 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2014-11-24 02:43
Hi all:
A recent bboard thread where contributors seek to find the right mouthpiece for someone in need of a new model lead me to try to find a single thread on the bboard dedicated to all the attributes that affect how a mouthpiece plays, barring the player themselves (probably the most important factor.)
In what I concede was a quick search, no such listing could be found. So I’d like to create one, for those to comment on, correct, and add attributes to.
AOTC: all other things constant
**: may elicit fanatical disagreement
1) Tip opening. The distance between the reed and the mouthpiece at its tip. AOTC, the smaller the opening, the stronger the reed a player will desire and vice versa. Small tip openings facilitate articulation.** Those performing classical music will likely opt for mouthpiece no wider in opening than medium in size, while those operating in jazz settings will likely seek medium to open tip mouthpieces.**
2) Lay length. The longer the distance in which the mouthpieces rails and table maintain contact with the reed, AOTC, the stronger the reed will appear to the player. Other attributes of lay length’s affect on play require discussion.
3) Rail width. The wider the rails, AOTC, the stronger the reed will appear to be to the player. The width of the rails at the point where they separate from the reed, and their affect on play, require discussion, perhaps falling under the “Window” attribute below.
4) Materials and Creation Methods. Whether it’s hard rubber, core rubber rods, plastic, crystal, or something else, what a mouthpiece is made of, and how it’s created, either by processes like injection molding or shaping, affect the mouthpiece in ways that require discussion.
5) Reed. Good luck with this one. Perhaps we should just concede that reeds affect play, and leave it at that.
6) Ligature. Good luck with this one too. Although most of us could probably agree on what’s a bad ligature (e.g. one with mechanical defects like screws that strip) and what’s a basically adequate one. Perhaps we should just concede that ligatures affect play by different amounts for different people and leave it at that.
7) Beak. The angle and length of the part of the mouthpiece that single lip embouchure players bite affects the mouthpiece in ways that require discussion.
8) Window. The portion of the mouthpiece where the reed is (partially) suspended affects performance, and perhaps is subsumed by tip opening, lay length, and rail width.
9) Chamber. The shape(s) inside the mouthpiece affects play in a manner that requires discussion.
10 Other attributes not considered.
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Oops, already thought of another I think....barrel?
Post Edited (2014-11-24 05:30)
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Author: kdk
Date: 2014-11-24 03:58
Quick question: Why is AATC = All Other Things Considered? Why not AOTC?
To your list, it makes clear, more than anything else, that the whole thing is a complete system and that each influences the behavior o the rest to one degree or another. You've left out the instrument body itself. At some point it becomes hard, if not impossible, to separate the individual influences in any useful way. And, apart from the player's physical approach to playing, there is the important aspect of his expectation of how the mouthpiece (and the rest of the system) *should* play, which you may still want to include that in the player attribute.
Karl
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Author: fskelley
Date: 2014-11-24 04:42
At first I thought you meant, "...as opposed to actually being only an MSO" (a mouthpiece shaped object, to go along with RSO's, CSO's, LSO's, and PSO's).
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
Post Edited (2014-11-24 04:44)
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2014-11-24 05:31
Thanks for pointing out the mistake in my abbreviation, which I've since corrected.
Further research external to the board finds Brad Behn taking on this topic pretty nicely here:
http://www.clarinetmouthpiece.com/nomenclature/
Post Edited (2014-11-24 18:13)
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-11-24 07:43
I especially like what Behn says about plastic mouthpieces:
"'Conventional wisdom' asserts that plastic is not capable of producing the depth and range of sounds that rubber can produce. This is in fact not the case. Some plastics sound quite good, and when properly made to the right design which augments the plastic's resonance characteristics, a good playing experience can be obtained. The key is that plastic must be enhanced by its design specification in order to have professional playing attributes."
Both Clark Fobes and Brad Behn produce an entry level mouthpiece from acrylic plastic (the Debut and the Overture mouthpieces respectively) that takes a good facing and play well, and high-end Wurlitzer clarinets in Germany are routinely provided with acrylic mouthpieces, both clear and nearly opaque.
