 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Jeanne
Date: 2001-10-25 04:30
In marching band, I have been using a poor mouthpiece because I am afraid to break/chip my good one. The downside of this is I sound pretty horrible. Our section has a fairly easy part that has to be really loud but in tune, and I have to sacrifice one for the other. Is it okay to march with a good mouthpiece? Should I just march performances with the good one, or will that throw off my performance playing? Is it easy to chip a mouthpiece? Is there a way to fix it if I do?
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Author: Dee
Date: 2001-10-25 11:07
Get a Hite Premier or Fobes Debut. These are good quality, inexpensive student mouthpieces.
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Author: Brenda Siewert
Date: 2001-10-25 13:40
Yes, I agree--you should save your best mouthpiece, but get one that isn't as terrible as the one you now have to use for marching season. Check around the web at places like Brook Mays Music, Woodwind and Brasswind and even eBay to buy a good marching mouthpiece to fit your budget.
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2001-10-25 16:09
Jeanne -
Don't risk anything fine by using it for marching. If you really hate the way your "poor" mouthpiece plays, and you want something respectable, get the stock Yamaha plastic mouthpiece carried by every instrument store. It's around $20 and plays just fine.
I marched in the West Point Band in hundreds of parades. Everyone played a plastic Bundy, a Bundy mouthpiece and plain Rico reeds. For concerts, we used our R-13s, and hand-made mouthpieces, but nobody would have thought of using them outdoors.
I've played in and watched a lot of marching bands, and I've never been able to hear a clarinet over the brass and drums. No matter what you use, it won't make much difference in the way the band sounds. Instead, concentrate on playing under control and as well as you can, rather than just blasting away.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Peter
Date: 2001-10-25 16:42
All the previous points are well taken and all the preceding advise as solid as granite.
But let me point out one thing: If you are in a very competitive, award-wining marching band that goes to many competitions, you undoubtedly have been involved in some where the judges actually go out on the field, listening to individual band sections as they play their piece.
My son is in one such band. For it he needs a good, loud sound. Not "good loud," but good, as well as loud. For that he needs a better, somewhat open mouthpiece.
I don't know what the general answer is because I don't budget everyone else's
expenditures, but I just finally bit the bullet and let him pick the right mouthpiece for him, for the marching band sound he needs to achieve.
So far he has had it all this year and has not damages it. In two years, he dropped a mouthpiece and broke it. Thank heavens it was a cheap one. Otherwise, he is very careful with all his musical trappings.
One student in his class just bent the neck of a brand new, expensive (for a student) tenor saxophone while putting on the mouthpiece. This happenned the day after he was told not to put on the mouthpiece in the way that he did when he bent it. Tell me that's par for the course and I'll tell you someone needs to seriously address that issue with the student.
The there is the one who ate chocolate and played her instrument right after...
I am involved with the band and hear the horror stories of what happens to instruments and accessories in the hands of the students and I often feel the urge to slap some of them silly. Of course I won't, but the carelessness with which many of them handle their instruments deserves notice.
Why not get a better, if not good mouthpiece, if it will enhance your playing? Just make a commitment to conciously take care of it.
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Author: Benny
Date: 2001-10-26 00:46
I hate the idea of marching band, but some of my friends who march won't even use their own plastic horns. They go rent a cheapo horn for the marching season. That's a good idea because marching band, in my opinion, is nothing more than a drum festival, and the clarinet sound doesn't really matter. I remember one of my friends telling me that he fell through the bleachers, dropped his rental clarinet and the bell shattered or something. So that's why you shouldn't use your own horn to march.
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Author: Ken
Date: 2001-10-26 02:57
hmmm, if you're an intermediate player or better, you've spent valuable time getting accoustomed to your good mp for serious playing and shouldn't risk screwing up your chops switching back and forth, especially if your doing alot of loud, free blowing on the field just to hear yourself. If it was me I wouldn't mess with you "set", spring for "duplicates" of your good one, stay on the same piece and let the "chips" fall where they may...that was bad.
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Author: Peter
Date: 2001-10-26 03:48
Benny,
I have been involved with marching bands and marching band competitions for some time, and except, perhaps, during footbal games or some such, the band puts away their instruments before they hit the bleachers.
However, if your friend dropped his clarinet through the bleachers and shattered the bell, then either he's careless and not too bright (I'm being kind,) his school chaperones were not doing their jobs or the band director did not do his, at any given point in time. The name of the game is discipline and civilized behaviour.
If he were my son he'd probably be grounded for months, whether the instrument belonged to him or not. Not to mention he'd spend every practice period thereafter doing push-ups or running laps around the field, until he either dropped out or the band director felt he learned his lesson and allowed him to return.
