 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Buffet^Rc
Date: 2002-12-16 03:13
how do i get a dark tone on clarinet with a Rc prestige???
wad type of mouthpiece and reed should i use?
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Author: james
Date: 2002-12-16 04:16
Hmm... I would say listen to recordings of only clarinetist with really dark sound. You make your sound. I could play on a prestige rc, or an R13 or a Rossi.. I will sound the the same. There will yes, be a difference in feeling. But in the long run. I would sound like myself.
I have been known to have a "dark" sound. I don't know exactly what that means still. What I use are Vandoren V12 4's and a Hawkins B mouthpiece.
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2002-12-16 09:02
Firstly, do you want a DARK or DEEP sound? They're different things. Is there any specific player you want to sound like? Have you tried sounding different by changing things - starting with physical, then mental.
Think a lot about how you visualise your sound, and then manipulate this sound picture to what you wish to sound like. You'd be astonished how changing your sound picture can actually change your sound.
Take this example - I had a piece for a recent audition that went from upper register G to the top G, slurred, quite quickly. I found it hard to get smoothy, so, in my mental picture of the sound line, I moved these notes next to each other. Sounds strange, but once I did that, I got it perfectly, every time. Since the notes were next to each other in my picture of the line of sound, they were easy to go between.
Try some of this visualisation. You can come up with some strange things, but you can also come up with some beautiful additions to your playing.
Good luck!
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Author: Mitch K.
Date: 2002-12-16 16:12
Interesting concept, Morrigan. I think I'll try that on the Stravinsky Three Pieces (Piece no. 2). It contains clarion to altissimo slurred G's, and a potpourri of other wicked intervals.
Regarding tone: As an undergrad, my tone was considered to be quite "dark" and "rich." In fact, my tone was a major recruiting tool for the clarinet studio. In grad school, my teacher changed my embouchure to one that was more focused, flexible, and technically superior to my previous one. Subsequently my tone was much "lighter." I use quotation marks because my sound is no less full nor rich than before, simply more moveable. Think of it as changing from viola timbre to that of a violin (without the E string!).
Just my imput; infer at will.
Mitch King
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2002-12-16 18:23
I'm always happy to read another thread, with posts, about dark/bright tonal quality, hoping for some technical discussion of "what is it and how to get it". I presume we all know of the odd-numbered harmonic series of notes which result from "standing" sound waves in a [nearly]cylindrical tube, open only at the end [or at the highest open holes]. This of course gives rise to the 12ths character of our clarinet, which produces beneficially a wide range/compass inst. but one in which the octaves finger differently, not like conical-bore "reed" insts. All this is prelude [I do go on and on!] to my ??/thoughts/suggestion-for-research? re: the quantitative energy distribution among the various harmonics from the viewpoint of our "qualitative" measure of dark/bright. It seems to me that perhaps our "dark" sound results from suppression/diminution of the energies in the higher frequency harmonics via player/mp"set-up"/instrument-characteristics/acoustics-of-surroundings. {My ?? at last!!], HELP, Don
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Author: HAT
Date: 2002-12-16 20:55
The only way to 'change' your 'sound' is to get your inner ear to 'hear' what you want to produce. Listening to your favorite players is the best way to do this.
Best is when you get to sit next to someone with a great sound all the time (this can happen at a good school if you're lucky or even on the job).
Recordings will have to suffice otherwise. There is no shortage of recordings featuring wonderful sounding clarinetists of all styles. Listen for hours and hours and then copy. It's amazing how much this can change the way you sound in a short time.
By the way, don't bother with long tones. A great deal of the way you sound is in how you make the intervals. Listen to the way the players you like do that!
David Hattner, NYC
www.northbranchrecords.com
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Author: Mark Charette, Webmaster
Date: 2002-12-16 20:55
Don Berger wrote:
>
> I'm always happy to read another thread, with posts,
> about dark/bright tonal quality, hoping for some technical
> discussion of "what is it and how to get it".
Benade discusses it somewhere in "Principles of Musical Acoustics" as the cutoff frequency associated with the tube length/effective bore diameter. My PMA is buried in the basement somewhere so I can't quote chapter & verse right now.
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Author: Jeroen
Date: 2002-12-19 10:47
The rc prestige has already a dark tone. So that is one step.
If you want a really dark, heavy and deep tone:
Try Vandoren BlackMaster reeds. You need a mpc with a long facing e.g. Wurlitzer L4 but may be an american mpc will work also.
But beware of presence, dynamics etc.
Your teacher (if you have one) will probably not like it!
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Author: Brenda Siewert
Date: 2002-12-19 15:30
You might focus on mouthpiece/ligature/reed combinations. I use a Greg Smith Grenadilla wood mouthpiece and a BG Super Revelator ligature with a fairly soft (3) reed. But no one has the "silver bullet" for a dark tone--it takes a lot of work. You can also try different barrels. The Chadash and Moenig tapered barrels help a lot with tone. The Moenig is a bit darker.
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Author: buffet^Rc
Date: 2002-12-20 06:09
longer the facing the smaller the tip opening~
so will a small tip opening coz the sound to be brighter?
buffet^Rc
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2002-12-20 11:59
buffet^Rc wrote:
>
>
> longer the facing the smaller the tip opening~
>
> so will a small tip opening coz the sound to be brighter?
No.
The mouthpiece is the mouthpiece. All the factors interrelate, so just because perhaps on one model this might be true does not allow you to extrapolate to other models; it's multivariate calculus combined with chaos theory as far as I can tell ;^)
A long facing/small tip opening combination <b>normally</b> allows or requires a harder reed (a generalization, to be sure) than a short facing/open tip opening, but this may or may not make things "brighter"; surely on German short facing/small tip opening mouthpieces the hard reeds they use are <b>not</b> "bright" (another generalization ...)
In other words - spend some time once in a while investigating mouthpieces, but don't make a religion out of measuring them. Your god will be inconsistent at best.
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Author: Jaymz
Date: 2002-12-24 14:37
one of my favorite reeds to use is the qubec cut legere reed it's cut to give you a darker fuller tone!
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