 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2014-12-20 04:35
Weird title, right?
Clarinet playing, like life itself, is a series of tradeoffs. Our favorite mouthpiece(s) often brings us 85% (YMMV) of what we want, but we may find ourself wishing the mouthpiece was as "good at articulation as mouthpiece X", or offer "the projection of mouthpiece Y," or be "as (not as) easy to blow as mouthpiece Z."
.."or only if it had the intonational reliability of mouthpiece Q."
You get the idea...
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With that said, envision yourself in a lab where mouthpieces could combine their most positive attributes to form a "test tube baby mouthpiece," if you will, imagining the parent and child mouthpieces to be genderless.
The polygamy reference merely suggests that the baby mouthpiece could have more than 2 "genetic" parent's attributes, even through true polygamy still of course produces an offspring from only 2 parents of different genders. It's merely a metaphor from human existence that is void of editorial on the way people live their lives (subject matter for other bboards.)
What would that mouthpiece look like?
For me, right now, I'd like to marry a Vandoren CL6 with a Vandoren M30D. I like the CL6's ease of blow and articulation, with the dark chocolate smooth sound of the M30D, which holds left hand Clarion notes for me without getting them too bright.
It's okay to envision somewhat impossible things, like the offspring of a crystal and hard rubber mouthpiece.
What mouthpieces might you merge, and why? Again, throw as many mouthpieces into the "stew" as you need (including only 1) to get what you want. Just say what about each mouthpiece you'd like to include.
Perhaps if we reach consensus (as if!!!) we can merge Smith/Behn/Forbes etc. to mass produce it for us!
Post Edited (2014-12-20 04:36)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-12-20 12:52
For me, the problem is MUCH WORSE. It isn't even a matter of getting esoteric characteristics into one package. An ideal mouthpiece for me would be a 'shape shifter.' I find something that is great and works..........for a time. Then either my tastes change or I decide I want to achieve a little more of "this," or a little more of "that."
Definitely over the course of years, my goals for a mouthpiece's parameters DO change. And there in lies the problem - serial monogamy.
...............Paul Aviles
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2014-12-20 17:48
You make your own sound, regardless of the mouthpiece. A good player learns to make many different sounds on the same equipment.
Play "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly" as many ways as you can think of: joyful and jolly, dancing lightly, aggressively, cutesy, as a lullaby, as dirty blues, as an operatic death aria. . . . There's no end to the possibilities.
The variety come out of you, not the mouthpiece.
Ken Shaw
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2014-12-20 19:10
Ken Shaw wrote:
> You make your own sound, regardless of the mouthpiece. A good
> player learns to make many different sounds on the same
> equipment.
>
Certainly this has become mantra here, and I completely agree that the player has a high degree of influence over what comes out of his equipment. The general *character* of sound that any good player produces is entirely of his own making.
But it seems extreme to suggest that the equipment has no effect on the result of a player's effort. If that were true there'd be no need for the variety of mouthpieces, instruments and reeds (not to mention barrels, bells and ligatures to leave nothing out) that exist. Different pieces of equipment have different tuning characteristics, different distributions of overtone reinforcement and different levels of damping of vibration that affect response and comfort in an ensemble as well as sound. So different mouthpieces can support or interfere with a player's getting the result she's trying to achieve. For better or worse, I'll probably always sound like me when I play - unless I make a conscious change in my goal concept (not easy after decades of playing) - and no mouthpiece, instrument or anything else will by itself make me sound like Morales or Leister or Pay or [plug in any famous clarinetist you like]. But I work harder with some mouthpieces/reeds/instruments than with others to get the sound I'm trying to get.
The search for a mouthpiece, to stay germane to this thread, is a search for a mouthpiece that makes achieving your concept easier or, at least, interferes less. But the marriages suggested by Dave's question will vary as much as do our individual concepts and the physical features we bring into the process of trying to realize them. As a result, I don't think there's much if any chance of finding a consensus that, mass-produced, would represent the ideal to all players.
Karl
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2014-12-20 21:48
I hear where Ken is coming from, and yet can also take in Karl's contribution as well.
Mouthpieces notwithstanding, I too am not big on gizmos and accessories for our shared instrument.
When students (4+ years of play, but not advanced) ask me about ligatures I'm apt to reply "this (holding up Klose's study method for clarinet) is the single best improvement to your ligature you're going to find," assuming the ligature meets basic tests of acceptablity (e.g. no stripped screws).
And yet, I respect top notch players, with very finely tuned senses of play, finding subtle differences in the "reed strap" or "bell/barrels" they choose to play on.
We (the person) certainly comprise substantial amounts, surely more than half to our level of play. And we all can certainly debate, with regards to each other, how much above 50% our own abilities bring to the performance.
To Ken's point, I think that I play better today on any, say, 4 of my favorite mouthpieces (from 10 years ago), than I did those mouthpieces 10 years ago. But to Karl's point, at any point in time, I feel I've played better, or should I say, that I felt that some mouthpieces were easier for me to play, than others.
And within limits, our ability to adapt the changes Ken speaks of, whether they be in clarinet, reed, mouthpiece, genre of music, etc. speaks to our musicality.
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Perhaps the day is sooner than we expect, as the price of 3D printers, and their cost of use drops, and their speed increase, and the plastics used to print with them become tailored to things like acoustics, that we really will be able to make mouthpieces that form a blend of the STL files (a common storage protocol for 3D images) of existing mouthpiece models.
Until then, we may have to "settle" for a mouthpiece similar to that Paul invisions, with "Terminator 2" like morphing capabities (including materials design), that (if I may Paul) is programmed with all current and future mouthpiece designs (it travled back in time to today), that can evolve at will, using its telepathy chip, to my changing needs, the preferences of all other players, and their needs to evolve.
There, that was simply, wasn't it? And who said we couldn't agree on a mouthpiece (wink)?
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