-called register breaks.
What might be considered the down-side is the fact that mopane produces a brighter sound than African blackwood.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2021-05-17 18:29
I see ebony mentioned a fair amount, but clarinets haven't been made from ebony for around a couple of centuries.
Although ebony is still used for fingerboards and other fittings on stringed instruments as well as mouthpieces, recorders and some bagpipes, but not wholly for other primary woodwind instruments.
Grenadilla/mpingo/African blackwood/Dalbergia melanoxylon and ebony are very different things with very different properties. The other Dalbergia woods used for woodwinds are the various rosewoods, kingwood/violet wood and cocobolo.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-05-17 19:09
Chris P: It is true: "ebony" is a misnomer.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: kdk
Date: 2021-05-17 20:14
Ruben, is mopane easier to get on a commercial basis than mpingo? The pictures I see online look like most of the trees are on the scrubby side. Can you get billets of size and quality suitable for instrument work easily?
Karl
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-05-17 22:42
Stravinsky should have called his Ebony Concerto: the Dalbergia Melanoxylon Concerto!
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-05-17 22:44
Yes, Karl. Mopane is readily available: I believe it used for flooring. It has about 90 percent of the density of African blackwood.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-05-18 02:22
I've tried a friend's set of mopane Schwenk and Seggelke clarinets. Really incredible instruments! But I think their grenadilla instruments are also incredible; not sure if one wood is better in some way than the other.
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Author: McDonalds Eater
Date: 2021-05-18 05:13
I’ve played on a couple Mopane clarinets.
They have a very warm, mellow, covered, almost “breathy” kind of tone.
Response is not too bad: not resistant but not super free-blowing.
You get this sort of cloudy texture that surrounds the mopane clarinet when you play it. It’s quite interesting. Very similar to a covered sound.
Very good for playing the Brahms/Mozart quintets, chamber music, and solos. Wouldn’t recommend for orchestra since it doesn’t project like grenadilla would.
I loved them!
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Author: bmcgar ★2017
Date: 2021-05-18 08:34
Unless I'm misremembering what I've read, unlike blackwood, mopane is not a threatened species and is not "controlled" as blackwood is, This is important as blackwood disappears.
Also, for what it's worth, I disagree with the previous poster about "not projecting," "cloudy texture," "breathy tone," and especially "covered sound." My mopane instrument (a Rossi) has a SOMEWHAT more radiating (you might say "diffused") sound compared to my blackwood instrument (also a Rossi), but the differences aren't profound, as some who read the previous post might infer from the description. And I'll play it in an orchestra any day: projects just fine.
B.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-05-18 10:15
bmcgar: I actually agree with both you and McDonald's. Mopane does have an edge -harmonics- that allow it to project well, but also has a somewhat muffled characteristic. This might be a contradiction in terms, but that's how I perceive it.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-05-18 15:58
Johan, true! Because the color of Mopane is lighter, most of us will find the tone it produces lighter. I hope to see you in Paris when this horrible sanitary crisis clears up.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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