 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-23 10:26
In http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=20&i=757&t=757 we read:
Neidich also said that the clarinet does *not* naturally play sharp at ppp and flat at fff. It seems to do so because players make an embouchure mistake, relaxing to get more volume and squeezing to get softer, and also by changing the oral cavity.
In http://www.woodwind.org/clarinet/Study/Vibrato.html we read, in irritating upper case letters:
THIS IS THE REASON THE CLARINET SOUNDS FLATTER WHEN YOU BLOW LOUDER. IT IS BECAUSE AS YOU GET LOUDER YOU ARE ADDING MORE AND MORE OF THE FLAT UPPER PARTIALS TO THE SOUND. THIS IS NOT TRUE OF MOST OTHER INSTRUMENTS.
I'd be interested to know whether there is an authoritative reference on this subject. Preferably not "I'm sure there is something about it somewhere in Benade...."
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-10-23 10:41
It's to do with the amplitude of the reed.
Play louder and the amplitude (the amount of travel between the reed and the mouthpiece rails) increases while the frequency decreases.
A simple demonstration to prove this is to clap your hands at a specific frequency (bpm). Start with your hands close together and then increase the distance but try to retain the frequency - you will have to make more of an effort as the distance increases, and you're likely slow down the rate you can clap with the increased distance.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
Post Edited (2008-10-23 10:44)
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-23 10:46
Chris P - you've answered the title of my post, but not the question I actually asked. (Oh, should I have made them match?)
In my post I asked "whether there is an authoritative reference on this subject."
I have a nasty suspicion that Neidich's explanation is wrong, Cohler's EXPLANATION is wrong, and your explanation is wrong.
Come to think of it, it seems likely that at least two of the three are wrong.
But I may be wrong.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-10-23 10:48
I thought the last bit was a closing comment and the actual question was the thread title as it had a question mark.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2008-10-23 10:59
So why do some notes get SHARPER when I play louder on a classical boxwood clarinet?
And why do many notes on an oboe get sharper when played both louder and very soft?
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-23 11:09
Thank you, Liquorice. Your comments tend to underline my suspicions that:
- Neidich's explanation is wrong - or at least not the whole story - else the classical clarinet would behave the same way as the modern clarinet.
- Chris P's explanation is wrong - or at least not the whole story - for the same reason and also because his explanation, if true for the clarinet, would seem to be equally applicable to the oboe.
We haven't any evidence that Cohler's EXPLANATION is wrong, and it sounds to me like the least implausible of the three. His EXPLANATION could, I think, readily be proved or disproved using a spectrum analyser, and actually that's rather what I was hoping for when I asked for an "authoritative reference". Cohler claims to have majored in physics, but his understanding of physics has been questioned elsewhere on this BBoard.
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Author: BobD
Date: 2008-10-23 11:24
"Cohler graduated with high honors in physics from Harvard University."
Sounds good enough for me.
Bob Draznik
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-10-23 11:56
If you don't make ANY embouchure adjustments while increasing the airflow, the pitch will drop on clarinet, sax AND oboe.
Fact.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-23 12:02
Yes Bob, but your standards are lower than mine.
If you knew anything about physics degrees, you would know that it is perfectly possible to spend several years as a physics undergraduate without ever doing a course on acoustics. Acoustics is very far from the central concerns of modern physics.
Moreover, that physics degree was decades ago. People forget things. I have quite a good honours degree in biology from a very reputable university, but I would hesitate to make ex cathedra statements about biology several decades later.
And of course, physics moves on. If Cohler studied acoustics at Harvard, he may have been taught things that are now believed to be wrong. I have no doubt whatever that I was taught loads of "facts" about biology that have been proved wrong by subsequent research.
Perhaps we could get back to the subject now.
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-23 12:15
Chris, you wrote:
quote
If you don't make ANY embouchure adjustments while increasing the airflow, the pitch will drop on clarinet, sax AND oboe.
Fact.
unquote
I know you are an accomplished player of all three of these instruments (and several others too!) I have enough trouble just with the clarinet.
But it's not too difficult to find sources claiming that oboes, like flutes, go sharper as they are played louder. Maybe there is in fact no contradiction, and both the following statements are true:
1. If you make no embouchure adjustments, the oboe gets flatter as it gets louder.
2. Inexperienced oboe players tend to get sharper as they get louder, because they make too great an embouchure adjustment.
But this is precisely why I am asking for authoritative references. Not just statements by the likes of Cohler, with his decades-old physics degree. Not just the observations of experienced players like yourself. But experimental evidence that tries to show what is REALLY happening, what is cause, what is effect.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2008-10-23 12:23
Well Chris- I'm sitting here blowing crescendos into my boxwood classical clarinet, making no adjustments to my embouchure, and watching the pitch rise on the tuning machine.
Fact.
I don't know why this is so. Maybe it has something to do with the bore dimensions. Or perhaps the very long and closed facing. Hopefully someone can explain it.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2008-10-23 12:23
Hand-clapping illustrations don't do it for me. After all, the period of a pendulum is independent of its amplitude. We know that from swinging in a kid's playground.
Just thinking out loud...
Possibility 1?
When we play loud, the reed vibrates with greater amplitude, and the reed pauses for an instant (assisted by higher breath pressure) every time it slaps against the rails, making a slightly longer period of vibration. No?
Possibility 2?
When we play loud, we play with higher breath pressure, so the air around the reed is a little more dense, so it offers more resistance to the reed, so it slows the reed down. No?
Possibility 3?
For a loud note, the reed leaves the rails for a longer length of rail during vibration cycle, so it is effectively a longer reed. Longer reeds vibrate more slowly, hence push the pitch lower. No? At least I tried. :-)
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Author: Bassie
Date: 2008-10-23 12:36
> I'm sitting here blowing crescendos into my boxwood classical clarinet, making no adjustments to my embouchure, and watching the pitch rise on the tuning machine.
[It is of course conceivable that a tuner might register a higher frequency at a higher amplitude. I've had a very experienced colleague swear blind that tuners read low if they're too far from the instrument, because the sound drops off with distance.]
*
Why do brass instruments play sharper with increasing volume? Certainly in inexperienced players the embouchure answer must be close to the truth.
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Author: BobD
Date: 2008-10-23 12:56
Norbert, I have no basis for believing that your standards are higher than mine since I don't even know who you are.
Bob Draznik
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-23 13:05
All Gordon's explanations seem to assume that the reed vibrates at the same frequency as the note. But is this actually true? When we open the register key to go from F3 to C5, say, does the rate of vibration of the reed triple at that instance? Subjectively, I'm not at all sure it does.
Has anyone measured the vibration of the reed? Brass players buzz at the pitch of the note, it's true (I believe....) but is the same true of reeds?
...........
I have tried a little experiment of my own.
I have before me an electronic tuner, a Vandoren 5RVLyre mouthpiece, a Vandoren Trad #3 reed, a Rovner 1R ligature, and ..... a Yamaha student-model tenor trombone. Using my skill and judgement, I have placed the mouthpiece over the bell receiver of the inner slide, having removed the outer slide. This has the effect of coupling the mouthpiece to the ascending portion of the inner slide, which is a cylindrical tube 715 mm long and 12.7 mm internal diameter. It is of course very accurately cylindrical, otherwise it would be no use as a slide.
I have played this combination, obtaining a clear note rather sharper than G#2. (That is to say, the lowest note of a tenor sax.) The timbre approximates to that of a bass clarinet, rather than to that of a trombone.
I have tried playing a crescendo without changing my embouchure. The pitch increases with volume.
Now this is not a very scientific test. I am not a very good clarinet player, and my idea of not changing my embouchure may not be the same as Liquorice's or Chris's. But I invite you to try the experiment for yourselves. Note that most orchestral trombone players use a wider bore than 12.7 mm, and a clarinet mouthpiece may be just too small to fit. You may need to find a student, or a jazzer, to borrow an instrument from. Or just use any old piece of pipe that fits any mouthpiece you have to hand.
I have tried overblowing this device, but can get nothing between the fundamental and a shrill squeak. I'm not inclined to drill a register hole.
I have tried the opposite experiment, putting the trombone mouthpiece on the body of the clarinet, but it fails to couple properly and doesn't produce a clear note.
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Author: wrowand
Date: 2008-10-23 13:09
Chris got it wrong about the oboe. When you blow harder without changing the embouchure it gets sharper.
That's why we oboe players need to tighten the embouchure to play softer. It's completely different from clarinet and one of the things that I had the most trouble getting used to when I started playing clarinet after playing oboe for 30 years.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2008-10-23 13:16
"All Gordon's explanations seem to assume that the reed vibrates at the same frequency as the note. But is this actually true? "
I believe so. Otherwise how could it keep that standing wave excited.
Possibility 4?
There is "end correction" which means that the air column is effectively somewhat longer than just to the first one hole. In lay terms, this would seem to be to do with the air rushing in and out the tone hole at the far end of the air column, in order to equalise the pressure at the end of the air column to atmospheric, but all this rushing air cannot all happen exactly at the beginning of the first tone hole. It happens even beyond the first open tone hole.
So, if we are playing loudly, presumably the air rushes greater distances, because of the amplitude of the air's vibration. So does the end correction increase a little with louder notes, increasing the effective length of the air column? No? Well I keep trying. :-)
Post Edited (2008-10-23 13:17)
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-23 13:28
Gordon - it seems to be common sense that it is true. But it doesn't feel like that. The reed feels exactly the same to me whether I am playing F3 or C5, or any note in between. I would like to know what happens if you measure the vibration of the reed, using some experimental setup that isn't affected by the pitch the clarinet is producing.
If I play different notes on the trombone (playing the trombone properly, that is to say) then I can clearly feel the different frequencies in my lip. On the clarinet, no.
I don't buy the end correction argument because it clearly does not apply to the flute. More convincingly still, it does not apply to the recorder, where embouchure adjustments play no part, and the pitch rises very significantly as the player blows harder.
Of course, it may be that the end correction argument is correct, it is merely that there is some additional factor that applies to the flute and recorder, which sharpens the pitch more than the end correction flattens it.
This is why we need measurements, not surmise. Fun though it may be to blow into different instruments, and weird hybrid instruments, to hear what happens.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-10-23 13:54
"Chris got it wrong about the oboe. When you blow harder without changing the embouchure it gets sharper.
That's why we oboe players need to tighten the embouchure to play softer. It's completely different from clarinet and one of the things that I had the most trouble getting used to when I started playing clarinet after playing oboe for 30 years."
How come so many inexperienced (or ones that have been playing for ages yet haven't learnt about volume control) oboe players that play loudly also play flat?
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2008-10-23 14:25
On flute the effect is called the Aeolian effect. I remember reading about this in a series of books by Mather. On flute the tendencies are opposite the clarinet. ie loud=sharp soft=flat.
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-23 14:41
Well, my favorite clarinet acoustics website says that when you blow a soft reed it travels further from the mouthpiece than a hard reed would, thus increasing the effective length of the air column in the instrument. (To be more specific, they say that it effectively increases "the volume of the mouthpiece") That causes the pitch to flatten.
It seems like that same explanation would also apply when you play more loudly, since playing loudly on a not so soft reed means that higher air pressure of the vibrating air column more readily overcomes the bending resistance of the reed and makes it flex more--which is the same thing that happens when you blow not as hard on a soft reed.
Post Edited (2008-10-24 15:36)
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2008-10-23 16:25
Using the piano as an example we can answer this question. A few basic rules-
1. The length of a *vibrating* portion of string determines pitch.
2. The sting is under tension.
(This is the big one) 3. Like all materials in the universe, the metal the string is made of has its own natural stiffness.
-
When a note is played on piano, the energy from the hammer has to overcome the forces from 2, and 3 to get it moving. Due to item 3, however, the points at both ends of the string do not vibrate. Thus, the length of the vibrating portion of the string is very slightly shorter than the actual length of the string.
Comparing striking a key with a lot or little force...
If one were to strike a key on the piano very hard, using a lot of force, the initial pitch will be lower than if the key were pushed softly. Why?
As above, "When a note is played on piano, the force of the hammer has to overcome the forces from 2, and 3 to get it moving." If you push the key hard, the hammer puts a large amount of energy into the string. This energy distributes itself throughout the string and then throughout the piano and air around the piano (but let's just talk about the string). Point 3 becomes very important here.