Award winning marching bands are made up of the dedicated band members who care for their instruments and their music, and the dedicated adults who support them. Things happen, but on the whole, we use good instruments and mouthpieces, and learn to care for them.
Where we come from, parents have to sign an agreement to replace a rented instrument if it's damaged through the student's negligence. You can bet the kids take care of their instruments or face their parents wrath when they find out some stupid escapade just cost them a $200.00 repair!
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Author: Stephanie
Date: 2001-10-26 03:54
Well...I kinda think you should get a ''''good bad" mp like the other person said. Or if you don't wanna do that, just be careful. All I know is that when I was in marching band, so many people dropped their horns through the bleachers it wasn't even funny. I was not to careful back in 7th and 8th grade and really messed up my mp, but it was a cheapy. Now I'm more resonsible. Oh, and yeah, most of the time, no one can hear the clarinets. We're just not loud enough I guess. Marching can be fun, I enjoyed it, but that was about 3 years ago b4 they switched directors.....I'm off the subject again. I know I just repeated everything everyone else said; I was just bored. Happy playing!
Stephanie
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Author: Erica
Date: 2001-10-26 04:00
Wow. I understand the concern with not wanting to harm your best mouthpiece out on the marching field, but you really shouldn't march a terrible one instead. The reason being that already too many people agree with this statement made in a previous post: "What have marching bands got to do with music anyway?" There's no reason one should not be as much of a musician on the field than they are off. Marching band is still a musical performance and you want to sound your best. The idea that clarinets are pretty much unnescessary is a false one if your band plays with concern for balance, tone, and general musicianship. Essentially you need to figure out what your personal best is (set-up wise), and practice and perform with it every time.
Erica
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Author: Jim (E)
Date: 2001-10-26 04:04
As for not hearing the clarinets over the brass/ drums, that's almost always true, but I attended a competition 2 weeks ago, there was a truly large band, about 125 musicians, they had 26 clarinets on the field, and the clarinet sound was wonderful.
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Author: willie
Date: 2001-10-26 05:56
A student out at the college has one of those new JodyJazz mouthpieces with some baffle lookin' thing in it. He got it for marching band just before transfering down here. He says it really adds more voluume to his horn for marching outdoors. As for indoor concerts, he uses his regular mouthpiece.
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Author: Peter
Date: 2001-10-27 03:20
Jim,
They call those "100 yard bands" because when they march out in single file, turn, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder, they stretch from one end of a football field
to the other. It can be an impressive sight.
If I remember correctly, from my military school marching band days, the rule of thumb is about 10 clarinets for every trumpet, if the clarinets are to be heard.
Aside from that, if the band director is inclined to do so, some of the music can be altered and of purchased to give a smaller clarinet section some room to be heard, but that is not usually the case.
And while I agree it is often difficult to hear them, that still does not mean the clarinets are "never" heard, useless, of besides the point in a marching band.
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Author: Jim (E)
Date: 2001-10-27 04:22
Peter,
Actually I think Meredeth Wilson got it right in "The Music Man" His "76 Trombones" were balanced by "a thousand reeds, springing up like weeds!"
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Author: Peter
Date: 2001-10-27 15:38
Jim,
How nice that would be in real life!
I wonder what that many clarinets (ranged in sections from sopranino to octocontrabass) would sound like playing together!!
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Author: Candi
Date: 2001-10-27 17:58
Marching band has to deal a lot with music. For one thing you can get into the music, and have fun with your friends that also play the same music... But to know this, you have to be in marching band. And its a great thing to be into what you like.
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Author: Carmen Izzo
Date: 2001-10-28 04:41
As much as i love marching band, it interferes with what i try to do with music and stuff that im still in the learning process of clarinet. If you ask me, if i ever do marching band again, im swithching to a brass or pit percussion.
~Carmen
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Author: Peter
Date: 2001-10-28 15:44
Carmen,
Perhaps some people aren't meant for marching band.
That's not a demeaning statement. Just like some people may not be meant for classical wind ensemble, or jazz band, or whatever. If it interferes with what you want to do with music, then you make a good choice not to involve yourself in it.
However, if you're a clarinet player you shouldn't have to switch to "a brass or pit percussion" to participate. Especially if you feel it is because the clarinet might be an inferior instrument for marching band, which it's not. Clarinets have a long-time tradition as contributing members of marching bands.
I think that while their ability to play loudly enough to be heard was, their validity as contributors wasn't much in question until about the middle of the 1900s. There once were marching bands that fielded some ten or more clarinets for every trumpet, some that fielded them for every brass piece in the band. Boy, were they heard!
