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Re: Clarinet Symposium

Author: sfalexi
Date: 2005-04-22 14:25

Quote:

I'm not referring to a limitation of any player. I'm referring to a characteristic of the instrument. A perfectly smooth legato cannot be achieved on a clarinet using the "flip" method because of what happens to the air when the flip takes place.

Sure the flip method will never be as smooth as the two trill key method (F to F#), but with practice, you can get it to work fast enough that the very slight interruption between the changing of fingers is undetectable with our ears ('our' refering to 'humans'). And at that point, noone will be able to tell. Perhaps there's a device out there can measure such a small time increment (the amount of time it takes to flip the fingers) and just how drastically of a difference it would be, but our ears can't.

For that matter, even the two side trill keys wouldn't be 'perfect'. As there ARE a few nanoseconds from when you begin to open them until they're fully open where the airstream is interrupted, and it changes direction to vent out the side, etc. etc. But it's so little time that we can't detect the imperfections. And chances are that if we WERE able to be put to the test of listening to Robert Marcellus, or any other professional who has drilled a "flip" fingering into their arsenal, play it both ways (randomly) over 1000 times, we'd probably still never quite be sure which way he/she was transitioning at any given time.

Alexi

US Army Japan Band

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Clarinet Symposium new

Ken Shaw

2005-04-18 20:15