If the energy is great, the energy will overcome SOME of the natural stiffness at the endpoints. In this case the vibrating portion of the string becomes longer. Thus, the pitch goes down. This is momentary and the string will soon distribute the excess energy and the "endpoint stiffness" will make the vibrating string shorter again- raising pitch. As the note continues, the energy will continue to dissipate and natural stiffness of the metal will continue to make the vibrating length shorter. The very last moments of a note are slightly higher pitched than the period before it. Eventually, the metal will completely overcome the dissipating energy and the vibration will stop.
So, does this mean that every note on every string instrument is increasing in pitch from start to finish? Technically, yes; but it is so slight that it cannot be noticed in normal performance. It can be noticed in the extremes, though. "Banging" on the piano will produce the slightly lowered initial pitch and one can hear the increased pitch by listening to the very last moments of the note (perhaps by placing one's ear against the piano).
This is even more easily apparent in plucking a guitar sting very hard.
Now for clarinet...
The reed has it's own natural stiffness. If the cutoff point of the reed (like maybe the start of the facing curve) and size of the aperture is constant (ie. no change in the mouth position or jaw pressure, etc) the pitch will go down when pushing more air and sharp pushing less.
However, playing winds allows us to adjust all these things so that we actually can play very loud or soft and adjust other things to compensate.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2008-10-23 16:42
Plus, as players play a long fff, they're relatively fast getting CO2-enriched air from the bottom of their lungs, which flattens the pitch additionally.
--
Ben
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-23 16:56
skygardener - this is all very plausible, but:
- Can you give me a reference to a publication that explains this, preferably a peer-reviewed journal or a textbook? I'd like to know the experimental evidence that demonstrates that your explanation is correct, not merely plausible.
- How can you explain the observations given above, that a sharpening rather than a flattening effect is found on a boxwood clarinet (Liquorice) and on a tube borrowed from a trombone (my experiment)?
tictactux:
I suspect you are joking. But maybe you are serious. I don't deny that CO2 in the breath affects pitch. I cannot believe it is the cause of the flattening with increased volume. An experiment with a clarinet-playing machine would, of course, immediately tell us one way or the other.
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Author: wrowand
Date: 2008-10-23 17:40
Maybe because they are overcompensating. Or maybe he just seems flatter in comparison to the flute player sitting next to him who is pushing the pitch even higher :-).
One of the exercises I have my oboe students do is to play a note, then allow the reed to open (I don't say relax the embouchure, it more about create a larger space between the lips). Then when the note goes flat, as it always does, I have them blow more air to bring the note back up to pitch. This gives them a tangible experience of the relationship between embouchure, air and pitch.
You can do the same with the position of the lips on the reed. Generally, the closer you play to the tip of the reed the flatter the pitch (and the more covered the tone color). So you can move to the tip of the reed, changing the color, then you can then increase the air and push the pitch up without changing the embouchure.
This is for oboe. It's even a little bit different on english horn. On english horn, if one tries to make a diminuendo (staying on pitch of course) using the same embouchure changes that work for the oboe, english horn usually goes too sharp.
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2008-10-23 18:52
Regarding the english horn doesn't your exercise work on english horn just like the oboe?
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2008-10-23 21:59
Norbert wrote:
"I don't buy the end correction argument because it clearly does not apply to the flute. More convincingly still, it does not apply to the recorder, where embouchure adjustments play no part, and the pitch rises very significantly as the player blows harder.
Of course, it may be that the end correction argument is correct, it is merely that there is some additional factor that applies to the flute and recorder, which sharpens the pitch more than the end correction flattens it."
There is indeed a significant additional factor for flute and recorder. When we play loud we alter characteristics of the airstream from the lips. And that airstream is effectively our reed. It 'vibrates' up and down as it travels across the embouchure hole.
BTW, regarding "Possibility 1" in my post of 2008-10-23 12:23... I expressed this poorly. The following article does not mention pitch but is interesting all the same:
See third chapter, "Playing Softly and Loudly", at http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/clarinetacoustics.html
That document (from a highly respected source) probably says something about the frequency of the reed matching the fundamental of the note as well.
Post Edited (2008-10-23 22:02)
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2008-10-23 22:17
Norbert- I was taught this by a piano tuner. Maybe there is a piano tuner related journal that has information on this, but I have not looked.
As far as the experements mentioned above, I can only assume that the player is doing something to bring the pitch up.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2008-10-23 23:09
> I suspect you are joking. But maybe you are serious.
I wasn't joking, for a change.
There are numerous threads discussing "fresh breath" vs "stale breath" pitch.
--
Ben
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Author: FDF
Date: 2008-10-23 23:27
wow, what a great thread. Underlining that clarinet playing and music in general is not a science, but an art.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2008-10-24 00:53
A bit semantic.
what is a science?
What is an art?
What do you call the area where science and art sets intersect?
When the detail of an art is understood, to what extent does it become a science?
To what extent is putting science into practice an art....
(Rhetorical questions) :-)
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Author: Koo Young Chung
Date: 2008-10-24 00:58
This is a basic physics stuff..
I'll give an example why when the amplitude gets bigger,the pitch gets lower.
Same principle applies when clarinet reeds or (Galileo's clock's)pendulum swings(vibrates).
When the amplitude is (relatively) small, the pitch remains same,but as amplitude gets bigger pitch(frequency ) gets lower.
When the amplitude is small,we(physicist) call it a harmonic oscillation.
(It obeys simple harmonic equation(almost), which gives same frequency regardless of amplitude.)
When the amplitude gets bigger,the terms we neglected when the amplitude is small, cannot be ignored any more,and the original vibrational equation is not harmonic any more,which gives you a solution whose frequency(pitch) depends on the amplitude.
There is no (neat) analytic solution for this general cases,you have to solve it with higher order terms.
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Author: D Dow
Date: 2008-10-24 01:03
Would not one naturally adjust the embouchure to allow the pitch to play in tune?
David Dow
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Author: wrowand
Date: 2008-10-24 01:51
Yes, it works pretty much the same, the differences are subtle but important.
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Author: jeeves
Date: 2008-10-24 02:04
Could be lies about Cohler goin' to harvard
Post Edited (2008-10-24 02:06)
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2008-10-24 02:59
FDF wrote:
>> Underlining that clarinet playing and music in general is not a science, but an art.
I wouldn't say that something leaves the scientific realm simply because a bunch of clarinet enthusiasts on the internets can't come to a consensus on which untested theory or questionably-applicable principle is the explanation for something...
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Nessie1
Date: 2008-10-24 07:54
Personally, I am one of those who believe that music is both a science and an art.
Vanessa.
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Author: graham
Date: 2008-10-24 08:35
This thread seems to lack a basic raw ingredient. If we accept that clarinets play flatter the harder you blow, then the first thing we need to observe is whether that relationship is ordinary linear or whether it varies to extent at any point from extreme quietness to ultimate loudness. If (as I suspect) the flattenning becomes far more pronounced as the dynamic tends towards the greatest possible from a given mouthpiece/reed combination, then that would point to theories relating to the behaviour of the reed. If it was more linear, then that might suggest that end correction or the gaseous make up of the air column could be more credible. If it were possible to show that Reed X goes louder than Reed Y is able to go before it starts to perform flat at all, and that Reed Y therefore suffers flatness as a result of being pushed to the far extent of its performance abilities, (and assuming the same mouthpiece is used) then that must surely point to a cause inherently focused on the reed.
The question then would be: "why?", but at least some variables would be removed.
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-24 08:42
I'm interested in answering this from a purely scientific standpoint. I strongly suspect that we'll only get an answer from a clarinet played artificially, rather than by a person.
To summarise....
Is it actually true that the clarinet gets flatter when you play louder?
- Most of us think it is true.
- Liquorice claims that (some notes of) the classical clarinet get sharper.
- I claim that a clarinet mouthpiece coupled to a purely cylindrical pipe gets sharper, not flatter.
- Neidich claims that the effect is caused by the player, not the instrument. In other words, the effect would not be shown by an artificially-played clarinet.
Assuming the effect is real, at least for some clarinets, we have a number of possible explanations (and of course there may be more than one valid explanation)
- Several people think it is caused by the vibration frequency of the reed. There are several variations on this argument, but they all boil down to the idea that the reed will vibrate slightly more slowly as the amplitude of vibration increases. I have pointed out that we don't seem to have any proof that the vibration frequency of the reed is the same as that of the instrument - even though that might seem like common sense.
- mrn thinks it is caused indirectly by the reed; as the reed amplitude increases, this effectively makes the chamber of the mouthpiece larger, causing the pitch to drop. He deduces this from the UNSW website, though the website does not make this claim in exactly this form.
- Gordon thinks it is nothing to do with the reed, but is caused by an increase in end-correction. It would therefore occur in all wind instruments; in Gordon's view, we do not observe it in flutes and recorders because the flattening effect of end-correction is drowned out by the sharpening effects from other causes.
- tictactux thinks it is related to the well-known phenomenon whereby pitch drops as the CO2 concentration of the breath increases.
- Cohler thinks that we perceive a flattening effect because the timbre is changing. In his view, a loud note contains a greater proportion of the higher partials than a quiet note does. Since the higher partials are flat relative to the fundamental, loud notes sound flat.
Although I have questioned Cohler's credentials as a scientist (I don't doubt that he has a Harvard physics degree, I merely question its relevance), I am tending to the view that he is right. But I really would like some real scientific evidence.
Post Edited (2008-10-24 08:51)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-10-24 10:51
Norbert wrote:
>> "preferably not "I'm sure there is something about it somewhere in Benade".>>
Well, it is in Benade; and although what Cohler writes is wrong, because he thinks that the spectrum of a clarinet sound can be anharmonic, the explanation does lie, at least in part, in the fact that the normal modes of resonance of a clarinet tube AREN'T harmonic.
In the thread about vibrato, I cited a post of mine:
http://www.woodwind.org/Databases/Logs/1999/01/000043.txt
...that does mention it:
"Because of the anharmonicity of the modes of resonance of the instrument (not the anharmonicity of the resultant *sound*), the perceived pitch in the steady state may be different from the fundamental corresponding to the length of tube. According to Benade (Physics of wind instrument tone and response, 1971) the fundamental frequency locks into position in such a way as to maximise the weighted average height of all resonance values R1, R2, R3,.... corresponding to the harmonics f1, 2f1, 3f1,....
"This is a bit arcane, but the message is that though the pitch of a note on the clarinet may depend on the dynamic, the resultant sound for 'normal' behaviour of the reed is *always* harmonic, though it may be more or less rich, or indeed have a different pitch, according as the sequence of normal modes of vibration of the clarinet are more or less harmonic."
There's a bit more I can say about the effect of different sorts of mouthpiece lay (can't remember what you call that in US), which I'll write when I've more time.
Neidich was clearly wanting to say that a player can compensate for these things, which is true; but there is no getting round the fact that, all other things being equal, the pitch of a clarinet tube which has particularly anharmonic resonances is a function of the dynamic. And it's in the direction of being flat, because as you can easily check, the B overblown from low E is flat, and the expected (harmonic) G# so much flatter that it's more like a G. (Note that the resonances of a cylindrical tube will be more harmonically related than those of a real clarinet.)
Tony
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-24 11:17
Tony, thanks for your reply. I think I have a reasonable grasp of elementary (A-level and a bit) physics and (A-level and quite a lot) maths, but I'm not entirely sure I have grasped the distinctions you are making.
Let me try to say in plain(-er) English what I think Cohler was saying:
"If we play the note C4, then as well as this fundamental we shall also hear its harmonics G5, E6 etc. However, the harmonics we hear will be flat relative to the fundamental. The note that we perceive (or that an electronic tuner measures) is the result of a 'weighted average' of these different pitches. So if the C4 component is the strongest, and the higher harmonics are weak, then the pitch we hear will be determined largely by the C4. At piano, this is indeed what happens. At forte, however, the higher harmonics become emphasised over the lower ones. They become the main determinants of the perceived pitch, so the pitch we perceive is flatter than at piano."
If Cohler is right, then we shall be able to demonstrate this using a spectrum analyser; the different harmonics will be out of tune with each other. Their frequencies will not change with volume, but their relative intensities will.