But that makes for a huge band, a luxury most band directors can't afford, except, perhaps, at the larger military academies, or some such. Often due to lack of enough instruments to go 'round, at times to lack of participants, sometimes both.
As a matter of fact, what they used to do was try to enhance the clarinet's capability by making certain modifications that would make it heard more. Like larger bores, more open mouthpieces, metal clarinets, etc....
And as far as the pit goes, that's something which arose out of more recent times (forty years?) to avoid law suits due to strained backs, etc., and "cheat" a little to enhance the band's musical capabilities.
Marching band pits have been around for many years, but I personally, have never been able to accept their use in a marching band. It turns it into a quasi-marching band. Detracts from the distinction that makes it a real, full-tilt marching band.
Years ago, if you didn't carry it, it wasn't a marching band instrument, and not allowed. (As my father used to say, back when they made wooden ships and iron men...)
In military school marching band there were huge kids who carried 42-inch bass drums and marching timpani. There were small xylophones which, like a drum, were harnessed to the front of the player (these things were heavy!!!) and of course, instead of full-sized bells, there were glockenspiels.
I started out beating a snare drum in the beginning school band when I was six years old and parents supplied instruments. In a 5,000 cadet school there were about six different marching bands (not all marched in public, although all participated in school concerts, etc.) and just about everyone participated at one time or another.
The begining of the end of the fully mobile marching band, just before "marching band pits" came about, were bands that, when marching on pavement as in parades, would roll two or three full sized xylophones on wheels. One person at each end would provide locomotion, and then the player walked behind it.
I understand this was somewhat awkward, if not outright difficult for the particular percussionist, although, often, when the band was playing all-out, it would be standing still.
The next step as I remember it, was that they would have a "float" (in parades) pulled along behind the rest of the band with the "pit" section aboard.
And that was already bad enough, but almost simultaneously came about the widespread use of the full-fleged, completely immobil pit section, which, by virtue of it's immobility, should preclude the band from being called a "marching band.
But times change. Like olympic basket-ball and volley-ball. The olympic game competitions are no longer all strictly tests of personal proficiency and endurance.
Now they include team sports and they detract from their original purpose.
Ahhh, well, now I know what my father meant when, forty years ago, he said the world was going to hell in a handbasket! In a few more years, my oldest children should start saying the same, but for different reasons than mine, or their grandfather's.
The thing is that, perhaps, none of these changes are necessarily detrimental to the quality of life. They just make things different than we have known them to be.
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Author: Sarah
Date: 2001-11-02 00:58
Okay, I probably don't have any right to say anything on the subject, seeing as i'm only a first year in my marching band. Regardless, I've been through almost all of the season now and know the routine pretty well. Please note that I haven't read all the messages.
Pit's cool, in my opinion, so long as it doesn't take any out of the music. Mr. Lewis has made many points out of not sticking out. In the pit's case,
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Author: Sarah
Date: 2001-11-02 05:04
I hit the wrong stinkin' button. Opps. Now I'm going to seem like a blabbermouth.
I was talking about the pit. Well, the pit has it's importance too as do the drum. In our field show we're doing a song called "Tevye's Dream." Might be familiar. It actually sounds much cooler than in the movie. One of the pit instruments starts it off with a Twilight Zone-like tune. Sorry, but no horn can pull it off right. The percussion gets a solo in that song and it's really cool. But it only works because they come in well and we (the horns) come in well. The drum line scares me since I almost got hit in the back with drum stick yesterday and they're creepy (one of them shaved his head save for an "H" on the back of it), but that's okay!
Going back to the top, um... dropping is bad. Best way I can put it. In our band we do push-ups if we drop our instruments, so it shouldn't happen in the first place. You shouldn't go and get a new mouth piece, and you shouldn't switch between. Changing the mouth piece might alter the tone or something or create complications. It just is really likely to be bad, and that's always bad.
Also, I am in no way a part of a "drum festival." I think you mean winter percussion. Football games suck. I hate them. And cheap, rental clarinets basically say that carelessness is A-OK. I paid for my clari and as much as it sucks, I love the thing. It has its own little snap (slap?) bracelet on the bell.
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Author: R Simpson
Date: 2001-11-10 22:07
go buy an R-13 Greenline, and use the included mouthpiece for marching. For concert-- use a good mpc like Pyne or a Vandoren Crystal.
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The Clarinet Pages
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.... like play on one that came with a clarinet... like I don't know what you kind of clarinet you have but when I got my R-13 it came along with a mp incase I didn't have one well I would just use that one because it is good but.....It is also "bad" beacuse it isn't yours....what kind of mp do you have? Well I hope this helps a little...I am hoping some other people post too because I don't think I did a really good job explaining it