I recently ordered--thanks to Paul Aviles laudatory review-- an EMS MCK1 clarinet mouthpiece that plays better out of the box than any mass-produced mouthpiece I have ever tried--and I believe the black shiny material it is made from is also acrylic. If so, one of the "design specifications" that enchance it is probably the metal ring at the bottom of the tenon. Other versions of this MCK1 are certainly made of translucent acrylic incorporating such enhancements as metal flecks embedded in the plastic to increase resonance.
Conventional wisdom concerning mouthpieces is probably wrong in so many ways that a book could be written to correct the myths and errors. One that I see repeated in the original thread for this topic is that softer reeds go with more open facings and harder reeds go with closer facings. Well, maybe, but often not! Robert Marcellus when he played in the in the Cleveland orchestra for a time used Kaspar 13s, more open than 1.07 (were they 1.10, 1.13, 1.14) with the old design Moree reeds, which were harder than a typical Vandoren #5. Ricardo Morales, reportedly, uses a fairly open Moba facing with hard reeds. In the early 60s, I met some very old French clarinetists who were playing on the old Selmer A facing. That's only open 0.89 mm at the tip, and they used regular #3 Vandorens. Their tone was something to die for! Mellow, sweet, and colorful. Not buzzy or reedy at all. I cross questioned them. No, they had not had their mouthpieces refaced, and no, they did not like the Selmer HS or HS* facings because those were much too open!!! These players were able to voice the tone (they played double lip) on a very very close facing with a rather soft reed and sound great.
If conventional wisdom was correct, Marcellus and Morales on their relatively open facings ought to be paired with the #3 reeds, and the old Frenchmen ought to have the stiff Morres. But that's not what they wanted and that's not what they did.
Post Edited (2014-11-24 21:12)
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2014-11-24 18:47
Mr. Monie:
I enjoyed reading your discussion of how convention wisdom, which is where I drew my conclusions about mouthpiece attributes--independent of their accuracy or my personal feelings on those attributes--may not be so wise.
If there's one thing I think we all could agree upon is our ability to site fine players who didn't go with this wisdom, still yet, bucked it, and played in ways that made us happy that their muscianship landed upon our beloved clarinet.
But that said, in your opinion, are the conventional wisdoms, at the very least, more apt to be right than wrong across the set of all players, and therefore the most logical assumptions to make for the developing player?
Maybe the trick is for the prospective mouthpiece purchaser to sit down with a whole slew of well known makes and models, along with an assistant who sets up their reed and ligature for them while they remain blindfolded, and try stuff out without knowing mouthpiece specifications and developing pre-conceived expectations/biases of what those specifications will mean for them.
But that approach could prove time consuming and expensive. So is it not more efficient, if not also a compromise, to look at mouthpieces that lie within "the ballpark" of specifications on a mouthpiece they use and like, and/or that others report being similar in play to a mouthpiece already appreciated by the potential consumer of a new one?
As it regards your discussion on mouthpiece material, as cited from Mr. Behn, I find that interesting too. I don't think (and I wouldn't be surpised if you agree) that Mr. Behn is by any means saying that mouthpiece materials don't matter, so much as he is saying that the right non-rubber materials "can hold their heads high" in the mouthpiece marketspace.
From what I read on Mr. Behn's painstaking recreation of Chedeville mouthpieces, I'd have to say that the materials with which a mouthpiece are made of are quite an area for Mr. Behn, of both interest and belief that such things make a difference.
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-11-24 20:58
A statistician taking a large sample of clarinetists would probably find that players generally do use heavier reeds as the tip opens and softer reeds as the tip closes. But if a sample were taken of the players who are most delightful, creatively musical, and satisfying (all very subjective criteria) that generalization might not hold at all, and in fact, a solid pattern (other than randomness or unpredictability) might not even emerge. The bottom line is that if you are a musician first and a clarinetist second, the generalities presented in much common knowledge may be of little or no help to you. You try the advice, and it either works for you or does not. If it doesn't work, you try something else to reach your artistic goal.