I think you are saying: "Cohler is right to claim that the harmonics are inherently out of tune. However, the 'weighted average' process is not taking place in our ears, as Cohler seems to imply. It is taking place in the instrument. Although the instrument inherently wants to produce out-of-tune harmonics, the laws of physics don't let it do so; the harmonics influence each other so the sound waves that come out of the instrument are exactly in tune with one another."
If you are right, then the spectrum analyser will give a different result. It will show that the harmonics will always be in tune with each other, but their frequencies will change with volume.
So my questions are:
- Where can I find experimental results that show that the spectrum analyser does indeed behave as your explanation predicts?
- If the spectrum analyser behaved as Cohler seems to predict, then I think that would be very strong evidence that his explanation is correct. But if it behaves as you predict, I'm not sure that it proves that your explanation is correct (though it does disprove Cohler's explanation). Can you give me any other experimental evidence for your explanation?
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2008-10-24 12:56
Excuse my non science interruption. After playing several clarinet harmonics from several series I find the harmonics are rather stable compared to the fundamental. Any fluctuation in pitch is more attributable to lip pressure on the reed than the dynamic .
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: Bassie
Date: 2008-10-24 13:02
> the harmonics will always be in tune with each other, but their frequencies will change with volume.
Makes sense to me. This is what a pendulum does at large amplitude.
*
So, do instruments which play sharper with increasing volume have higher modes which are slightly sharp?
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-10-24 13:07
Norbert wrote:
>> Where can I find experimental results that show that the spectrum analyser does indeed behave as your explanation predicts?>>
I once believed that there could be anharmonic partials in certain sorts of clarinet sound, and went to Cambridge university and played about with some equipment with a my friend Michael McIntyre and his collaborator Jim Woodhouse.
I was wrong, of course. But in any case, the theory is well-established; periodic sounds can be Fourier-analysed into harmonic components. It's a matter of mathematics.
Just to kill this controversy off: I wrote to Cohler about the matter around a year ago, and his response was to agree with me. He said he would look again at his post, and perhaps change it.
But he hasn't. (I really do think he should, by the way.)
Here is an extract from what he said at the time:
>> That article on vibrato is a very old post of mine, and was written in quite a bit of haste. I haven't gone back and read it recently, but perhaps there is some misleading wording in it and probably a few errors. I was trying to write it so that non-physics people could understand it. Let me briefly try and restate the point you refer to here. I think we are in agreement, actually.
>> The resonant modes of the clarinet tube are aligned slightly flat of the 3rd, 5th and 7th multiples of any fundamental. When the coupled reed/tube system vibrates its regime of oscillation (as Arthur Benade called it) is influenced by the amount of 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th etc partials that are present in the sound. The more upper partials that are present, the flatter the overall pitch becomes because those flat upper modes of the tube pull the oscillating regime down to where they want to be.
>> But you are correct that the resulting sound has only perfect integer multiples of the fundamental frequency of the coupled system as driven.
>> Benade also showed that for most of the dynamic range of the clarinet the amount of upper partials in the sound grows in strength faster than lower partials. This is why the clarinet sound gets brighter as one makes a crescendo, and this is also why the pitch gets flatter. The player has some degree of control over the pitch change by changing the pressure on the reed and the oral cavity. But with a fixed embouchure and pressure the pitch goes down with increased loudness and up with decreased loudness.>>
(He then went on to try to convince me about the necessity for vibrato -- in which he had little success, as you can imagine.)
The moral is that you have to be careful about distinguishing the normal modes of oscillation of a clarinet -- the series you get when you overblow a low E -- and the (harmonic) partials present in a sustained sounding of that low E. Michelle Gingras gets that all wrong in her 'Clarinet Secrets' book, as I complained in the Clarinet and Saxophone Society magazine. She may have changed it in later editions.
I still haven't said the bit about the mouthpiece FACINGS, I now remember you lot call them. But I will....
Tony
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2008-10-24 14:06
Tony- it's good that you are in on this discussion. I am curious- do you also experience the pitch getting SHARPER when you play LOUDER on certain notes on a classical boxwood clarinet? If so, do you have any idea why this is so?
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-24 14:44
Well, if flatness is induced by an increase in upper partials, it's easy to see where the upper partials come from when you're playing loudly. When you play loudly, the reed vibration becomes less sinusoidal because the reed closes up on the mouthpiece facing for a longer period of time. Instead what you get is something that looks like a clipped sinusoid. Clipped sinusoids contain lots of upper partials. (A *perfect* sinusoid, of course, contains only a fundamental--reeds never make perfect sinusoids, though)
In fact, this is one of the tricks that electrical engineers use to double or triple the frequency of a signal. They use some kind of non-linear component such as a diode or transistor to clip a sinusoidal signal. That introduces harmonics. Then they pass the clipped signal through a filter to filter out everything but the harmonic they want. Presto...instant frequency doubling, tripling, etc... Most FM radios equipped with stereo have a circuit like this to assist in decoding the stereo portion of the signal.
It's also why a lot of people prefer the "warm" sound of vacuum tube (valve) audio equipment. Tubes don't clip abruptly like transistors do. Instead, they sort of round off the signal, generating more low-order harmonics and fewer high-order ones (especially the high-order odd harmonics, which tend to make the sound more "harsh" or "brittle").
Post Edited (2008-10-24 14:56)
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-24 14:48
Perhaps my old article on vibrato wasn't totally clear in the language regarding why the clarinet DOES tend flatter as you play louder. Before I explain, I should say this is not a matter of opinion, but one of well-understood scientific fact.
This also does not change the fact that a player has a significant degree of pitch control at his disposal by how he adjusts his embouchure and oral cavity. Those are completely independent parameters which can cause the pitch to go up or down to varying degrees depending on what note is being played, the dynamic, the reed response and the particular mouthpiece being used.
But leaving all of those parameters out of the discussion (i.e. keeping them as fixed variables), the pitch of the clarinet goes down as blowing pressure increases and up as blowing pressure decreases. The amount of the pitch change is different on different notes. Some are more stable than others.
In fact, clarinets are purposely designed this way by clarinet makers, and the reasons for it are quite technical to explain, but suffice it to say that when the clarinet it designed so that this doesn't happen, which is certainly possible, the instrument ends up being much more out of tune and has other undesirable playing characteristics.
Here is the quick explanation of where the flattening comes from (sorry for the length). If the clarinet were a perfect cylinder (which it is not), it would have resonant modes at exactly 1f, 3f, 5f, etc... where f is the fundamental frequency of a given fingering. Because of the aforementioned manufacturing compromises which are needed to make a good instrument, however, the bore is NOT a perfect cylinder and so the resonant modes of the tube are actually 1f, 3f-e1, 5f-e2, .... where e1, e2 etc... are small perturbations.
When you blow into the clarinet you force the reed and air column to vibrate in concert with the reed in what Arthur Benade (not to be confused with Daniel Bonade) called a "regime of oscillation" which produces a purely harmonic sound. As you are taught in Physics 101, harmonic sounds have only perfectly harmonic (i.e. integer multiple) frequency components. So the produced sound has a harmonic spectrum consisting of components at 1F, 2F, 3F, 4F... etc... where F is close to f mentioned previously. (Yes, there are even partials in the sound, but that's a whole other discussion.)
When we blow very softly the resonance peak of the tube at 1f dominates the "regime of oscillation" so F is very close to f. But as we blow louder and louder the reed produces more and more of upper partials in the sound (see Benade pp 441-442 of "Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics") and the resonant modes of the tube at 3f-e1 and 5f-e2 etc.. become more influential in the regime. These flat tube modes "pull" the frequency of the "regime of oscillation" (i.e. the reed/air column coupled system) downward.
By the way, none of this is new stuff. As Benade points out on p. 395 of FMA, "The usefulness of the harmonically related air-column resonances in fostering stable oscillations sustained by a reed-valve was first pointed out by the French physicist Henri Bouasse in his book "Instruments a Vent", the two volumes of which appeared in 1929 and 1930." He goes on to point out on p. 441, "In 1971, Walter Worman completed a very detailed study of the way in which regimes of oscillation set themselves up in wind instruments... his results give us a mathematical basis for ... a quantitative understanding of Bouasse's observations of intermode cooperations as they take place in all kinds of instruments."
Without getting into the math, he showed precisely what I just explained above.
So to summarize:
1. Does the clarinet get flatter as one blows harder? YES (Does the instrument get sharper as one blows less hard? YES)
2. Can one compensate for that with the mouth? YES to varying degrees
3. Are the upper partials of the produced sound flat? NO they are always integer multiples of the fundamental sounding frequency F.
4. Are the upper resonant modes of the clarinet tube flat? YES they are tuned this way on purpose to make the instrument more playable.
5. F does not equal but is close to f. F is the frequency of the created regime of oscillation which will depend on the mouth, reed, moutpiece and air pressure of the note being played.
For more detailed info, see "Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics" by Arthur Benade, Dover Publications, Inc. (http://store.doverpublications.com/048626484x.html).
Best regards,
Jonathan Cohler
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-24 15:09
For the record, I did indeed graduate from Harvard in 1980 with a degree in Physics and was a Teaching Fellow in Physics during my time there.
But none of the information I have presented here was invented by me and its veracity has nothing to do with the presenter. Unfortunately, in this day where political mumbo jumbo masquerades as science, people spend far too much time talking about the messenger rather than the message. In science, it's the information, the theory, and the experimental data that matter.
There have been numerous physicists that have studied this subject over the last hundred years or so. Arthur Benade was one of the most well known and most recent in the field. His book has an extensive bibliography with hundreds of references to all the original work if anyone is interested.
As I said, and as Tony Pay related, my original post, in an effort to make it more understandable to non-physicists, may have had some confused wording in it, but the bottom line is as I have stated it here.
Tony, you suggest that I update my old posting...How can I do that? I would be happy to do so, what do you suggest?
Best,
Jonathan Cohler
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2008-10-24 15:23
cohler wrote:
> Tony, you suggest that I update my old posting...How can I do
> that? I would be happy to do so, what do you suggest?
Tony can't, but I can ... just send it to me.
Hi Jonathan.
Mark Charette
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-24 15:29
Will do.
While I am at it, I'll add some interesting information to the vibrato discussion, that I recently wrote for the program notes in my latest CD "Rhapsodie Francaise".
Thanks, Mark!
Best,
Jonathan
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-24 16:02
cohler wrote:
> While I am at it, I'll add some interesting information to the
> vibrato discussion, that I recently wrote for the program notes
> in my latest CD "Rhapsodie Francaise".
It's great to see you here on the BBoard! Welcome!
I had a question relating to something else in the article I was hoping you could answer. You mentioned in the article that Charles Neidich had obtained some evidence that indicated that Anton Stadler may have played with vibrato. Can you recall what that was or if anything else has been discovered since then?
Thanks!
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-24 22:00
He said there were some letters that indicated Stadler played with singerly qualities and compared him to the sopranos in the operas, which implied vibrato. I have not seen those letters myself, but maybe Dan Leeson or someone else knows more about this...
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2008-10-24 22:44
cohler wrote: "some letters that indicated Stadler played with singerly qualities and compared him to the sopranos in the operas, which implied vibrato. "
There is a gaping fault in this logic:
1. Modern singers use vibrato
2. An 18th century clarinetist was compared to singers of his time
3. Therefore he must have played with vibrato
The problem is that singers contemporary with Stadler didn't use vibrato in the modern sense. Here's what the famous singing teacher Manuel Garcia said as late as 1840 about the frequent use of vibrato:
"An artist who has contracted this intolerable habit, becomes thereby incapable of phrasing any kind of sustained song whatsoever. Many fine voices have been thus lost to the art."
