 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Chalumeau Joe
Date: 2007-02-19 02:22
During my lunch break at work, I brought my clarinet over to my local service tech for a loose key adjustment, which he fixed while I waited. After he did the repair, he handed the clarinet back to me and wanted to know if I wanted to go for a test drive. While I normally would have, I had just come from a local eatery and had bits of food stuck in my teeth (OK, I admit there's a mild 'eeewww' factor here).
I politely declined and told the tech that I had just had lunch (food bits, etc.) and usually brushed my teeth before playing (BTW, a habit I've had ever since 4th grade). He responded with a bit of a sneer and said, "Oh, so you're one of THOSE," and said that he usually doesn't bother with that sort of fussiness.
I mentioned this to a friend of mine (a trombone player), who was surprised that I was so "anal retentive" and ritualistic about my oral hygiene before playing. (He, BTW, drinks Coke and smokes while he plays, which makes his horn smell most foul.)
Having a clean mouth just seems to make sense to me: it's intuitive that bits of baloney and cheese encrusted in your bore and pads would just not add to the longevity or playability of the instrument. (I suppose that brass players could be less concerned about it, since there's less to gum up in their horns.)
So, silly as this post may seem, I'm curious about what you folks do before playing: brush, floss, gargle,...eat fudge?. I'm especially curious about professional players, i.e., those that play at clubs and restaurants, where "a free meal is part of the deal."
Joe "Adrian Monk" Chalumeau
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Author: Cosmicjello
Date: 2007-02-19 02:52
I've known many musicians who carry tooth brushes and paste in their cases.
I prefer the gunk free mouth and fresh breath.
Have you every played an instrument that you could easily tell that the owner had poor oral hygiene and neglected the swab.
Foul indeed.
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Author: Carol Dutcher
Date: 2007-02-19 03:05
I watched a clarinet player eat a cinammon roll and drink coffee while playing her clarinet. This was at a jazz festival. Amazing. I would have choked on it.
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2007-02-19 04:29
If one eats fried chicken, they usually wash their hands before playing piano, right? Same for winds, I think.
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Author: Chalumeau Joe
Date: 2007-02-19 04:30
My private clarinet teacher in high school would frequently take my clarinet away from me, blow into it to demonstrate the correct way to play a particular passage,and then give it back to me.
He was a heavy coffee drinker...and, in my mind, I can still taste that fetid mouthpiece, even after 30 years.
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Author: pewd
Date: 2007-02-19 04:48
you teach middle school clarinet for awhile, and see all the wonderful things growing inside the mouthpiece,
and you'll start brushing befoe playing ; religiously
- Paul Dods
Dallas, Texas
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Author: Max S-D
Date: 2007-02-19 06:11
My clarinet teacher always drinks coffee during our lessons, although he keeps a bottle of water around, now that I think about it. I don't know if he drinks the water to rinse his mouth out a little bit before playing, although I would assume he does.
I try to always play with a reasonably clean mouth (i.e. not after eating), but don't carry a toothbrush with me.
I had a sax teacher who said that he bought his bari from Doc Kupka of Tower of Power. He said that when he bought it, the inside of the neck was purple and smelled like wine.
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Author: marcia
Date: 2007-02-19 07:18
I carry a toothbrush, toothpaste, and dental floss in my case. If I eat before playing I ALWAYS floss and brush first. I know a bassoonist who will eat chips during rehearsal, then pick up his bassoon and play. Don't know why he doesn't get bits of chip stuck in his reed! And there's the icky hands on the instrument Also know an oboist who took lessons from a heavy smoker. The teacher would invariably take the studnet's reed, blow into it with his cigarette breath , hand it back to the student, and expect him to play on it.
I most definitely play with good oral hygiene.
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Author: larryb
Date: 2007-02-19 11:43
You eat baloney? Ever seen what goes on at a meat packing plant? Yuck!
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Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2007-02-19 11:57
<<He was a heavy coffee drinker...and, in my mind, I can still taste that fetid mouthpiece, even after 30 years.>>
Joe, you may fall into that recently-discovered category of people who are called "super-tasters".
Do you like vegetables? (Supposedly, super-tasters don't.)
Susan
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2007-02-19 12:04
> You eat baloney? Ever seen what goes on at a meat packing plant? Yuck!
