 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: derf5585
Date: 2018-12-20 08:35
Of all the instruments out there why did you choose to play clarinet?
fsbsde@yahoo.com
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Author: Caihlen
Date: 2018-12-20 08:37
As a youth, Benny Goodman, as an adult(?) Evan Christopher.
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2018-12-20 08:44
...because the instructor looked at my hands and said, "We need you on clarinet, your fingertips are big enough to cover the holes."
Fuzzy
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Author: Tony F
Date: 2018-12-20 10:06
At school I wanted to play cello, but they already had all the cellos they needed in the school orchestra. They were short a couple of clarinets so I went over to the dark side.
Tony F.
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2018-12-20 11:46
Pete Fountain!
Back in the late 50's, I can still remember sitting on our living room floor and listening to the "FM radio" which my mother had on. In those days, they used to introduce the player followed by the musical number they were going to play.
When I heard Pete play "Ballin' the Jack", that was it...I was hooked!
I told my mother right then that I wanted to play the clarinet. Within a week or two, my mother got me a "strange, French sounding" clarinet called a Buffet Crampon. (We weren't rich...my Aunt's boyfriend owned a music store.)
Oh, how I wish I still had that instrument!
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2018-12-20 14:03
When I was six I heard Peter And The Wolf and immediately just knew. Started shortly after.
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Author: Dibbs
Date: 2018-12-20 14:22
I wanted to play oboe but a clarinet player friend convinced my Dad that playing the oboe gives you TB. Seriously.
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Author: Luuk ★2017
Date: 2018-12-20 15:29
First idea: piano, which I didn't follow because I thought it would be too unpractical carrying it around.
Second idea: violin, which I didn't follow because I thought I would be stuck to classical music.
Third idea: clarinet, which would solve both limitations. Of course, I didn't foresee the load of issues that came with this choice... However, I stayed with it.
Years later I thought about picking up the accordion because it would be like a piano but much more practical in the carrying-around-sense. However, with a clarinet taking all my spare time I didn't follow this idea, either.
Had some try-outs on saxophone (too easy) and oboe (too difficult).
Merry Christmas everybody!
Regards,
Luuk
Philips Symphonic Band
The Netherlands
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Author: monnarush
Date: 2018-12-20 16:39
My parents allowed me to join the band. My father played the guitar every Saturday of his whole life with some friends and a few times even on the raido. I did not really want to play guitar but loved music. When I walked into the band room in 5th grade I was thrilled at all the instruments. I leaned toward the sax or the flute. My parents were not able to afford them I guess so between them and the teacher I was given the clarinet. I fell in love with it, the feel and the sound, the contrast of the black with the silver keys ect. I enjoyed my 4 years of band but dropped out in 9th grade because the teacher required me to be at every football game and my parents were not able to comply. We owned and operated a family dairy farm and were not able to make the drive and also get the chores done. I am picking up the clarinet as an adult again and am enjoying it even more! 
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Author: Philip DeVries
Date: 2018-12-20 18:07
My 8th grade daughter abandoned hers, and I decided to play it instead of selling it back to the music store. I thought to myself - "How hard could this be..."
Still having fun 10 years later!
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Author: BobW
Date: 2018-12-20 18:58
I played saxophone until 8th grade
the clarinet had more parts and looked cooler
so I switched lol
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2018-12-20 20:58
David,
"Because some guy told me that male clarinetists got all the girls."
I was in a trad jazz band when the leader suggest having the clarinet play the lead on a specific song. After the song was played, the leader said, "Now you know why all the girls go for the clarinetist."
There was a sudden groan from the trumpet player as he yelled out..."Clarinetist?! I thought they said 'Cornetist!'"
Fuzzy
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2018-12-21 01:20
When I wanted to join the band program in grade school, it was the closest thing in appearance to a recorder, which I already knew how to play.
Karl
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Author: NOLA Ken
Date: 2018-12-21 02:17
Upon entering the school band in 7th Grade, I wanted to play tenor sax. The band director, for reasons unknown to me, wanted me to play bassoon. (I do remember him looking at my overbite.) We compromised on clarinet. The die was cast.
I later got hooked on Pete Fountain, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw.
I didn't get my hands on a saxophone until they gave me a bari sax for stage band in my senior year. That was a hell of a lot of fun, but out of my price range and skill level to continue with in college.
When I returned to playing 40+ years later, the clarinet skills came back quickly. The sax skills didn't. So when I'm jonesing to play sax, I play alto clarinet instead. Of course, I have yet to find anyone to let me play alto clarinet with them.
Ken
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Author: Caroline Smale
Date: 2018-12-21 03:06
As a child in the late 1940s I often heard a program on the BBC called "Housewives' Choice".