Garrcia, Manuel Particio Rodriguez, 'Traité complet de l'art du chant' (Paris, 1840)
There are other qualities which opera singers may have had which commentators could have been comparing Stadler to, eg. beauty of tone, dramatic use of dynamics and tone colours, quality of phrasing and legato. To give this as "proof" that Stadler used vibrato is a very feeble argument. To me it seems more like an excuse to validate one's own taste in the use of vibrato. I'd much rather Neidich said "I use vibrato in Mozart because I like it" than to come up with some psuedo-historical argument.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-10-24 23:09
Jonathan Cohler wrote, an it please god:
>> Yes, sorry, I goofed. I said that the overtones of a clarinet sound got flatter as they went up, and then made matters worse by providing a totally spurious explanation, involving white noise and all sorts of other nonsense, of why that was. Sorry to have misled you all.>>
Well, in the face of such a nice apology, it seems churlish to comment further. But when you wrote:
>> ...perhaps there is some misleading wording in it and probably a few errors. I was trying to write it so that non-physics people could understand it.>>
...I think I want to say that one should be particularly careful to be accurate when providing explanations for 'non-physics' people who don't have ONE'S OWN DEEP UNDERSTANDING of these matters.
This thread owes its existence to Norbert's enquiring mind. Congratulations to him on pursuing the matter, and chasing up what he saw as inconsistencies.
I noticed the difficulty with that part of your 'vibrato' post at the very beginning, and said so on the Klarinet list to no effect; I even flagged it by saying, "Mark?" -- to no avail.
Who knows how many other of your readers have blamed themselves for their failure to understand -- which failure was actually yours.
Mike wrote:
>> It's great to see you here on the BBoard! Welcome! >>
Homework, Mike: Find the English translation of the Italian word 'lusingare', as used in the present participle 'lusingando' by Weber in his Gran Duo Concertant.
People who claim to be scientists -- even lapsed scientists -- have to prove themselves by showing their commitment to the truth. Had you (Jonathan) shown even a shred of that, I wouldn't have written this.
Tony
Post Edited (2008-10-24 23:53)
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-24 23:15
Thanks to Jonathan Cohler for answering my question!
Liquorice wrote:
<<The problem is that singers contemporary with Stadler didn't use vibrato in the modern sense. Here's what the famous singing teacher Manuel Garcia said as late as 1840 about the frequent use of vibrato:
"An artist who has contracted this intolerable habit, becomes thereby incapable of phrasing any kind of sustained song whatsoever. Many fine voices have been thus lost to the art.">>
I'm not saying you're wrong, Liquorice, but this quote indicates is that by 1840 many singers DID use vibrato (thus giving rise to Garcia's complaint), even though there were obviously some (like Garcia himself) who felt strongly that it should not be used.
We don't know exactly what those letters regarding Stadler say, exactly, though. It may be that the specific singer-like qualities described in the letters do imply vibrato, although I completely agree with you that if all they do is indicate that Stadler's playing is singer-like in quality, that doesn't, per se, necessarily indicate vibrato.
What it might do, however, is provide someone with a decent rationale for why he/she might want to perform some of Mozart's works *today* with vibrato. A singing style in today's terms might translate into a decent context for vibrato for some players for whom vibrato enhances their sound. A singer today might perform Mozart with vibrato, so a clarinetist who is looking to sound singer-like in the present day might want to use vibrato as a tool to make the clarinet "sing" like a coloratura, though, just as Stadler used whatever stylistic touches he used (whether or not they actually included vibrato).
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-25 01:18
I went and found my post (from Feb 7 1995) in the archives. Paragraph 3 under the Physics section:
3. The flared bell and the tone holes conspire to make all the partials (overtones) on the clarinet flat. As you move to higher partials they get more and more flat. THIS IS THE REASON THE CLARINET SOUNDS FLATTER WHEN YOU BLOW LOUDER. IT IS BECAUSE AS YOU GET LOUDER YOU ARE ADDING MORE AND MORE OF THE FLAT UPPER PARTIALS TO THE SOUND. THIS IS NOT TRUE OF MOST OTHER INSTRUMENTS.
Should be corrected to read as follows:
3. The flared bell and the tone holes conspire to make all the upper tube modes of the clarinet flat. As you move to higher modes they get more and more flat. THIS IS THE REASON THE CLARINET SOUNDS FLATTER WHEN YOU BLOW LOUDER. IT IS BECAUSE AS YOU GET LOUDER YOU ARE ADDING MORE AND MORE OF THE UPPER PARTIALS TO THE SOUND AND THE ENTIRE REGIME OF OSCILLATION IS DRAGGED DOWN IN FREQUENCY BY THE FLAT TUBE MODES. THIS IS NOT TRUE OF MOST OTHER INSTRUMENTS.
As for paragraph 6, I would probably opt to remove it from the post. Reading it now, it seems not so relevant and probably misleading. While it is certainly true that a system can be driven to produce non-harmonicly related tones (multiphonics for example) and all kinds of other noises (think airleak, reed noises etc..), I don't think that the "white noise" is the main driver of the sound production here. In non-noisy, single tone production, the reed's simple vibration, coupled with the air-column vibration, is producing the sound.
Thank you to those that asked for a clarification of this. I haven't paid much attention to it since I wrote it 13 years ago. Tony P. emailed me a question about it in January and that's when I sent him the explanation he quoted on the Board.
The physics section of the post on vibrato was a bit of a digression, and I did it somewhat hastily. While the explanation given wasn't totally lucid, most of it was accurate, and the main points were and are absolutely correct, i.e. the clarinet gets flatter when you blow louder, and the reason is that the upper tube modes are flat. Nobody had pointed out any problems to me until Tony contacted me in January.
Sorry if this caused any confusion.
Hope it is all clear now!
I will send an updated version of the entire post to Mark C. so he can update it for future reference.
Best regards,
Jonathan
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-25 01:30
Check out this article on use of vibrato and other related subjects.
http://www.soundpostonline.com/archive/fall2003/page4.htm
In it, he quotes a letter from Mozart to his father Leopold, in which Mozart states, "The human voice trembles without help, but in such a manner and proportion that it is beautiful, that is the nature of the voice."
Sounds like vibrato to me! :-)
Best,
Jonathan
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Author: GBK
Date: 2008-10-25 01:37
cohler wrote:
> Check out this article on use of vibrato and other related
> subjects.
>
> http://www.soundpostonline.com/archive/fall2003/page4.htm
>
> In it, he quotes a letter from Mozart to his father Leopold, in
> which Mozart states, "The human voice trembles without help,
> but in such a manner and proportion that it is beautiful, that
> is the nature of the voice."
>
> Sounds like vibrato to me! :-)
The full passage:
"...Meissner, as you know, has the bad habit of purposely making his voice tremble, marking thus entire quarter and eighth notes; I never could endure it in him. It is indeed despicable and contrary to all naturalness in song. True the human voice trembles of itself, but only to a degree that the effect is beautiful. Such is in the nature of the voice. We imitate it not only on wind instruments but also on the viols and even on the clavier. But the moment the proper limit is overstepped it is no longer beautiful - because it is contrary to nature..."
...GBK
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-25 01:50
And the passage continues, "It reminds me then of the organ when the bellows are puffing."
That sounds like a BIG vibrato to me.
In fact, Roland John Jackson, in his book Performance Practice, says
"Mozart's comparison with 'organ puffing' suggests the presence of excessive deviations of volume. At the same time, his father, L. Mozart (1756), made reference to certain violinists of his time whose hands shook as if they had palsy, a criticism of excessive pitch digressions. But a number of writerscluding the younger Mozart in the first part of his statement, have praised the presence of vibrato, including Agricola (1528), Ganassi (1543), and Praetorius (1619), all of whom accepted it as a natural component of singing."
--Jonathan
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-25 02:20
If people are interested, by the way, I would be happy to post my notes on the Debussy Premiere Rhapsodie, and my accompanying note on vibrato from my new CD "Rhapsodie Francaise".
There are some very interesting connections there.
--Jonathan
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2008-10-25 06:31
mrn- Garcia did not feel strongly that vibrato should not be used. He writes about it's tasteful and sparing use in a positive way. The above quote was referring to the 'frequent' use of vibrato.
My problem is with the "logic" that says that because the playing of Stadler (Baermann/Mühlfeld, etc) was compared to a human voice, then it's OK to use vibrato whenever and however you feel like it. This is a very incomplete picture, because there is no attempt made to uderstand how singers in Mozart's day used vibrato. Based on hundreds of sources relating to singing and instrumental playing, we can be absolutely certain that they didn't use vibrato in the same way as modern singers and players use it today. The modern usage would definitely fit into Garcia's 'frequent' category, which was deemed by him and many other sources to be lacking in taste.
So I'm not saying that Stadler didn't ever use vibrato. Just that, if he did, it certainly wouldn't have been in the way that Neidich uses vibrato.
You could take the argument a bit further and apply Neidich's logic to the use of portamento. Singers in Mozart's time made use of certain portamenti in particular instances. I'm really looking forward to Neidich's new recording of the Mozart adorned with ornamental smears and glisses between notes because, hey, Stadler sounded like a singer, didn't he?!
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-10-25 12:45
Liquorice wrote:
>> Garcia did not feel strongly that vibrato should not be used. He writes about its tasteful and sparing use in a positive way. The above quote was referring to the 'frequent' use of vibrato.>>
The important point about the Garcia quote is the connection to PHRASING. I know that by now everybody will associate me with an insistence that an understanding of what phrasing meant in the eighteenth century is crucial to the performance of the music of the period, but I can only direct you to it again:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2001/04/000074.txt
...and,
http://www.woodwind.org/clarinet/Study/Phrasing.html
Given that many modern performances don't even consider these issues, the argument about whether or not to use vibrato founders on that word 'use'; if you don't understand WHAT you are using it for, anything you do with it is almost bound to be destructive.
Listening to many modern singers attempting Mozart with their 'sprayed on' vibrato, I have to agree with Garcia that:
"An artist who has contracted this intolerable habit, BECOMES THEREBY INCAPABLE OF PHRASING any kind of sustained song whatsoever. Many fine voices have been thus lost to the art." (my capitals)
Of course, there are other singers who DO understand; and even ones who use almost no vibrato to great effect, because they appreciate that their art is crucially about how to shape the words and phrases in a 'sustained song' (see the first of the links above).
Tony
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-10-25 15:15
"Why does the clarinet get flatter when you play louder?"
'Coz it duz.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2008-10-26 02:09
Norbert , do you still believe this?- You stated " Cohler thinks that we perceive a flattening effect because the timbre is changing. In his view, a loud note contains a greater proportion of the higher partials than a quiet note does. Since the higher partials are flat relative to the fundamental, loud notes sound flat." It seems to me that Cohler says in one post that these partials are in tune. It is the upper resonant modes of the clarinet that are flat. In his 1995 excerpt he says the partials are flat. In any case he categorically states that flatness occurs (not just a subjective flatness).
Secondly have we found the "experimental evidence" that you were looking for?
Freelance woodwind performer
Post Edited (2008-10-26 02:56)
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-26 16:12
No, this is not what I said. We do not perceive a flattening because of a timbre change.
1. There is a timbre change as one blows louder, because the upper partials of the sound grow faster than the lower partials.
2. Because there is relatively more upper partials versus lower partials in louder notes versus softer notes, and because the upper MODES of the tube are flatter, the resulting "regime of oscillation" is therefore rooted at a lower fundamental pitch (which I called F in my post).
So the tube modes are f, 3f-e1, 5f-e2, etc... They never change, because they are a function of the clarinet tube geometry only.
The resulting sound has partials F, 2F, 3F, 4F, etc... where F is close to but slightly lower than f. And F decreases with increasing air pressure into the mouthpiece.
I hope this is clear...
--Jonathan
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-10-26 16:24
Not really.
It's all very well having the formulae and all that other stuff that is beyond most of us. But what really matters is how we as players deal with the problem, and that's something a load of letters and numbers doesn't solve.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-26 16:46
How to deal with the problem is an entirely different question...
To restate things, I assume your question is "How does one keep the pitch constant during dynamic changes, given that the clarinet naturally tends flatter as one plays louder and sharper as one plays softer?"
The answer is a combination of things depending on which note you are playing, and at what dynamic you are starting and finishing the note, but it involves various combinations of the following:
1. Changing embouchure pressure.
2. Changing embouchure position.
3. Changing tongue position.
4. Changing throat position.
5. Changing soft palette position.
6. And yes, even changing the fingering itself.
Of course, small dynamic changes require only small adjustments, and some notes are more subject to the pitch changing with dynamic than others, but those are the basic tools at our disposal, and they can be used in varying degrees and varying combinations.
