The Clarinet BBoard

Re: Profile 88?

Author: bethmhil  Date:   2012-08-27 02:38 You know by now that reeds of the same strength vary-- some are harder & softer than others. Your mouth naturally learns to adjust to each reed to make the most desirable tone. On softer reeds, your lower jaw doesn't push as much so that your tone does not become buzzy & metallic; with harder reeds, your jaw pushes more to get a better response out of the reed. Interestingly, this happens without much conscious thought. If it doesn't, I suggest a lot of long tones. Anyway, mouthpieces are the same way. I switched last February to the M13 Lyre from a Gennusa. Both are vastly different in sound, response, and shape. Yet, it took me less than 2 weeks before my mouth had fully adjusted to the mouthpiece. From the sounds of it, you are playing on hard reeds (4's, or 4.5's?), since air is escaping out of the corners of your lips. The M13 Lyre, being a closed, long-faced mouthpiece, indeed calls for harder reeds. But, the thing that helped me is playing on soft(er) reeds during the switch. I used 4's on my Gennusa, but I went down to 3.5's for the M13 Lyre. Having soft(er) reeds helped me learn to adjust to the mouthpiece very quickly and easily, since I wasn't fighting my reeds on top of fighting the mouthpiece. BMH Illinois State University, BME and BM Performance

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