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Re: Help with middle B&C

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2008-12-17 17:04

By now you'll have probably had some contact with Morrie Backun and maybe solved the problem. But the key would seem to be that this problem is intermittent. Badly seated pads, bent keys and the like usually cause a continuing problem until you find and fix them.

Two things that can cause very intermittent problems that can drive you absolutely nuts are fingers that for some reason aren't covering their holes each time you play the note or water somewhere it doesn't belong.

If you're not hitting a tone hole cleanly (could be because the positions of the holes on the new clarinet are different from what you're used to) you can try to stop - freeze - as soon as you encounter a problem and then carefully re-position one suspect finger at a time (without moving anything else) to see if you can get the note to pop out. You can probably work out which suspects to try first - each 4th (ring) finger, the left hand thumb, left hand first finger. If none of those is the problem, then go on to less likely ones. Even if you find that one finger wasn't covering that one time, it may be that different fingers are involved in different fingering contexts, so you may have to work this out passage by passage - if it's the problem at all.

Water can cause all sorts of problems that are hard to detect at a shop because the problems only come up after several minutes of playing. While no pads may be leaking, one of them in the area of the B/E and C/F may have a small tear or hole in it. It may not leak when it's dry, but once a little water gets into the felt as you play, it can swell the pad enough to interfere with its ability to seat. Has anyone actually taken the keys off to check the pad surfaces, or have you just checked for seal with the keys in place? A feeler around the pad won't detect this, nor will closing the holes and blowing or sucking through the instrument. Even a vacuum gauge might miss it if there's no external opening in the pad where air could get through. This kind of problem would tend to stay once it appears until the pad has dried a little.

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