--Jonathan
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-26 17:49
arnoldstang - I think I now understand pretty well what Jonathan Cohler (one-time physicist) and Tony Pay (one-time mathematician) believe to be the mechanism that causes the pitch of a modern clarinet to drop as the volume of sound increases. I think they are now in agreement that Jonathan's explanation that I cited (the one in UPPER CASE) was potentially misleading. Neither has pointed me to published experimental results, but maybe I just need to spend more time with Benade.
Thank you to both gentlemen for your input.
And yes, I'm sure we'd all be interested to read Jonathan's notes on vibrato and the Premiere Rhapsodie.
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2008-10-26 18:01
If we don't examine this subject we are back to square one which is just accepting Mr Neidich's idea or rejecting it for no good reason. You could argue it doesn't matter either way. Even non scientifically minded musicians are interested a little in why things work. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing but no knowledge is too safe.
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-26 19:54
I did give several references in Benade which will point you to experimental results...
Quotes from previous post:
But as we blow louder and louder the reed produces more and more of upper partials in the sound (see Benade pp 441-442 of "Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics") and the resonant modes of the tube at 3f-e1 and 5f-e2 etc.. become more influential in the regime.
>>>
By the way, none of this is new stuff. As Benade points out on p. 395 of FMA, "The usefulness of the harmonically related air-column resonances in fostering stable oscillations sustained by a reed-valve was first pointed out by the French physicist Henri Bouasse in his book "Instruments a Vent", the two volumes of which appeared in 1929 and 1930." He goes on to point out on p. 441, "In 1971, Walter Worman completed a very detailed study of the way in which regimes of oscillation set themselves up in wind instruments... his results give us a mathematical basis for ... a quantitative understanding of Bouasse's observations of intermode cooperations as they take place in all kinds of instruments."
>>>>>
Here are some bibliographical references for further research:
1. Henri Bouasse, Instruments a Vent, 2 vols. (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1929 and 1930).
2. John Backus, "Small Vibration Theory of the Clarinet," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 35 (1963).
3. Cornelis J. Nederveen, "Acoustical Aspects of Woodwind Instruments" (Amsterdam: Frits Knuf 1969).
4. Walter E. Worman, "Self-Sustained Nonlinear Oscillations of Medium Amplitude in Clarinet-like Systems" (Ph.D. dissertation, Cae Western Reserve University; Cleveland, Ohio, 1971).
As a footnote, in 1830 the German physicist Wilhelm Weber did research with organ pipes to figure out how a reed works with an air-column. His work was later extended by Bouasse in his 1929 work. Bouasse's work was extended in 1963 by Backus. And Backus' work was extended by Nederveen in 1969. Worman came next, and Worman worked with Benade who further extended all of this stuff.
The reason we can change the pitch with our mouth (lips, tongue, throat etc...) is summarized nicely on p. 436 of FMA, where Benade writes:
"1. The resonance frequencies of an air column terminated by a reed are always lowered by the reed's presence..."
"2. Changes in the reed's natural frequency (produced for example by changes in the way in which it is pressed onto its mouthpiece by the player) produce small but parallel changes in the air-column modes that lie far below the reed's natural frequency. These changes become progressively larger for higher modes that lie nearer to the reed frequency."
BTW, this is also the beginning of the reason why it is so critical to adjust the pressure point of your lower jaw (teeth) against the reed when playing in the altissimo register.
Also, as a further note, Benade has a whole lote of unpublished papers that delve further into the physics of the clarinet, other instruments and musical acoustics in general.
--Jonathan
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-26 20:05
Here are my notes on the Debussy and vibrato from the CD booklet of Rhapsodie Francaise (copyright Ongaku Records, Inc. provided with permission). These notes are part of a 20-page booklet that ties together the entire French school represented on the CD, so some of it refers to composers and things that were discussed previously in the notes.
I hope you enjoy the notes!
Best,
Jonathan
Claude-Achille Debussy (1862-1918)
Première Rhapsodie (1910)
Claude Debussy, while not a child prodigy like Saint-Saëns, nonetheless entered the Paris Conservatory at the young age of ten in 1872. He spent 12 years at the Conservatory, but from the beginning, Debussy was pugnacious and wanted to go his own way in terms of composition. He studied organ and harmony with César Franck, whose music is known for its frequent and somewhat predictable modulations. In fact, Franck’s students recount that his most frequent admonition in class was “Modulate!” In response to one of these admonitions, Debussy is said to have replied, “Why should I, when I am perfectly happy in this key?” and subsequently changed teachers. Debussy’s independent and unorthodox ways also rubbed Saint-Saëns the wrong way and the two had little regard for each other.
Upon graduating from the Conservatory in 1884, Debussy won the Prix de Rome and he went for the standard four-year residence at Villa Medici in Rome. Debussy had a terrible time there, and in a letter from June 1885 during his stay there he wrote, “I am sure the Institut would not approve for naturally it regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamored of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas.” Debussy was much more interested in color, texture and subtlety in music — sensibilité — and not so much in form. Once asked by a teacher what rules he followed in composition, Debussy replied, “Mon plaisir” (my pleasure). He was indeed outspoken in his thoughts on music albeit on the opposite end of the spectrum from Saint-Saëns.
I am more and more convinced that music, by its very nature, is something that cannot be cast into a traditional and fixed form. It is made up of colors and rhythms. The rest is a lot of humbug invented by frigid imbeciles riding on the backs of the Masters — who, for the most part, wrote almost nothing but period music. Bach alone had an idea of the truth.
Like Saint-Saëns he developed anti-German and anti-Wagner feelings over time and during World War I, he made a statement drawing a stark contrast between the Germanic musical values of length and heaviness with the French values of clarity and elegance. “To a Frenchman, finesse and nuance are the daughters of intelligence.” The Premiére Rhapsodie recorded here is the perfect example of Debussy’s beloved clarity, elegance, finesse and nuance from first note to last.
He wrote the Première Rhapsodie from December 1909 to January 1910 for the 1910 Concours and it was dedicated to Prospère Mimart the eighth professor of clarinet at the Conservatory from 1904 to 1918. The Concours took place on July 14, 1910 and Debussy sat on the jury hearing eleven clarinet students. Only one impressed him; he described the other performances as “straightforward and nondescript.”
Mimart subsequently played the evidently inspiring official premiere on January 16, 1911 in Salle Gaveau, as it was after this performance that Debussy decided to orchestrate the work in that same year. Debussy was no doubt moved by Mimart’s artistry and his beautiful, large and expressive vibrato (which can be heard in a performance of Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock on Grenadilla RGP-1008CD The French Clarinet School Revisited), something that many clarinetists and pedagogues incorrectly claim is not part of the French clarinet tradition. Not only is vibrato part of the tradition, but it was used by one of the most prominent proponents of the tradition (see Note on Vibrato below). Interestingly, Mimart also used a double-lip embouchure with the mouthpiece positioned so that the reed was facing upwards.
Another small controversy that surrounds this work is whether the first two notes of measure 201 are D-sharp and E-natural or D-natural and E-flat as printed in the Durand clarinet/piano edition of the work. Dennis Nygren resolved this issue to my satisfaction in his paper of 1982, The Music for Accompanied Clarinet Solo of Claude Debussy: An Historical Analytical Study of the “Premiere Rhapsodie” and “Petite Piece” (Northwestern University). He shows very clearly that of the four sources, (1) the clarinet/piano autograph, (2) the Durand clarinet/piano edition, (3) the orchestral autograph, and (4) the Durand orchestral score, only (2) shows the D-natural/E-flat.
Nygren points out that Debussy had Durand send him a copy of the published clarinet/piano version (containing D-natural/E-flat) so that he could complete the orchestra version while on vacation in August 1911. It seems highly unlikely that Debussy would change those two notes in the orchestral edition unless to correct an error. Furthermore, the corrected notes agree with the original autograph and are used in several passages throughout the piece. Nowhere else in the piece does the D-natural/E-flat combination occur.
In fact, the only arguments in favor of the D-natural/E-flat are those based on word-of-mouth tradition, which by nature is highly suspect. As children, we have all played the game of “telephone” where you sit in a circle and the first person whispers something in the ear of the next person and so on around the circle. When the message comes full-circle, it is often unrecognizable. Toscanini was so suspect of oral tradition, in fact, that he called it the “memory of the last bad performance.”
Another aspect of this work that has been controversial over the years is the tempi. We know that Debussy was a stickler for tempi, and score markings in general, and he provided precise metronome markings throughout the work. He was often quoted as saying, “There are people who write music, people who edit it, and some … who do what they feel like!” Once when someone suggested an “artist of genius” to Debussy for a part in Pelléas et Mélisande, he replied, “A faithful interpreter is all I need,” a comment very similar to ones made by Igor Stravinsky around the same time.
Despite the clear and consistent markings in all of the scores and parts for the Première Rhapsodie, many French players, and consequently many of their students from all over the world, have for decades ignored these markings because of word-of-mouth traditions handed down through multiple generations of French teachers. I find this highly suspect as there is no documentary evidence of any kind that supports the extremely fast tempi that they advocate in sections that are marked quite a bit slower by Debussy. Furthermore, when played at these fast tempi that diverge widely from Debussy’s markings, it becomes virtually impossible to bring out all of the numerous and important other details in the score.
Debussy made the famous remark about metronome marks to his publisher Durand in a letter of October 9, 1915, “You know what I think about metronome marks: they’re right for a single bar, like roses, with a morning’s life. Only there are ‘those’ who don’t hear music and who take these marks as authority to hear it still less!” So evidently, he doesn’t advocate strict metronomic playing throughout, but the metronome markings are a clear indication of where to begin each marked section.
NOTE ON VIBRATO
Prospère Mimart’s generous use of vibrato draws a curious parallel to that of Richard Mühlfeld and the Brahms clarinet works. Most modern-day clarinetists and pedagogues believe fervently that vibrato should not be used on the clarinet, and especially not on German music such as Brahms on Mozart, but it was, in fact, the big and expressive vibrato of Mühfeld that most likely inspired Brahms to write his clarinet pieces (see program notes in More Cohler on Clarinet, Ongaku Records 024-102). There is even some good evidence dating back to the days of Mozart and his clarinetist Anton Städler that shows he probably also used a healthy vibrato in the playing of the instrument.
Of course, this is what one would logically expect. Vibrato has developed independently on every instrument (that can vibrate) in every kind of music everywhere in the world. In fact, the only kind of music where vibrato is absent is the early music of the church where vibrato was forbidden precisely because it introduced too many earthly connotations into the music.
I have written about the subject of vibrato at length in a 1995 posting to the Klarinet mailing list (klarinet@woodwind.org) and for those who are interested, a copy of it is extant at:
http://www.woodwind.org/clarinet/Study/Vibrato.html
In that article, I did not give any reasons for why it is that most people like and prefer vibrato in music to non-vibrato. In fact, practically to a person, everyone I have met during my lifetime, other than clarinetists who have been trained to believe the opposite, prefers vibrato to non-vibrato. I have come to believe that there are two very important reasons why vibrato is so clearly preferred by virtually everyone.
First, vibrato creates an acoustical impression that is very similar to that of reverberance. In a reverberant space (like a concert hall), the sound bounces off the walls and ceiling and comes at the listener from all directions, adding together to give the pleasant sensation that one is enveloped in the complete sound of the instrument. In a non-reverberant space all we hear is the sound that comes directly at us, which is naturally only a portion of the instrument’s spectrum and it has a very “laser-like” and annoying quality. Vibrato accomplishes a very similar acoustical effect to reverberation.
Second, vibrato adds an entirely independent dimension to the sound. I liken it to color TV (music with vibrato) versus black-and-white TV (music with no vibrato). On a black-and-white TV, you can see everything and understand the action, but it is monochromatic throughout. When color TV came along, it didn’t take long before everyone switched and the movie companies began to colorize all the old classics. One can vary the size, speed and intensity of the vibrato (including using no vibrato at all) independently of all the other musical variables such as loudness, articulation, tempo and tone color. This gives the performer an infinite number of additional combinations that he or she can apply to shape and color the music, and shape and color, after all, is the essence of music as Debussy so aptly points out.
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Author: srattle
Date: 2008-10-26 20:35
Just to play devils advocate with this color tv thing:
This example is completely nullified by photography. We have had the option for color photos for a long time now, but people, many people still use black and white as a photography medium, with unbelievably successful results.
