 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: wjk
Date: 2004-11-02 18:22
I'm sitting in with a jazz group that includes a guitarist who is quite proficient at "chord/melody" improvisation. He will play a melodic line using both chords and single note runs. How can best blend in with him on clarinet?
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Author: ron b
Date: 2004-11-02 18:39
I've played many a gig with guitar. Percussion and/or bass is a welcome addition if you can swing it. I always did "what comes natural" and as long as we're playing the same tune, of course, it works out wonderfully well. Just relax and play what you can as you always do and it should work out wonderfully well for you too 
- r![[cool]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/cool.gif) n b -
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Author: allencole
Date: 2004-11-03 06:43
Good advice on both counts. I play with a western band, and spend most of my time playing notes that are on or below the staff. You definitely want to save your high notes for times where they are actually needed for impact.
Some of these guitar gigs can be relatively quiet, and a real pleasure to play. In the western band, I enjoy not having a drummer. The instrumentation is guitar, bass, pedal steel, accordion and clarinet. Lots of chance to experiment with textures, and almost never raucous. Without all the cymbal hiss, we can actually HEAR each other.
Allen Cole
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Author: hans
Date: 2004-11-03 14:16
A tenor sax might work better than a clarinet.
Hans
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Author: Terry Stibal
Date: 2004-11-03 15:02
One thing that those of us who spend much of our time playing "popular" music learn pretty quick is that the clarinet, as a solo voice instrument, is pretty limited when trying to express what are, after all, mostly vocal melody lines.
As we are trained as clarinet players, we spend so much time playing "clarinet" music, designed to showcase the instrument itself, that we don't really think about what "sits easy" on the ears of the actual audience. Technically, clarinet playing is very appealing to other musicians, but the technicians capable of executing these feats of skill don't realize that most people are looking to be entertained, not impressed.
Over many years, "popular" (i.e., that music which is popular with the general public) has evolved from the old operatic standards (soprano vocals a la The Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind, and the male equivalent singing a pure tenor part) to a more "alto/baritone based" standard.
Put in clarinet terms, most of the notes in modern pop are in the staff or below it, rather than in the upper clarinet register or the altissimo. If you are playing a northern ledger line, it usually better be an accent note or a quick ornament, rather than the melodic line.
(This accounts for the popularity of the saxophone as well. As played "normally", the alto and tenor are both pitched in a more "human" range than the soprano clarinet. It's not a tone quality issue, but rather what sounds more like "singing" to the listener.)
(There are three interesting (and well documented) manifestations of this shift that's occurred over the last fifty years or so. One is the Broadway musical, an excellent barometer of pop tastes over the years. If you listen to recordings of 1930's era shows, you'll clearly notice how "fluty" the female chorus sounds compared to something from the '50s or the '60's. Another is the general "fall from grace" of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Technically, they are tours de force, but trying to decode all of those clever words way up in the stratosphere of the soprano and tenor ranges is just too much work for modern audiences. The third is the film cartoon. Old Warner Brothers cartoons are full of soprano choruses singing ditties behind the action; the modern ones (60's on) are not (when they have a vocal background, which is seldom).)
Over the past few years, I've dealt with any number of excellent, professional quality, female vocalists who have answered our "help wanted" ads. It pains me to tell them that we can't use them, their considerable talents and gorgeous good looks notwithstanding, because the day of the soprano female vocal ended sometime back prior to 1940 and everything (well, virtually everything) these days is written for the alto voice.
These girls do try really hard to make the switch, but very few are capable of doing so. And, some have been insulted when I tell them that most of the vocal arrangements (at least from the arrangers that I use, four different ones), are for the alto range. However, they are bucking years of tradition in the music industry, and it's tradition that's formed on hard experience of what the listening public likes.
Mind you, I know that there is still some soprano singing going on in the non-classical world. For example, I'm not discounting the showy kind of vocal swooping put on by a Celine Dion during the "ornamental" choruses of her "work". But, if you listen to the actual melody line rather than the recapitulations in her work and that of the others in the same genre, it's all down in the alto.
How does this affect the clarinet player? Well, for those oriented towards the classical style, listening to "regular" clarinet playing is within the norms. But, since _most_ audiences are oriented towards "pop" sounds, they're going to be impressed by florid upper register playing FOR A WHILE, but will be much more comfortable with "singing" notes in the alto range. Hence the excellent advice to "keep it below the staff" offered in earlier posts.
It works the other way as well. Bass voices are novelty acts only in the pop world these days, and tenors only do well in "specialty" tunes. For the vast majority of male "pop" vocals, it's baritone first last and always (says the bass-baritone who has to perform his portion of the Love Shack clown show not once but twice in the next week...the things I do for money...)
And, in all of the above, I'm not ignoring the "noise" style of some "modern" rock. It's just that it, like classical music and barbershop and Irish tenor work, only appeals to a "narrow" band of listeners.
A MUSICAL ASIDE:
There's an excellent "rule of thumb" to follow on overarching popular tastes. For what goes well with most everyone, ignore what you hear on the radio, CDs and the like and listen to elevator music. Stupid sounding or not, it's done the way it's done because years of research show that it's most appealing to the widest swath of the population when done that way.
One interesting thing is to listen to the tunes that show up in the Muzak mix. Over the years, it's moved from straight Broadway and pop tunes, done in the inimitable Muzak style, to the more obscure and rock/pop based "book".