Since when is there meat in it? ![[tongue]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie6.gif)
--
Ben
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2007-02-19 12:24
Washing out the mouthpieces of the used clarinets I buy from flea markets, "junktiques" stores and yard sales would cure just about anybody of eating before playing, methinks. I'm "one of those," too--the last thing I do before I practice is brush my teeth. What's that repair tech, a trumpet player? ;-)
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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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2007-02-19 13:15
A well-discussed thread, YES, isn't there something about cleanliness and godliness ? I prefer brushing AND the water-pic, and use it regularly before my home or band rehearsing. If "needing" to eat something "on the job", I at least "slosh-out" my mouth with water before playing again. Yup , UGH and YUCK, Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Terry Stibal
Date: 2007-02-19 14:38
It's all well and good to practice extreme oral hygiene with musical instruments, and I'm not one to look for opportunities to scarf and blow. No point in making things any worse than they need to be.
However, most of the times that I'm performing involve provided meals that have to be eaten within a ten to twenty minute time frame. Not enough time there for chewing the food properly, much less a full cleanup afterwards. For those who can't manage things around these time frames need to do what I do - eat first, just in case.
I have had one trombone player who can disappear into the can for extended periods during breaks (I have no idea what he's doing in there, for what that's worth, but I've never seen toothbrush and dentifrice in evidence), and he's also notorious for arriving back at the bandstand after we're into the next set. If he's valuing his instrumental hygiene above promptness, he may need to reevaluate how long he takes to eat, since he's been warned.
In any event, the overall hygiene issue needs to be considered as a whole, not just in one particular area. Despite your best efforts, most of the parts of your body are a teeming mass of bacteria virtually all of the time, and our feeble efforts at "cleaning" don't make much of a difference. While cleaning out the food residue from your mouth is a good thing in dental hygiene terms (and will certainly cut down on the amount of bacterial growth medium you introduce into your horn), it does little in terms of bacteria that you "carry around" with you in your day to day life
Just like the hordes of mites that live around us all of the time (with some of them residing in the root system of your facial hair right this very moment, waiting only for you to "go dormant" before they emerge on their nightly foraging expeditions), the bacteria and fungi are going to be there regardless of what we do to move them along. We deal with this through our own body's defense mechanisms, and as long as the white blood cells are doing their vicious job, we manage to get along just fine.
You don't want to go the path of periodically washing out your instrument (as one student of mine was forced to do by his mother). Hard on the skin in the pads, plus it didn't do much to eliminate the crud.
Smoking, on the other hand, is nothing more than unnecessary grossness. No point in adding to the problem, right?
leader of Houston's Sounds Of The South Dance Orchestra
info@sotsdo.com
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Author: Chalumeau Joe
Date: 2007-02-19 15:14
ohsuzan:
No, I'm not a "super-taster" ("super-eater", perhaps)...but in my mind's eye (mouth?), whenever I think of my old instructor, that taste is triggered in my mind. Perhaps this is a form of PTSD: Post-Taste Stress Disorder
****
marcia:
"Potato chips!" Yaargh! (Although a side benefit may be that the oboe doesn't need to be oiled as much.)
****
I think I'll just crawl into my bubble now and practice.
Joe
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Author: Brenda Siewert
Date: 2007-02-19 15:16
I absolutely agree that the mouth should be as clean as possible before playing. The gunk goes right into the pads. Your pads will last longer and your instrument will smell better if you try to at least rinse your mouth out before playing. You can keep a small bottle of water and swish your mouth and swallow (after all the food is already in your mouth) before playing if you're in a situation where you can't go brush and there's no place to spit. Pardon my grossness.
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Author: D
Date: 2007-02-19 16:04
I at least try and drink water and chew gum before the mouthpiece goes back in my mouth.
I think I was traumatised as a young child by the box of school recorders. ICK!
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Author: C2thew
Date: 2007-02-19 16:20
He was a heavy coffee drinker...and, in my mind, I can still taste that fetid mouthpiece, even after 30 years.
i think it's time to clean your mouthpiece :-)
Honestly, i think food and playing is ok just as long as you are aware of the grease and fat concentration that will seep into your hands and linger on your keys. Eating a carrot and playing is bad as carrot tends to flake. Any flaky food WILL get caught somewhere. Sugary foods will just bind to the chamber and will cause white residue. Sharing mouthpieces is underrated. From my point of view, guys just tend to swap mouthpieces just for fun, wheras girls won't even let you touch their instruments. Hey that's all fine and dandy, but you don't know what their missing.