Why is this true? Why is it possible?
It seems to me that b/w photography can really get the the core of what a photography really means. The essence of the artwork, without the distraction of color.
Vibrato is wonderful on an oboe, or a violin, or a voice, but I personally find that the most expressive things of all these instruments are usually when they break away from the vibrato.
When a violinist, or oboist really knows how to form a sound without vibrato so that it is beautiful, and moves in the same way as with vibrato. . .well musically I think it is an amazing thing because you can hear a lot more within it.
Don't get me wrong. I love vibrato in a lot of things. I even like it on the clarinet if it is very artistically done (I use artistic because I don't necessarily mean subtle, just done so that it 'adds' to the music, and doesn't take away from the sound)
but I very rarely want to hear vibrato played to crescendo through a suspension. I also want to hear as much of the emotion coming through the music, and there are some emotions that have a round, fluttery sound, and some that need a piercing, direct sound, and some that need a still, content sound. Not all of those should be played with vibrato. . .right?
If you said all of your sentences with a very soft, and beautiful voice, you probably wouldn't do a very good job of letting someone know you were angry, or sad, or ecstatic, or terrified. . .right?
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2008-10-26 21:04
"but I very rarely want to hear vibrato played to crescendo through a suspension" To me, this is what romantic music is all about. It heightens the intensity. The vibrato doesn't have to remain constant but I want to hear it through a crescendo. You might want to use non vib for a change of pace but for the most part it fits very well into a crescendo.
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-26 22:15
Tony wrote:
<<Homework, Mike: Find the English translation of the Italian word 'lusingare', as used in the present participle 'lusingando' by Weber in his Gran Duo Concertant.>>
Lusingando?? Geez...I was just trying to be amabile (as used by Brahms in the Sonata in Eb major, Op. 120, No. 2).
Just because I think the physics portion of Jonathan's article had quite a number of errors in it and just because I generally belong to the "non-vibrato" camp, doesn't mean I can't be genuinely pleased to see Jonathan join the BBoard, especially since we're discussing *his* article on vibrato, and he was nice enough to join the discussion and entertain questions as well as correct his remarks. (It was his first post here on the BBoard, too.)
Two observations regarding the article's physics discussion I would like to note, since I didn't see them addressed above, are:
1.) Jonathan's statement that any physical system excited by a sinusoidal input will vibrate only at the frequency of the input sinusoid is not quite correct. What is correct, and what I think he meant to say, is that a *linear time-invariant* (LTI) system will vibrate only at the input frequency. Most physical systems are actually not LTI systems, but many physical systems can be modeled as LTI systems because their response is close enough to the linear response that we get useful results by treating them as linear. Many systems (the clarinet reed and mouthpiece combination being one of them) are highly non-linear, however, and will produce harmonics (not just a fundamental) when excited by a sinusoidal input. In fact, all practical oscillators (clarinet mouthpiece/reed being one of them) have some kind of non-linearity to them (if not, we'd all go deaf because our instruments would simply get louder and louder ad infinitum as we play sustained notes).
2.) Just because you can see diaphragm vibrato on a spectrum analyzer doesn't mean that diaphragm vibrato cannot be purely an amplitude modulation phenomenon. As it turns out, even pure amplitude modulation will show up as multiple frequencies on a spectrum analyzer. Here's why:
A sinusoidal AM (amplitude modulation) waveform takes a form like
A * (1 + B * cos(wv * t)) * cos(wn * t),
where A is the average amplitude, B is a constant that defines the amount of amplitude variation allowed in the vibrato, wv is the radian frequency of the vibrato (2 * pi * vibrato frequency), wn is the radian frequency of the note being played (2 * pi * note frequency), and t is time.
If you multiply this out, you get:
A * cos(wn * t) + A * B * cos(wv * t) * cos(wn * t)
Using the trig identity cos(x) * cos(y) = 0.5 * cos (x+y) + 0.5 * cos(x-y) gives you:
A * cos(wn * t) + 0.5 * A * B * cos((wn+wv) * t) + 0.5 * A * B * cos((wn-wv) * t)
In other words, pure "sinusoidal AM vibrato," gives you three spectral components: one at the frequency of the note, one at the difference between the note frequency and the vibrato frequency, and one at the sum of the note frequency and the vibrato frequency. This would show up on a spectrum analyzer.
Of course, if you're dealing with a non-sinusoidal period input, that input still decomposes into a sum of sinusoids, so you get this same "trio" of spectral components at every harmonic of the non-sinusoidal signal. In other words, vibrato adds little "dissonant sinusoids" to each harmonic (the vibrato frequency being the "beat frequency" arising from these extra components.) And if the vibrato itself is not perfectly sinusoidal, then you'll get even more little dissonant sinusoids when you multiply everything out.
That doesn't mean that diaphragm vibrato is necessarily a pure AM process, but it does mean that you can't conclude that diaphragm vibrato isn't AM simply from looking at a spectrum analyzer (which is what the article appears to do). In fact, this is why AM radio stations have 10 kHz of separation between them, because amplitude modulation consumes bandwidth on either side of the carrier wave.
Post Edited (2008-10-26 23:03)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-10-26 23:56
NorbertTheParrot wrote:
> I think they are now in agreement that Jonathan's explanation that I cited (the one in UPPER CASE) was potentially misleading.>>
You mean, WRONG?
Don't YOU start being 'economical with the truth';-) What it was, was WRONG. (It even had a spurious explanation of its wrongness.)
I don't think I've ever encountered such a wriggler as Jonathan. It's easy to see why he left the physics community; they don't put up with that sort of behaviour. He's far better off in the bull***t community of American clarinet playing.
(I especially liked the way he said I emailed him with 'a question', to which he provided 'an explanation'. In fact, I emailed him to tell him that he had his **** up his *** -- politely, of course. He made an excuse, and as we saw, did nothing.)
HOWEVER, the subject isn't done yet. Liquorice wrote:
>> I am curious -- do you also experience the pitch getting SHARPER when you play LOUDER on certain notes on a classical boxwood clarinet? If so, do you have any idea why this is so?>>
I said I would reply to this when I had a bit more time. And my reply is that I DO find this; but in my experience it isn't due to the classical boxwood clarinet but to the mouthpiece/reed setup that you need to play such an instrument effectively.
The truth is that certain sorts of mouthpiece and reed setup reverse the tendency described by Benade -- which means that although the physics of the flattening/dynamic correlation is correct, other things can dominate and even reverse it.
Most people here will play on an essentially French mouthpiece/reed setup. Though not a great deal of research has been done into reed behaviour that I know of (but perhaps I'm wrong: see the summary of at least one paper in:
http://www.speech.kth.se/smac03/abs05_link.html)
...it is perhaps intuitive that the reed on a curved facing tends to come away from the mouthpiece more as the dynamic increases, so that the longer 'pendulum' has a lower frequency. So that is in the same direction as Benade's prediction of flattening with increased dynamic inherent in the clarinet.
On the much less curved long German setup, the pendulum is long to start with -- suggesting that perhaps it shortens as the dynamic increases, giving rise to a sharpening effect.
(I'm guessing here.)
But where I'm NOT guessing is that I can report that playing a German style mouthpiece on an Ottensteiner copy -- a really quite complicated clarinet, with many toneholes -- the 'sharpening with increased dynamic' occurs over the whole range of the instrument, contra the prediction of the 'Benade effect'. Attacks here are sharper than tailoffs, and a sudden increase in dynamic pushes the sound sharper.
In fact, we're playing Tchaikovsky's music for Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, and other things, with the OAE at the moment, and I have to say that keeping the quiet, low clarinet notes in tune is much more tractable than on a French setup for this very reason.
So 'the clarinet' DOESN'T always get flatter when you play louder, even though almost all of YOUR clarinets do.
Tony
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-27 05:21
Vulgar ad-hominem attacks don't help you make a scientific case, Tony.
Yes, as I already stated a few times, the mouth, jaw pressure, lips, tongue, throat and entire vocal tract have an impact on not only the stability of notes (as shown by Benade) but also can have a significant impact on pitch.
This is entirely independent of, and seperate from, the fact that the clarinet gets flatter with increased blowing pressure.
1. To quote Benade (p. 436, FMA):
"The resonance frequencies of an air column terminated by a reed are always lowered by the reed's presence."
>>>>
2. Furthermore, if the tube is designed with flat upper modes, which the flare at either end creates, then the resultant pitch will go flatter with increased air pressure. I suppose it is possible to design an instrument with sharp upper modes (at least for some of the fingerings), which would have the reverse effect. Perhaps, the Ottensteiner copy that you mention has sharp upper tube modes. You could certainly measure that with a sine-wave generator and a microphone to record the result as you sweep through the frequency range.
You could also test the modes by squeaking through the upper partials using low-register fingerings. If those are flat then the upper tube modes are flat.
I have never seen, played or heard of a clarinet that didn't have flat upper tube modes. It would necessarily be a very out of tune and difficult to control instrument with all kinds of timbre problems.
>>>>
3. As I stated in my email to you and in my message to this Board, paragraph 3 of my Physics section of my 15-year-old posting had some unclear wording, which I have now corrected thanks to you pointing it out to me. I also removed paragraph 7. Prior to your message, noone had ever pointed out to me the confusion, and I had not gone back to restudy my 15-year-old posting, especially since I had never received a criticism of it in 15 years. It is after-all, not a peer-reviewed scientific publication, but a quick post made to a clarinet discussion list! :-) As you can see from the correctly worded correction (and yes there are frequently corrections made to scientific publications by all sorts of scientists and even mathematicians! Even the guy who solved Fermat's last conjecture--incorrectly the first time!) there are subtle differences between the terms "tube modes," "resonant frequencies," "partials," "harmonics," etc... and that is where my explanation was confused.
However, the fundamental statement was and is correct (as was most everything in the post): the clarinet gets flatter with increased blowing pressure. And the reason for this is that the upper modes of the tube are flat. End of story.
Sorry that my post wasn't perfect.
Best regards,
Jonathan
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-27 05:30
The air-column of a clarinet is a very linear system.
And yes, I was referring to linear systems, but didn't want to get into the explanation of what is a linear system.
--Jonathan
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-10-27 05:40
Is that a system of lines? |||||| _______-------|||///////\\\\\\\\
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-27 06:41
I'm just conjecturing here, but it seems that the natural tendency of wind instruments in general is to go sharp with increased airflow. According to one reference I own on the subject, this happens in a flute due to the increase in velocity of the airstream: the edgetone frequency produced by a flute (or a recorder) is directly proportional to the air velocity and inversely proportional to the wavelength. (Same sort of relation between speed, frequency, and wavelength as you find in electromagnetic waves) Also, if I understand correctly, all other things equal, the instrument resonates a higher frequency with a greater air velocity than with a lower air velocity.
Now if the flatness of upper mode partials in a clarinet is due, at least in part, to the flaring that occurs prior to and in the bell of the instrument, if the instrument is more cylindrical than a typical French clarinet (like many German clarinets are), perhaps the usual tendency toward sharpness found in other wind instruments without as much flare will prevail instead of the usual tendency toward flatness. So perhaps if an Ottensteiner is more cylindrical, along the lines of your typical German clarinet, this might explain part of what is going on. It would be interesting to see if this theory would hold with an Oehler- or Reform-Boehm-type instrument.
I realize that a clarinet is a relatively low-flow, high-impedance instrument (so air flow rates in a clarinet are always very much on the low side), but if we are talking about relative differences between flow rates at loud and soft dynamics, perhaps this is enough to make somewhat of a difference in the resonance characteristic of the instrument. (Again, I'm just throwing out ideas, here.)
Also, it would seem that if the instrument we are talking about has relatively leaky pads (I have to confess that my knowledge of period clarinets is very limited, so I don't know if this even applies to the Ottensteiner), then the decreased Q of the instrument's resonance peaks caused by the slight leakiness could mean that even if the upper tube mode resonance peaks are on the flat side (meaning flat in pitch), they would have less ability to pull the reed vibration frequency down than would the higher Q peaks of a modern instrument. (Again, this is just a hypothesis, although I'm sure someone could devise a nice experiment to test this.)
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-10-27 07:26
Saxes also tend to go flat when played at louder volume levels, so is this more to do with the single reed and mouthpiece set-up?
