Author: JHowell
Date: 2012-12-27 05:27
Jeff, that's an excellent point. How is he going to college majoring in music without a private instructor up to this point, one who would have guided him away from his "dinky stock" mouthpiece?
However, I'm not sure what playing style and level of development would make a medium facing mouthpiece an unwise choice. And a student going to college for music who can't afford $100 for a mouthpiece is going to have trouble affording music and reeds.
This past summer my middle daughter, who plays piano, moved into junior high (7th grade) and decided that she wanted to play clarinet so she could be in band. I gave her an older clarinet, an X5, and a few decent but soft reeds. She sounded good right away and four months later got second chair overall in a local honor band competing against kids from maybe 15 or 20 schools up to grade 9.
My point isn't that the X5 is magic, but rather that the mouthpiece doesn't make the sound, and the best mouthpiece for a student is one that does as little harm as possible. For instance, requiring too much bite pressure, or preventing the use of a strong enough reed to play the high register easily, or pitching the throat tones too low. This last point has always been my beef with Vandoren M models, which are otherwise excellent mouthpieces. There are some nice mouthpieces being made with E model Zinners blanks and some even nicer ones being made from CNC blanks, but they're considerably more expensive. The Rico Reserves tune very well, and in my book that's the best thing you can say about any mouthpiece.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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