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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The Clarinet BBoard
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