I was once taken aback when I heard, while whistling skyward in an elevator in Chicago high-rise, the very obscure tune "Love Is Going Around". This is a piece of incidental music from A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, currently played under the post intermission monolog but originally set by Sondheim as the "main tune" of the show.
I was so amazed by this fossil's appearance in such an unlikely setting that I rode the elevator all the way up and down again, just to take it all in.
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Author: Terry Stibal
Date: 2004-11-04 20:48
Bob A wrote:
> More gigs for the Bass Clar?
> Bob A
When hell freezes over, perhaps. As much as I love the bass clarinet (and have done so for nigh on forty years, man and boy), I am very careful when I decide to inflict it on my audiences. I play the nifty bass clarinet obbligato part to the old Les Brown "Sentimental Journey" arrangement while my wife does the vocal, and it's a great novelty tune that uses the expressive qualities of the instrument to the max. (I always tell the audience that it's one of the few things musical that we can truly do together...a cute human interest gimmick as well.) The rest of the time though, I only grab for it when it's needed for background purposes.
There are plenty of "solo" appearances for the horn, but virtually all of them are verging on the "Look what I can do" model rather than the "This is melodious and pleasing and (by the way) it is being played on the bass clarinet" approach. A fine point perhaps, but one that differentiates between the "specialist" markets and the overarching "what works for all" market.
There will always be markets for specialized music of any stripe, be it classical, Romantic, modern, jazz, skaw, etc. This market takes in a portion of the whole, and may be enough for some people to do very well both artistically and financially. But, these markets will never make up "the whole" while there are diversified human beings making up the whole.
Besides these though, there will always be an "at large" market for what's considered to be the "lingua franca" music of the moment. It's formed from a far greater number of components than any of the specialized markets, and it "moves" a lot less than them as well. But, it's a type of music that has "stood the test of time", gained wide acceptance, etc.
It's interesting to watch this process develop. It gathers its strains from all across the musical spectrum, mixes them together, and then spits out a synthesis that's both like and unlike the original. And, we have it all around us without really noticing it in action, sort of as a cultural "background noise", even as we are all too concerned about "our" particular strain of music.
The one sphere that pays it a lot of mind is that of commerce. They worry about it as it gives them another tiny little "edge" when trying to get people to purchase something or perform some behavior.
So, you do get "popular trends" showing up (cf rock themes, the ever present disco beat with sports events, and the like), but they are all "de-edgified" and homogenized into something quite different.
Western music has followed this path as well. It draws in elements from a wide variety of strains (both stylistic and structural) and synthesizes something not quite the same from it all. But "Western music" doesn't always include the strains from elsewhere....a process that rock and blues have been a bit better at incorporating.
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Author: Contra
Date: 2004-11-05 03:50
Thanks to this thread, I have realized why I enjoy playing lower notes so much more than higher ones.
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Author: allencole
Date: 2004-11-06 06:06
I have to agree with a lot of that Terry has to say, but I don't think that the clarinet is ruled out. With mellow music, though, I think we're all in agreement that we're better off staying in--or very close to--the fundamental notes in the tube.
Given that, I think that the normal clarinet works better than the bass clarinet. This is not so much for reasons of range, but of register. The upper reaches of that ideal tessitura are getting pretty high in the bass clarinet's second register, and that's a place where it's heard to keep the kind of tone and articulation that would please a pop audience. I think that his problem points out what a marvelous compromise of factors the tenor sax embodies.
Given the guitar player's love of sharp keys (my bandleader almost lives in Concert D) I have been using an A clarinet on many of our numbers. The reduction in shrillness from the B-flat is significant and welcome to both player and listener. So is the increase in depth. It makes me wonder how an F Basset Horn might do.
Another thing that can make the clarinet more palatable is to have a set-up that has sufficient flexibility to let you play conversationally, and to have a natural-sounding vibrato. The throat register is particularly critical. If it has a tendency to dryness or inconsistenty in timbre, or causes you to feel labored in your blowing, it's going to be a mood-killer.
I started gigging while in college, using #5 reeds and Hite mouthpiece. I found that this setup made reeds VERY critical, not to mention temperature of the horn and dry-out while I'm on another instrument. It was very high-maintenance and it showed in my playing.
I retreated some years ago to #4 reeds and medium mouthpiece facings. The Portnoy BP02 (suggested to me by some big band guys) has proved to do very well, particularly in keeping the throat register user-friendly. And #4 reeds are a lot easier to deal with than #5's in terms of flexibility and playability. Using Zonda reeds has led to much more consistency in strength from reed to reed, and fewer fears of strapping on a 2x4 when time is tight.
I've had good comfort and good comments using Legere reeds in many cases. The seem to err on the side of being mellow, and their strengths seem even more consistent than those of the Zondas. I find that a 4 1/4 is a little more blowable than my Zonda N's but their resiliance gives me the stability of a stiffer reed--a pretty sweet combination! I also keep some Legere 4's, which provide a very liquid sound as long as embouchure and support don't sag. (4 1/4 and 4 are sigificantly different) Generally, I feel a bit at risk with the softer strength, but get consistent compliments when using them--significantly more than with any other reed type.
This may speak to several issues in terms of what audiences want. I feel like it spreads out the sound, and also lessens the temptation to play above the staff.
Allen Cole
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2004-11-07 04:53
hans wrote: "A tenor sax might work better than a clarinet."
In music, a clarinet alwyas works better than tenor sax
But seriously, how can you even compare clarinet + guitar to sax + guitar. The clarinet sounds so much better especially in this case.
Post Edited (2004-11-07 04:55)
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