Author: ChrisC
Date: 2003-10-08 04:30
Hi--I'm not exactly looking for a concrete response here, but I would like to be pointed in the right direction by those of you have experience playing Bulgarian music (i.e., the typical wedding band repertoire, horos and rachenitsas and the more-than-occasional occasional kyuchek). I'm currently playing a Vandoren M15 that was recommended by my (classical) instructor, with Vandoren traditional #3 reeds, and that's working very well for the small amount of legit music that I play as well as, quite surprisingly, klezmer, where I would have assumed I would need a much more open mouthpiece. Bulgarian music, which is consuming an inordinate amount of my time and energy is posing much more of a challenge--I have a hard time mustering up the stamina to play those fast, repetitive phrases, and I seem to be feeling more resistance than is probably necessary. I also have a B45 and a supply of 2 1/2 reeds, which I used prior to acquiring the M15, and I will definitely experiment to see which setup works better ( I was using the B45 with much harder reeds at Balkan Camp, and it suited me well enough, but I really wasn't playing all that much). I've since gotten pretty serious about picking up a working repertoire of Bulgarian and Macedonian tunes, though, and I'm afraid that my current set up is making the music harder to play than it should be.
Any suggestions would be very much appreciated by this newly minted Balkan nut.
--Chris
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The Ethnic Clarinet
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