The signature music for this featured some beautiful phrases on the clarinet, simply but purely played.
From that time I wanted to play the clarinet, but our household was very poor and we couldn't afford one, so I started saving the money I earned doing a Saturday/Sunday job delivering milk.
It took me nearly 3 years to save the money, but one glorious day in 1954 I took the train to Plymouth, and came back home with my B&H Emperor clarinet.
All I had to do then was teach myself to play it. Still trying nearly 65 years on!
For some time I tried to identify the clarinet player on the original program music.
Not been able to positively confirm, but it sounds remarkably like Reg Kell.
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Author: jordan.1210
Date: 2018-12-21 05:44
My parents wanted me to learn an instrument in 4th grade and when I told the teacher I wanted to play saxophone, she said I was too small and said I should play clarinet instead, rest is history.
Now I have also have and play several clarinets and saxes.
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Author: fernie121
Date: 2018-12-21 05:55
In 5th grade they had lines for every instrument to sign up if you wanted to play it. The girl I liked, Katya Bermudez, was in the clarinet line. So naturally, I went there. She stopped playing sometime in high school, and I just kept on going!
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Author: Jordan Selburn
Date: 2018-12-21 09:36
It's interesting how many of us were pushed onto the clarinet rather than by choice. I initially wanted to play trombone, but when I went to tell the band director, he looked at me and said "you look like you want to play clarinet", and there it was.
On the positive side, at the time it would probably have been a stretch for me to reach 3rd position!
Jordan
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Author: Tom H
Date: 2018-12-22 09:51
In between 3rd & 4th grade (1963), I spotted my mother's clarinet on a top shelf. She said I could have it if I took lessons. She said a decade later that she played it in Band (around 1930) in H.S. in order to get out of math class. As a retired Band Director, it seems I recall similar statements in the '70s-'90s.
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Author: shmuelyosef
Date: 2018-12-22 10:00
Mostly, both my kids played clarinet and it looked like fun.
But I'm also ADD, and had already spent many years learning to play classical/pop/jazz piano, accordion, low brass (including a specialty on French horn), guitar, bass, drums, all the saxophones, melodica, flute (alto/soprano), saxophone (SATB), and yes...I'm that old. I still own and regularly play all of the above except for the brass; I sold them all during a 'dead broke' period back in the mid-70s and never repurchased any brass.
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Author: 2cekce ★2017
Date: 2018-12-22 22:37
My oldest sister played clarinet, I fell in love with three things about the clarinet. 1st its shape,2nd its keywork, 3rd its sound. Being an auto mechanic now, was as a kid intrigued by how it produced those beautiful lows and highs with the intricate keywork it has to the point that I find myself mesmerized by its sound and beauty then and now. Nothing against sax but I had to play it instead due to restrictions on guys playing clarinet in my high school and college bands. Self taught myself and took lessons on clarinet when I finished school and joined a couple of local bands where I now play both Bb and Eb clarinet quite well.
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Author: mmatisoff
Date: 2018-12-23 04:26
I was about 8 yo, and my father bought a wood clarinet from a woman he worked with. From then on, it was with me night and day for 7 years. Then I stopped playing for 43 years. And, in 2015, I took it up again after my wife suggested I take up music again (she was expecting I would pick up the flute again). So, why the clarinet the second time? Because I felt that I had matured enough to take this monster of an instrument. And... it's time to bring the clarinet back to jazz.
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Author: Clarineteer
Date: 2018-12-23 04:50
I was 12 years old and heard 2 rock and roll songs that featured the tenor sax. One was Tequila by the Champs and the other was Yakety Yak by the Coasters and I knew that was the instrument for me. So I asked my Father to find me a teacher and buy me an instrument. The teacher he found convinced my Father that in order for me to learn the sax properly it would be easier to learn the clarinet first. Well try to play those sax rock and roll songs on a clarinet. It just did not work for me. By the time that my Father and teacher realized that clarinet was not for me it was to late. My Father finally bought me a Tenor sax but by then I was ruined. Hence 40 years later I bought a clarinet and found that I could still play and have enjoyed it ever since.
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Author: gwie
Date: 2018-12-23 10:04
At my school, elementary ran from K-6. As I moved up into grade 6, I had been concertmaster (violin) of the school orchestra since grade 3 due to ongoing private lessons and regular daily practice since I was six years old.
To give other kids a chance, the director offered me the chance to learn another instrument, so I became a beginner on the one instrument available, a Yamaha clarinet. It helped that my director was a clarinet player as well, and he was a wonderful teacher who I still have many fond memories of.