Behn, Omar Henderson, and Chris Hill all evidently believe that to achieve a 1920s to 30s clarinet sound as exemplified in such vintage mouthpieces as the Chedevilles and the Roberts, a special kind of rubber is required. But note--this is not exactly conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom rather lazily and stagnantly says rubber is better than plastic, ivory, or stainless steel. This is more of a probing, developing kind of hypothesis tested by cutting up old mouthpieces and chemically analyzing their material properties and then trying to produce new blanks that have some of the same characteristics. Another mouthpiece expert, such as Ramon Wodkowski, chooses to pursue a different hypothesis--that the dimensions of a mouthpiece are of much greater importance to its sound and overall performance than the chemical makeup of the material. When his "Napoleon" interpretation of a Chedeville comes out soon, it will be possible for players to compare the outcome of his approach to that of Behn, Hill, and Henderson in making a Ched-like mouthpiece. This is not common knowledge; this is empirical testing. We cannot know the outcome until we have tried the mouthpieces, and even then we may all choose to disagree and not develop any fixed and settled common knowledge on this point.
Behn also seems to be implying that copying old Cheds and Roberts--whatever their merits-- may not be the best goal to follow for the future development of mouthpieces. Common knowledge tends to sneer at plastic mouthpieces but, as he says, if the right design changes are made, some plastics (I would suggest acrylics among them) might be made to play very well indeed (that is, even better than most rubber ones???). When I recently tried the new MS MCK1 (which comes in a variety of acrylics) the first thought that came to my mid was "this plays right out the box better than any rubber mouthpiece I have tried." Based on my little epiphany, I am prepared to scrap the common knowledge that rubber--even vintage Chedeville rubber--is necessarily better.
By the way, the same kind of skeptical approach to common knowledge in mouthpieces can be applied to every point that you raised in your list. To take just two more, for instance, if the rails are widened articulation is supposed to be slowed, and big tone chambers make darker sounds than small tone chambers. One of the easiest mouthpiece to blow and to articulate on I have ever played is a James Kanter that also happens to have the widest tip and side rails of any piece in my collection--wider than those on a Vandoren M30D, a D. Johnston, or a Nick Kuckmeier. Wide rails are supposed to add resistance, and they usually do. but we can only play one mouthpiece at a time, and THIS ONE doesn't follow that statistical generalization. For the player, the single mouthpiece trumps the 60,000 other pieces that uphold the force of common knowledge. How did Kanter build this into a mouthpiece with such wide rails? I have no idea but there must be other countervailing features that offset the wide rails. Is this a perfect mouthpiece? Not at all. It is great for recording work in an acoustically dead studio but lacks the resonance needed for large halls. But surely the common knowledge that large chambers make dark sounds and narrower ones make brighter, edgier sound must be true? Well maybe for many mouthpieces but certainly not for all. Examine the chambers in the Kuckmeier Play Easy model, the Grabner G11, and the Vandoren M30D as compared with the wider chamber in Richard Hawkins' B model. The first 3 play very dark with little or no edge yet have medium small chambers; the last--with a wider chamber-- plays brighter with more center resonance and a fair amount of edge.
The practical question of how a given mouthpiece plays can only be answered by playing it; common knowledge may apply or may not.
Post Edited (2014-11-24 21:25)
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Author: saxlite
Date: 2014-11-25 00:42
I am anticipating that the new 3D printing technology may allow mouthpiece makers to rapidly explore their theories of what changes produce what results in mouthpiece designs- designers could quickly crank out variations without the time consuming hand tweaking usually required. Does anyone know of such experiments?
Jerry
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-11-25 07:59
One quick addition to the list.....one that has ALWAYS been a factor known to the "old timers." If you draw a straight line from the opening at the tip down to where the mouthpiece and reed come together...... that is almost NEVER what the actual rail gradient looks like. In fact there are many MANY variations of how much, and at what points you create this slope.
And I agree with the observation that once you have all these ingredients in mind, it is more the interaction of ALL the factors together that make up the 'characteristics' of the mouthpiece.
As for material, I am still "getting to know" my acrylic ESM (Ernst Schreiber Michelstadt) mouthpiece. I was NEVER fond of the acrylic mouthpieces from Wurlitzer dating from the mid-eighties, so is a wonderful surprise to discover such a nice acrylic today. One decided character is that the body of the acrylic mouthpiece seems tonally inert compared to its hard rubber counterpart. I cannot yet sense a difference from one ligature to another with the acrylic, whereas I always felt there was tangible difference from ligature to ligature with hard rubber. I'm still not sure what I think of this!
.................Paul Aviles
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