Sharing reeds is a no. that's it.
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. they are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which was already but too easy to arrive as railroads lead to Boston to New York
-Walden; Henry Thoreau
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Author: Chalumeau Joe
Date: 2007-02-19 16:37
C2thew...recalling my experiences from high school, I would agree that guys didn't seem to be as hung-up about swapping mouthpieces as the girls. I think this was more so with the trumpet players as it was with the wind players.
At the risk of going off-topic here, there's a local scandal here in Maryland regarding something called the "gum chewing game." Its purpose was to teach students the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases, and involved them taking turns chewing the same piece of gum.
http://www.wbaltv.com/family/10980505/detail.html
(Reed sharing pales in comparison!)
Joe
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Author: pelo_ensortijado
Date: 2007-02-19 17:38
my teacher smokes pipe! all the time!!
and he's having the common clarinet-thing and buys new instruments all the time(once or twice a year) and make them stink and taste in no-time!!!
and such lovely instruments he gets! they play and intonates like heaven!!
it is a horrible thing to allmost KILL your closest friend!!
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Author: brwndot
Date: 2007-02-21 01:40
I try to brush before playing but it didn't really dawn on me to do it until I got a new mouthpiece a few years ago. I guess I think of it as preventative maintenance.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2007-02-22 15:17
>>How on earth does he sell them again?
>>
I'm getting this mental image of his tobacco-stained fingers lighting up a stick of incense, maybe sandalwood or, if he's a cigar-smoker, something stronger, like patchouli. He pushes the long-dish incense burner into the clarinet where it lies on a table between a white candle and a turquoise blue candle. The smoke wafts out through the tone holes as he intones, "Benevolent spirits of earth, air, water and fire, from the east, from the south, from the west and from the north, from the upper world and the lower world, from the hidden places within me, come to my call. By fire, I cleanse this clarinet of all impurities and harmful past associations within it. I cense and cleanse it to be ready for my purposes. The smoke that rises from this incense carries the power of my wishes and my commands. Let no taint of tobacco remain. A customer will fall in love with this clarinet! A customer will pay whatever I ask! As I will, so must it be!"
Ah, now the clarinet smells all holy, like a church or a temple. Well, okay, maybe it smells like a den of hippies circa 1966--but he thinks he's solved his problem. Then he finds out that the resin in modern incense has left a crust of varnish all over his pads.... He forgot to tell the spirits the part that goes, "Grant me such knowledge and power as I may wield with widsom...."
Not only that, but, in his eagerness to sell the clarinet, he cleansed the instrument, all right, but he forgot to do a self-purification and self-protection spell first, and he neglected the first law of summoning: "Do not raise up that which you cannot put down again." So the clarinet rolls over, excretes the incense burner with a mighty squeak and hoots at him, "You smell like a dirty ashtray! Don't you even think about putting your filthy mouth on me again, you !@#$%^&*!"
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2007-02-22 15:21)
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Author: jane84
Date: 2007-02-22 18:40
HAHAHAHAAAA.....oh, goodness....
Which makes him jump about a meter up in the air and overturn his coffeecup (filled with some horrible, black tar-like thing from the cantina) all over it..
-jane
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Author: shmuelyosef
Date: 2007-02-24 16:32
"However, most of the times that I'm performing involve provided meals that have to be eaten within a ten to twenty minute time frame. Not enough time there for chewing the food properly, much less a full cleanup afterwards. For those who can't manage things around these time frames need to do what I do - eat first, just in case."
Same thing for me...when I go to restaurants, I snag lots of those nicely wrapped toothpicks and throw them in all my instrument cases. I also take a bottle of water to every gig. I can pretty quickly pick the food out of my teeth with the toothpick, then rinse quick. My horns all stay pretty clean (I'm a sax tech as well, so I have seen the consequences of sloppiness...it's not just hygiene, crap builds up on the pads and causes leaks, so you're horn will slowly degrade in performance.)
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Author: GBK
Date: 2007-02-24 16:41
Playing professionally - Rule #8
8. Never go to a gig expecting to get fed, or it will be a VERY long 4 hours.
Eat and brush at home before leaving ...GBK
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