 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: NOLA Ken
Date: 2026-08-06 21:15
I just learned to my dismay that the ClarinetPerfection.com web site and its hosting site The Woodwind Forum are gone. A terrible loss. When I was unable to access the site I went searching for information on it and came across this YouTube explaining the shutdown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZE9qBL4oc4
When I returned to playing clarinet ten years ago after a 40-year hiatus, ClarinetPerfection.com, the Clarinet Pages and similar sites bootstrapped my return and provided me more knowledge of the clarinet and the clarinet community than I had learned in my entire nine school years playing in the 60s and 70s. The Clarinet Perfection web site literally gave me the information to understand why I had found playing so discouraging back then (and why my college instructor dissed my instrument so badly). That knowledge re-entergized and reformed my approach to the clarinet and has informed every step in my exploration of all things clarinet since returning to playing.
I will sorely miss Clarinet Perfection. In the Youtube there is mention that some of the web pages may be added to the Internet Archive. As of today they are not there yet. Lets hope they get there. YouTube videos and Facebook pages are just not very accessible venues for the type of information that was on Clarinet Perfection.
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Author: paulyb
Date: 2026-08-07 01:35
I can see at least some of the content in the Internet Archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250621224754/https://www.woodwindforum.com/clarinetperfection/
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2026-08-07 02:52
It is a real danger. This bboard is not immune as Mark has mentioned here before.
If I were to list the top two repositories of musical information / iterations...I'd list this bboard's early years right up there at the top - along with an old mailing list...The Dixieland Jazz Mailing List.
Both of these had pointed debate, clear views, contradictory views, professionals, and novices.
Watching Ken Shaw and Tony Pay go at it was priceless. Plus the others giants who frequented the mailing list and early bboard.
Getting to interact with Jazz legends on the Dixieland Jazz Mailing List was amazing. Molly Ringwald's dad, Bob, was an early jazz performer and managed the mailing list. Probably the most informed group I ever had the privilege of observing...even venturing to ask a question now or then. Bob was served well by the mailing list, but (due to being blind) said that Facebook and such were all but unusable for him. One member decided to start a Facebook page with the same name, and that was the end of it the mailing list. Bob passed away, shortly thereafter. You can still find remnants of the old mailing list (archived), but I see the archives are now disappearing - and with it, all the priceless writings from truly brilliant, noteworthy individuals.
The Internet "is forever" only in the context that pieces of any one thing will most likely survive...like paper tore to pieces and thrown into the wind...or a coin dropped from a pocket while crossing a fence. However, finding any semblance of the whole is much more difficult.
Like a tree or plant, as long as it is nurtured it will sustain, but neglected, it will die.
Fuzzy
;^)>>>
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Author: stevesklar
Date: 2026-08-07 15:31
You may find a more total version of the ClarinetPerfection.com website (and earlier saxmaniax.com) at this archive link instead of subset of Woodwindforum archive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150217142010/http://www.clarinetperfection.com/
10 years ago after some very intrusive cancer surgery I had to really realign life goals .. #1 staying alive
That link you can see that I was selling stuff & repairing stuff. That kinda ground to a halt.
The website went dark back then, but Ed and the gang at WoodWindforum gave me some free storage to migrate the website there. It was a completely different platform, so I never migrated the entire website (archive link above shows the more complete website).
3 years ago life (or in this case death) got in the way again with a really bad SAH Stroke. Sooner or later the domain payment is not going to happen, and as others have mentioned things will disappear with time. April 2023 - I made a youtube video about it just search for "stroke" on my YT video page. That was not a fun time.
But I plan on making some YT videos strictly about Serial Numbers, and provide a PDF in the description. Just don't expect those tomorrow ... one can probably archive those PDFs here for as long as "here" exists.
It's hard to give just a "list" as it's all HTML code. It originated back in the 1990s using ColdFusion (hand coded HTML) and ColdFusion Pro, and evolved over time on to different development platforms but the original code is still embedded in there.
It's also hard to make YT videos .. I have so many retakes as my verbal and thinking skills are quite "damaged", plus everything else. I find myself just babbling at times, then have to retake multiple times, and will say inaccurate stuff which I try to correct with overwriting text in the videos. Alot of editing.
Of course, I never thought about it when the YT channel would disappear ...
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Stephen Sklar
My YouTube Channel of Clarinet Information
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Author: Ed
Date: 2026-08-07 15:50
I saw that the site was going away. That is a shame as it had so much great information. I was hoping that there might be a way that it could become part of this site. While this site is old and not as flashy as lots of internet content, it is still one of the best places for good clarinet information.
Aaah, well, as George Harrison once said "all things must pass" (something that I increasingly have trouble dealing with!)
Best wishes to Steve and thanks for all that he has done over the years.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2026-08-07 20:15
Ed wrote:
> ... While this site is
> old and not as flashy as lots of internet content, it is still
> one of the best places for good clarinet information.
This site was set up as a replacement for a text-only email list (that I took over from a couple of university folk because the university-based Klarinet email list was losing university support , and received a lot of criticism in its early life for not NOT being simpler (and not being Klarinet) :D Browsers didn't do much other than make text and pictures available back then. There was JavaScript, but it didn't do nearly as much as it does today.
The software is absolultely ancient - but it works more or less flawlessly as long as the servers stay running. A few bugs here and there, and posting pictures is a pain - but there are other places that you can post pictures and they're "free" (but won't last forever either).
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The Clarinet Pages
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