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: graham
Date: 2008-10-27 08:05
The problem with the boxwood clarinet/German mouthpiece point is that it shows that where they may be one acceptable reason for pitch to drop as dynamic increases, there could be another reason why the opposite tendency occurs, and the result, in certain set ups would be self cancellation. This is one reason why it is important to define in what manner pitch drops or rises, not merely that it does. I suspect the biggest reason is as Chris P says last re saxes, but it is no more than a hunch. If sufficient information is given on the properties of the change in tuning (how severe at what dynamic levels etc.), I can't help thinking that the debate could easily be shortened to a likely common cause.
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-27 13:38
mrn wrote:
"I'm just conjecturing here, but it seems that the natural tendency of wind instruments in general is to go sharp with increased airflow. According to one reference I own on the subject, this happens in a flute due to the increase in velocity of the airstream: the edgetone frequency produced by a flute (or a recorder) is directly proportional to the air velocity and inversely proportional to the wavelength. (Same sort of relation between speed, frequency, and wavelength as you find in electromagnetic waves) Also, if I understand correctly, all other things equal, the instrument resonates a higher frequency with a greater air velocity than with a lower air velocity."
>>>>>>
That's because a flute is an "air-reed" instrument. The air bouncing back and forth across the edge is actually the "reed" that is then coupled with the air-column of the flute. Again, see FMA.
This is NOT the case with the clarinet.
I think you are confusing two different velocities in your statement above. Frequency is, indeed, proportional to the velocity of sound (not the velocity of the air passing the reed). The frequency of a sound wave is given by the formula F = v/L where v is the velocity of sound, and L is the wavelength, (which is determined by the precise geometry of the instrument and the players "windway" for each note played).
If you would like to know more about how the clarinet works, I would strongly recommend reading FMA. There's no point in continued conjecture about long-studied, well-understood, and copiously documented issues in physics (any more than it would make sense to debate whether F=ma is correct, in classical physics scenarios). Especially, since there has never been anyone to present any new evidence (not personal conjecture) to the contrary of what has been demonstrated and explained over and over again.
This will be my last post on the subject. So, for the record, once again, the clarinet (with flat upper tube modes) gets flatter as air pressure increases into the instrument. End of story.
Best,
Jonathan
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2008-10-27 14:39
Thanks Jonathan for the detail and dignity. In regards to Mike's statement " Just because you can see diaphragm vibrato on a spectrum analyzer doesn't mean that diaphragm vibrato cannot be purely an amplitude modulation " From my experience on woodwinds I would say that pitch is effected very miniminally by pulsing the air stream/diaphragm/ non embouchure vibrato. The air pulses are just not radical enough. It would make sense if the clarinet got flatter when you went from mp to mf but even if it does it isn't enough flatness to be perceived by the listener. I think diaphragm vibrato is basically just a pulse or amplitude change.
How many people who use vibrato on clarinet use diaphragm vibrato? I use the term diaphragm in the colloquial, inaccurate fashion.
As I view recordings of the past it seems many players are "vibrating" in a nervous fashion. It isn't controlled but more like they can't keep a perfectly straight tone. In flute pedagogy , vibrato was taught by imitation in a very natural way. Only in modern times did teachers universally start to employ a controlled/metronomically assisted approach to teaching vibrato. In performance of course it moves away from this rigidity.
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-27 15:41
Most of my old post on vibrato, is actually about--who would have guessed?--vibrato! :-)
In it, I discuss the three ways of producing vibrato: (1) "diaphragm" or more accurately abdominal muscles, (2) "throat"- the way a singer does, and (3) jaw pressure. For jazz (and other kinds of folk/popular music), you would also add the lips themselves as a fourth method.
There has been some study of this done. Actually, Tony's reference above points to some papers on the subject.
For practical purposes, the pitch variation in a "classical" clarinet vibrato (i.e. one in which the tone color/quality remains very constant) is very minimal, especially compared to the obviously noticeable amplitude variation. On string instruments and voice, however, the pitch vibrato is very noticeable.
When one makes a noticeable pitch vibrato on the clarinet, by purposely allowing the focus of the embouchure to change (and the tongue position to move perhaps) dramatically, that sound is immediately associated by most people with jazz/folk/klezmer and other popular forms of music.
As for teaching vibrato, it can be taught in the same step-by-step approach that one would use to teach anything. Start doing it in small increments on one note at a time and going from there. As I always say, there is nothing "natural" about playing the clarinet (or any other instrument for that matter). If there was, you would see monkeys playing clarinets, and as yet, I haven't noticed any.
Vibrato, like anything else on the clarinet, is learned step by step.
And it is important to learn it, because the world (i.e. non-clarinetists and especially non-musicians, our primary audience) universally loves vibrato.
Best regards,
Jonathan
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Author: Old Geezer
Date: 2008-10-27 16:17
Of course, Tony P knows everything...everything except how to have a discussion with civility and proper respect. Smugness and a superior attitude don't become anyone! Is it possible that he, even he, might be wrong or half right at times?
Clarinet Redux
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2008-10-27 16:52
Jonathan,
With all due respect I don't think audiences universally love vibrato, in terms of clarinet playing. I'm also not sure about vibrato being taught and learn't 'step by step'. I feel that something like vibrato is, and IMO, something that is natural. There is nothing worse than hearing a wonderful musician play a beautiful phrase only to spoil it with an artificial wobble. Of course playing any musical instrument is not natural but that doesn't negate the feeling one gets when they are expressing themselves and being true to the music.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-27 17:45
What do you base this statement on?
"With all due respect I don't think audiences universally love vibrato, in terms of clarinet playing."
Personally, I have done hundreds of classes, seminars, and demonstrations, all over the world, and (as I said in my article) virtually to a person, everyone (with the notable exception of clarinetists who have been trained to believe the contrary) preferred phrases played with vibrato over those with none.
Furthermore, as I have also pointed out, vibrato has developed independently in every kind of music everywhere in the world.
How would you explain this?
In fact, I would challenge anyone to present a scientific study that shows anything to the contrary. I am not aware of any such study.
It is abundantly clear that human beings overwhelmingly prefer vibrato in music to non-vibrato, for the reasons I have explained in my previous posting.
Can you show me even the slightest bit of evidence to the contrary? And telling me what your personal preference is, is not evidence. As I have stated before, the preferences of clarinetists (who have been trained to believe that vibrato is bad) is an anomaly in the world. Virtually nobody else feels this way.
Try it yourself on a general audience (of non-clarinetists and non-musicians) as I have done hundreds of times in numerous parts of the world. The response is essentially unanimous.
And yes, there are many different kinds of vibrato that have developed in different musical/cultural contexts. Certainly, a classical vibrato is different from a jazz vibrato, which is different from a klezmer vibrato, which is different from an Indian vibrato, which is different from a Japanese folk vibrato, which is different from a Chinese folk vibrato etc.... But in all cases, people prefer some vibrato (which is not to say a constant vibrato). People like the variety that it introduces, and they like the acoustical effect it creates.
This is not a matter of my opinion, this is a statistical fact.
Best,
Jonathan
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2008-10-27 17:54
If one looks to the saxophone you see jaw vibrato being used in both classical and jazz. I'm not convinced jaw vibrato can't be used in a sensitive and subtle way so that it is effective in classical clarinet playing. I may have misinterpreted Jonathan's post regarding this. Maybe it isn't contrary to what he was saying.
Regarding "wobble" , I think this might be more to do with the quality of the vibrato rather than it's employment.
Freelance woodwind performer
Post Edited (2008-10-27 18:26)
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-27 18:16
That's what I said.
I listed "jaw" as (3) in methods of classical vibrato.
The one I excluded from classical, was "lip" vibrato, which necessarily changes the tone quality and pitch significantly.
You can certainly vary jaw pressure without a significant change in tone quality as long as you keep the embouchure very solid.
I use all three kinds of vibrato in varying combinations and to varying degrees depending on the context, dynamic, register etc...
The three muscle groups (in descending order of size and power)--abdominal, jaw, throat--are analagous to the three muscle groups used to produce string vibrato: arm, wrist, finger. Just as a string player uses varying combinations of arm/wrist/finger, we can use varying combinations of abdominal/jaw/throat.
They each have different characteristics and sensitivities.
--Jonathan
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2008-10-27 19:04
Well Jonathan, I felt that to be a huge sweeping statement. I'm my humble experience vibrato is not really considered on the clarinet.
Jonathan wrote,
"Furthermore, as I have also pointed out, vibrato has developed independently in every kind of music everywhere in the world.
How would you explain this?"
Well I would hazard a guess that this developed out verbal sounds from when we lived in caves, but I don't hear people talking with vibrato do you? Obviously the vocal chords vibrate when we use them but generally the sound and pitch variations are steady.
Just because people associate with a certain genre doesn't make them 'love vibrato' does it. Just because I hear someone playing jazz or klezmer or whatever doesn't make me go, 'ooohh I love that vibrato'.
John, I wasn't saying that vibrato in 'Classical' playing can't be used I did and have done used it myself. I was trying to point out that sometimes performers, either vocalists or instrumentalists use vibrato for vibrato's sake.
Jonathan wrote,
"Try it yourself on a general audience (of non-clarinetists and non-musicians) as I have done hundreds of times in numerous parts of the world. The response is essentially unanimous."
Jonathan, I have, including your Country and have found negative responses. Here in the UK and abroad.
I'm not trying to discredit your scientific fact just merely expressing an opinion. Surely one is allowed to do that here?
Peter Cigleris
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-27 19:22
But you didn't simply present an opinion. You made a factually incorrect statement. Saying, "I don't like vibrato" for example, is an opinion.
But you said, "I don't think audiences universally love vibrato, in terms of clarinet playing."
The fact is that (with the exceptions noted), they do essentially universally love vibrato in terms of any and all music.
That is not to say, of course, that they love constant vibrato of all kinds all the time, but it is to say that music with appropriately used vibrato (right kind according to culture, music style etc...) is always preferred overwhelmingly over no vibrato by all audiences of people who have not been specifically trained to dislike it.
Fact. Opinions about factual matters are irrelevant. Facts are facts and opinions are opinions. N'ere the twain shall meet. :-)
You are certainly entitled to your opinion that you don't like vibrato on the clarinet, but it is a fact that your opinion is not shared by the overwhelming majority of human beings.
The evidence I cited about different musics in different cultures shows that people like vibrato in music. That's why it has developed. Popular music is called "popular" because it is popular, i.e. many people like it. The fact that all popular musics in the world use vibrato is incontrovertible evidence that people (who are the listeners of music) like vibrato in music.
If you go back and read my original posting from 1995, you will see much more discussion of this issue.
I understand that when one has been trained for their entire life to believe something that is patently false, it is hard to dissuade them. That's why, for example, it is such a difficult process to "de-program" people who have been inducted into cults. But to say that audiences don't like vibrato is patently false. Audiences overwhelmingly like vibrato. Yes, there are individuals who don't, and most of those are individuals who have been trained to not like it (analgous to the cult members). There are in fact, very few human beings who naturally prefer zero use of vibrato in music.
Those are just the facts. :-)
--Jonathan
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2008-10-27 20:10
Peter, Regarding your opinion that clarinet vibrato should be natural. Take a glimpse into the flute world. Look at this video on Youtube......flute vibrato Nina Parlove. It shows a real tradition of " taught vibrato. "
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-27 20:34
cohler wrote:
<<Personally, I have done hundreds of classes, seminars, and demonstrations, all over the world, and (as I said in my article) virtually to a person, everyone (with the notable exception of clarinetists who have been trained to believe the contrary) preferred phrases played with vibrato over those with none.>>
The problem with this argument is that it only really supports the proposition that YOUR audiences prefer to hear YOU performing with YOUR style of vibrato. It's what statisticians call selection bias.
Presumably, because your audiences chose a priori to listen to a guy who plays regularly with vibrato, they are more likely to favor vibrato than other audiences. They are also more likely to support your point of view on this matter when asked about it, if they know what your view is.
If you'll forgive the political nature of my example, asking your audiences what they think of vibrato is a bit like asking Rush Limbaugh listeners what they think of conservatism. If they didn't like it, they probably wouldn't be listening in the first place.