It was supposed to be a temporary thing, but then my family moved to a school district with no orchestra program...so clarinet was my ensemble outlet. I did get two years of lessons in high school with another wonderful teacher who encouraged me to keep playing. One thing led to another, and at the end of my university education, I found myself playing a master's recital on...clarinet.
While I don't get to play as much these days, spending the majority of my time playing string quartets or conducting, I still enjoy it immensely, and love working with clarinet students.
Post Edited (2019-01-06 11:48)
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Author: Zia
Date: 2018-12-24 02:47
I always wanted a violin and clarinet. No one would teach me Violin left handed and i could cope with the right handed ones and its not so easy to teach myself stringed instruments so with the clarinet i had to wait till i was old enough for lessons at school, they didn't last long and i went to a private teacher. I stopped for a few years and got rid of my yamaha 250 as it was falling apart 6 months after stopping lessons then i picked it up again, i now have 13 (2 will never work, broken joints etc from a joblot, there sonata ones so not worth much but will be experimented on, i've never seen a chimney fall off a clarinet, the sonatas i've had 3 X)) and i can repair them myself, i'm not sure why i liked them so much but i do, i also have whistles and a flute and a few other things with an oboe, saxophone and bass clarinet on my list of what i would like.
I've developed a taste for B&H clarinets, my favourite being an old B&H wooden regent from the 50s, its like an old friend and can almost predict the next move, its the easiest clarinet i have to do a glissando on I haven't played as much recently due to my health but usually it comes back again so i'm sure i'll be playing again as much as i was in a couple months. Eventually i would love to get my hands on a pair of 10-10's.
Post Edited (2018-12-24 02:49)
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Author: gsurosey
Date: 2018-12-28 02:14
I didn't choose the clarinet; the clarinet chose me. I wanted to be a brass player when I was younger, but when trying out instruments in 4th grade, clarinet was the only thing I could get to make a sound. Took me awhile to grow into it as I couldn't cover the holes properly or reach the pinky keys. Once I caught up physically, I fell in love and have been playing ever since.
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Rachel
Clarinet Stash:
Bb/A: Buffet R13
Eb: Bundy
Bass: Royal Global Max
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Author: Stacie S.
Date: 2018-12-28 22:39
I wanted to originally play the flute when I started in band in 6th grade (many, many moons ago), but all of the spots were taken. Our band director looked at my hands and said, with my long fingers, clarinet would be best (since we didn't have a piano in the band...was always told I have piano fingers, but never played the piano). I wound up loving the clarinet.
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Author: TomS
Date: 2018-12-29 09:57
In the sixth grade, Mr. Haskett (who taught all of the beginners and the Jr. High Band) brought a pile of instruments for us to attempt to get a sound from. I couldn't get a good sound out of a cornet, and refused to play trombone. So, I settled on clarinet. My Mom did a rental-purchase for an unknown brand of clarinet ... about 15 bucks a month for about a year until it was paid off.
Tom
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Author: JEG ★2017
Date: 2018-12-30 19:17
I started on saxophone in the 4th grade. I showed some talent, and in the 6th grade my school music teacher, a clarinetist, urged me to try clarinet. My sister managed to get the high school to lend me a clarinet for the summer. I taught myself basic fingerings using a book my father bought for me. My father bought me a clarinet a few months later.
After I expressed an interest in the 7th grade in going into music my father, who had been exposed to the music scene in New York (he was a CPA), decided that knowing saxophone alone was not enough. In the 9th grade I began studying clarinet and a year later was introduced to the recording of Robert Marcellus playing the Mozart Concerto. From then on I was hooked on the clarinet sound.
So I don't know if you can say I "chose" to play the clarinet, but over 50 years later I choose to keep playing it.
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Author: Brian Peterson
Date: 2018-12-30 20:10
I was going to play the cello, but when I didn't hear anything from the orchestra teacher, my mom said "hey, I've got Grandpa's clarinet in the closet if you want to play that." And well, that was well almost forty years ago.
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Author: tucker ★2017
Date: 2019-01-05 21:32
The school I went to required EVERYONE to start playing a musical instrument starting in 5th grade. (The school furnished all instruments).
We all had to choose 3 instruments to learn in the 5th grade from the 4 families: woodwind, strings, percussion, and brass. You then had to choose to one of the 3 to continue playing in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, after which time music became an elective.
I chose viola, clarinet, and trumpet. I sucked at the trumpet. Never could get the embouchure. I sucked at viola too. No much variance in sound with the slightest movement of your fingers. I clicked with clarinet and love it. Played soprano, alto, and bass. Learned to play oboe as well. After many years absent from music, I returned to playing bass a few years ago and am having a ball. Music never leaves you.
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