 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: christian_comeau
Date: 2005-08-06 17:24
Hi,
I play in a school band and in my city's woodwinds band.
The question I want to ask is: Does the clarinet itself have a SO BIG importance in tone quality?
You know there're all these high priced clarinet described as having a "natural beautiful dark sound", but some of the clarinetists I know can take a cheapper clarinet and get easily a beautiful tone...
Are people having many clarinets because one sounds "darker" than another?
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2005-08-06 17:38
Yes, the clarinet itself makes a big difference in tone quality.
It also depends on what your definition of "high priced" is.
And your definition of "beautiful." What I thought was great tone five years ago I now consider mediocre.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2005-08-06 20:47
The better the Clarinet the better tone you will get on it.
But up to a point - you can't buy a good tone except for having good equipment, and paying a teacher to give you a good tone concept or at least how to approach it.
Post Edited (2005-08-07 11:31)
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Author: christian_comeau
Date: 2005-08-06 23:49
By "high-priced" I meant over 2000$ which is (only) intermediate level...
As I said, I know a lot of people (others amateur/professionnal) clarinetists that play with a "very good" tone on any instrument... The question could also have been, if you take a professionnal clarinetist and you give him a cheaper clarinet some months before a performance, will the listeners hear a significant difference, I don't think so.
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Author: Kel
Date: 2005-08-06 23:59
Aren't there a number of different "beautiful" tones? I hope so, because the sound I want is not necessarily the sound some other players want.
The traditional response to equipment versus player is that "so-and-so could play on a sewer pipe and make it sound good."
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Author: archer1960
Date: 2005-08-07 00:34
"As I said, I know a lot of people (others amateur/professionnal) clarinetists that play with a "very good" tone on any instrument... The question could also have been, if you take a professionnal clarinetist and you give him a cheaper clarinet some months before a performance, will the listeners hear a significant difference, I don't think so."
Maybe you wouldn't hear the difference, but I'll bet he would know the difference by how hard he has to work to produce the sound he wants. I would think that having to work too hard to produce a good sound would take a lot of the fun out of performing.
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Author: john gibson
Date: 2005-08-07 02:12
.....as former American president Bill Clinton asked...."depends on the defintion of what is, is.".........OR something stupid like that. JG
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Author: BobD
Date: 2005-08-07 11:12
I agree that a competent clarinetist can sound just as good on a cheap clarinet as on an expensive one. The key word is CAN. First of all not all cheap clarinets are capable of producing the same tone. And when you find one that is capable of producing a good tone you will find that the tone produced depends to some extent on the mp,barrel,reed, and....yes...even ligature. And, yes, there are "cheap" non-wood clarinets that are capable of producing good tone.......finding them is not an inexpensive hobby. Anyone who wants more details can email me off the board.
Bob Draznik
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2005-08-07 11:50
There's also the hassle factor. A great clarinetist could probably sound good on any clarinet that's in top playing condition. (Nobody can sound good on the best clarinet in the world, if the pads are rotten and half the bumper corks have fallen off.) But why should a professional clarinet player struggle to get a decent sound out of an Artley, let alone an Artley with its original mouthpiece? Part of what a musician pays for in the more expensive instruments is responsiveness, which isn't necessarily the same thing as ease of use.
I'm an adult amateur, not a professional, but even I can hear a big difference in the way I sound on my Buffet Bb and the way I sound on a cheap student clarinet. The cheap clarinet with the very open mouthpiece is actually easier to play. I can blow into it any old way and get a note instead of a squeak. My vintage 1937 Buffet, with a very closed tip on the mouthpiece, is a lot more resistant, and it will punish me for sloppy embouchure, but I can do things on that clarinet that I just can't do on a cheap student clarinet.
For that matter, I can do things on a good student clarinet with a good mouthpiece that I can't do on a crummy one. It's been interesting to repair different models I've found at flea markets. A good quality student clarinet (from the big names: Leblanc Vito, Yamaha, Selmer, Buffet) is well worth the price for parents tempted by that no-name junk on sale at Wal-Mart. A good student clarinet is actually easier to play than a top professional instrument. A good student clarinet, with a good student mouthpiece such as a Hite Premiere or a Fobes Debut, is less resistant and therefore less discouraging in the early days. It's easier for a young student to get notes instead of squeaks.
I wouldn't try to start a child on a top-of-the-line Buffet--partly because a young kid sometimes uses clarinets in ways that manufacturers probably don't contemplate and that might cause serious parental distress if the instrument came with a significant price tag. Overheard at a recent yard sale: "Mom! Mom! Tell Billy--Billy, stop that! Give me that! Give me my--MOM! Billy's swatting mosquitoes with my recorder." It was a white plastic Yamaha. The kid got so upset at seeing her old, plastic recorder used this way that once she wrested the instrument away from her little brother, she yanked the $1 price tag off and marched the instrument right back into the house, even though her mother (who hadn't moved a muscle to stop Billy) called after her, "Your new one is better! You don't even play that one any more!"
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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