The other thing (and you alluded to this, too) is that there's vibrato and then there's vibrato. Some vibrato is good, some is not so good. Likewise, some people probably sound better with it, some probably without it. Maybe you just happen to be one of those people for whom vibrato enhances your sound. How do we know that someone else with different tonal characteristics and a different style wouldn't sound better without it?
Post Edited (2008-10-27 20:37)
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-27 20:40
Playing an instrument is not "natural". What an absurd concept. As I said before, if it was natural then monkeys would be doing it.
Playing a musical instrument is a 100% learned behaviour. There isn't anything natural (i.e. existing in or formed by nature) about it.
Vibrato is just one of many techniques that must be learned. The fact that some people figure out how to do it by themselves, without being taught it by a teacher, doesn't make it natural. In any case, all learning takes place in one's own head.
As for vibrato in the human voice, I don't know the answer. Obviously, the human voice IS a part of nature. And I know many professional singers say that the best vocal vibrato comes naturally. There may be something physical in the body that causes this, but I don't know. In my own personal case, when I sing (which you definitely don't want to hear!) I have to consciously make a vibrato, it does not happen naturally. But perhaps there is something built into the human body (a part of nature) that causes vibrato to occur naturally under certain conditions.
But as for vibrato on any man-made instrument, or any other technique on any man-made instrument, it is 100% a learned behaviour.
--Jonathan
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-27 20:56
mrn wrote:
<>
The problem with this argument is that it only really supports the proposition that YOUR audiences prefer to hear YOU performing with YOUR style of vibrato. It's what statisticians call selection bias.
Presumably, because your audiences chose a priori to listen to a guy who plays regularly with vibrato, they are more likely to favor vibrato than other audiences. They are also more likely to support your point of view on this matter when asked about it, if they know what your view is.
If you'll forgive the political nature of my example, asking your audiences what they think of vibrato is a bit like asking Rush Limbaugh listeners what they think of conservatism. If they didn't like it, they probably wouldn't be listening in the first place.
<>
If I was as popular and well-known as Rush Limbaugh, this argument might carry a little bit of water. But unfortunately, that is not the case.
No, as I have said repeatedly most of the people to whom I am referring are not even musicians. They don't even know what a vibrato is! All they know, when I do the A/B comparison of a phrase played once without any vibrato and a second time exactly the same in every regard but with a little bit of judiciously placed vibrato, they always choose B as being more pleasing. When asked why they find it more pleasing, they give a variety of answers, but rarely to they even know that vibrato was the only difference.
mrn wrote:
<>
The other thing (and you alluded to this, too) is that there's vibrato and then there's vibrato. Some vibrato is good, some is not so good. Likewise, some people probably sound better with it, some probably without it. Maybe you just happen to be one of those people for whom vibrato enhances your sound. How do we know that someone else with different tonal characteristics and a different style wouldn't sound better without it?
<>
This is an illogical argument. Because some people don't do vibrato well, is not an argument against vibrato itself. It is an argument people doing things poorly. I would agree with you that people find things done well more pleasing than things done badly, but that has nothing to do with this discussion.
Vibrato makes music more interesting and pleasing to human beings.
Deal with it. :-)
--Jonathan
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-27 23:07
cohler wrote:
<<When asked why they find it more pleasing, they give a variety of answers, but rarely to they even know that vibrato was the only difference.>>
They don't have to. People who come to listen to you because they like the way you play are probably going to like it better when you sound like yourself and use vibrato. (and that's OK) They don't have to know that the difference is the vibrato. One is the sound they came to hear and the other one isn't--that's all that really matters. The selection bias remains.
<<This is an illogical argument. Because some people don't do vibrato well, is not an argument against vibrato itself. It is an argument people doing things poorly. I would agree with you that people find things done well more pleasing than things done badly, but that has nothing to do with this discussion.>>
It's not illogical. First of all, I wasn't arguing *against* clarinet vibrato as a general proposition; I was rebutting your argument *for* clarinet vibrato as a general proposition. There's a big difference between the two. For example, I'm not convinced that there isn't 50% of the population who like clarinet vibrato and 50% who don't, whereas someone actually arguing against the use of vibrato would believe that the crowd that favors vibrato is significantly outnumbered by the crowd that doesn't.
Second, the assumption that people who sound better without vibrato than with must lack skill in producing vibrato is your assumption, not mine. While it's true that some people are better at producing vibrato than others, I'm not convinced that there aren't players out there who can execute a vibrato with fine skill, but for whom any vibrato sounds out of place in their playing style and sound.
<< Vibrato makes music more interesting and pleasing to human beings.
Deal with it. :-) >>
Making music without vibrato is more interesting and pleasing to ME. The petty interests and pleasures of inferior carbon-based lifeforms are entirely inconsequential....
Post Edited (2008-10-28 02:40)
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-27 23:55
Old Geezer wrote:
<<Of course, Tony P knows everything...everything except how to have a discussion with civility and proper respect. Smugness and a superior attitude don't become anyone! Is it possible that he, even he, might be wrong or half right at times?>>
Well, this time he was right!
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Author: srattle
Date: 2008-10-28 02:13
Mr. Cohler
I don't necessarily want to disprove anything you are saying.
I do however think that if you are trying to prove a valid point, you should phrase things a little differently.
Saying that humans prefer music with vibrato is a fact. . .well that just sounds to me like an impossible statement to state as proved. . . . .don't you?
Couldn't it also be possible that most humans have been socially 'trained' to like the sound of vibrato?
There was a huge generation of music lovers who heard no, or very little vibrato in the classical era, no?
Also, probably the two most loved instruments of the general western public (piano and guitar) both generally use no vibrato and people seem to love it.
Also, isn't it possible that you, knowing that you prefer vibrato, would play your non vibrato part of your 'experiment' unconsciously differently?
Or possible still, since you are now clearly completely used to playing with vibrato, maybe your non vibrato playing is not up to par with your vibrato playing (just as my vibrato playing is definitely not up to par with my non vibrato playing)
If vibrato has to be learned because nothing is natural on the clarinet, then so much playing clarinet without vibrato.
Basically although I don't agree with your statements, I'm not disproving them. All I am saying is that I don't think that with any of your exercises you can really prove anything about human nature, or human preference.
I know many people, all non clarinetists, who abhor clarinet vibrato. How can you explain that?
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Author: jeeves
Date: 2008-10-28 02:35
People love the piano in guitar in western culture for their beautiful chords, which clarinets (generally) cannot do. Multiphonics are not very common on clarinets. But anyway, you can't compare these instruments b/c the piano is like 4-8 clarinets. Also, these instruments are probably more popular b/c they don't sound like crap when you start playing. A piano can (more or less) have perfect tone quality from the first day, same w/ guitar. Not so w/ clarinet.
Jeeves
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2008-10-28 02:41
srattle wrote:
> Also, probably the two most loved instruments of the general
> western public (piano and guitar) both generally use no vibrato
> and people seem to love it.
In the case of guitar, that is provably incorrect. Rock, jazz, and (especially) classical and flemenco style guitar use (pitch) vibrato. Amplitude vibrato is also available on amplified guitars ( and has been for many decades).
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-28 03:08
My last post on this subject as well...
It is an empirical fact. Human beings prefer vibrato in music. There are hundreds of years of history behind it (all with vibrato!).
I challenge anyone to present any systematic data to the contrary. Isolated cases of indoctrinated clarinetists who don't like it proves nothing.
But there is no use trying to convince people who have been trained to believe the opposite, so I won't try any further.
Do you or own survey and perhaps you will begin to find the truth.
Good luck!
Best regards,
Jonathan
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2008-10-28 08:43
>> Is vibraphone better than xylophone?
After recently playing a duo with each, I'd have to say yes... except in situation where it doesn't 
Regarding cohler's statistics, it only shows that the phrase he played sound better to the people he was playing it to when he used vibrato. But vibrato attracts attention, and can distract from other things. Maybe playing a piece without vibrato allows you to do things that vibrato will mask. Maybe for a specific short phrase, vibrato can sound better to people, but for the whole piece, maybe vibrato will sound worse, especially if not using vibrato will allow to do other things as I mentioned.
A friend of mine, saxophonist, usually says how classical clarinet sounds a bit boring because it doesn't have any vibrato. Recently I played for him a CD of a clarinet player that used no vibrato (a French player playing the Mozart quintet). He really liked it and thought adding vibrato will actually make it worse. So it is not the lack of vibrato that made him not like some classical clarinet playing, but instead specific playing of clarinet without vibrato.
By the way, I have no problem with vibrato in general and I use (I'd even say a lot of) vibrato in both written and improvised music.
Nitai
Post Edited (2008-10-28 11:02)
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2008-10-28 10:27
Jonathan wrote,
"Playing an instrument is not "natural". What an absurd concept. As I said before, if it was natural then monkeys would be doing it."
Was that for me?? Because I was agreeing with your post when you said this, quote,
"As I always say, there is nothing "natural" about playing the clarinet (or any other instrument for that matter). If there was, you would see monkeys playing clarinets, and as yet, I haven't noticed any."
Why do you think it's absurd when you said it in the first place??
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Old Geezer
Date: 2008-10-28 14:40
Someone wrote "Is a vibraphone better that a xylophone?"
A vibraphone might be a xylophone with a GED. Of course, it depends on who's playing what.
Didn't Hamp play a vibraphone?
Clarinet Redux
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-28 14:56
Old Geezer wrote:
> Didn't Hamp play a vibraphone?
Yes, he did.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-28 15:09
graham wrote:
<< Is vibraphone better than xylophone? >>
If you're playing Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals ("Fossils" movement), it's most certainly not!
If you're trying to sound like the Benny Goodman quartet, it is.
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2008-10-28 18:19
Peter, Here are your words.....". I'm also not sure about vibrato being taught and learn't 'step by step'. I feel that something like vibrato is, and IMO, something that is natural." The gist of my comments and referral to the youtube of Nina Parlove was to show a definite step by step approach that is anything but Natural. In my experience teaching vibrato is pretty commonplace. Check out the youtube video.....flute vibrato Nina Parlove.
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2008-10-28 19:41
Arnoldstang,
Vibrato needs to be 'natural' with the phrase and not just employed for effect. In my experience teaching vibrato is not commonplace and why should it be? It should be left to the advanced performer to use their musical judgment.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-28 20:07
What does that mean "just employed for effect"? What in music is not for "effect"?
I teach all my students to do vibrato as young as 12 or 13 years old. Same with double and triple tongueing and circular breathing.
And every one of them has been extremely successful at it.
As soon one has a basically solid embouchure (after approximately 2 years of playing), one is ready to begin learning all these other basic techniques (just as they do on other instruments).
Clarinet pedagogy is very much behind that of other instruments. String players, flutists, trumpet players etc... are all taught these things from a very young age. The younger they start the better they get at it.
--Jonathan
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-28 20:37
cigleris wrote:
<<Vibrato needs to be 'natural' with the phrase and not just employed for effect.>>
Well, that's basically my take on it. Another way to say that would be to say that it needs to fit the intended musical expression of the phrase.
BTW, there's a difference between teaching *how* to do it and teaching *when* to do it, as well as a difference between *natural to do* and *natural sounding*. And I tend to think that we're kind of blurring these distinctions in this thread. Maybe if everyone is a little more specific about which sense of the words they intend, everything would be clearer.
Post Edited (2008-10-28 20:38)
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2008-10-29 01:38
A question about vibrato- is it possible that one reason some people do not like vibrato on clarinet is that [gasp!] most clarinet players don't work on it enough and many end up doing it badly if asked?
Strings, saxophones, and oboe players work on vibrato for YEARS and when they start it is far from beautiful.
[edit] ps. This is not a judgment on any specific performers' playing, but just a general thought.
Post Edited (2008-10-30 11:51)
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2008-10-30 11:49
Finally had the time so I just did a little experiment.
Took out my Clemens-Wurlitzer German system clarinet with a Vandoren (Austrian style) A0 mouthpiece. This has a tip opening of less than 1mm and is the narrowest mouthpiece that Vandoren makes for clarinets.
Playing at a whisper and increasing the volume to a mp/mf- the pitch goes down a bit. Increasing the volume further- the pitch goes UP a bit. I tried a few things to make sure that I was not causing this with lip/jaw pressure, but it was consistent.
I stand corrected (and by my own experiment too!).
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The Clarinet Pages
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