Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2019-01-02 19:48
I watched this year's PBS presentation with new eyes.....and a large HD television.
Watching the clarinet section and soloist ("Artist's Life" for example) it really looked more like they were playing saxophone the way they held there clarinets further out, taking in more mouthpiece and using almost frighteningly relaxed looking embouchures.
Of course I now also have two years of playing a German mouthpiece, more correctly, under my belt. The idea is that with a longer facing you take in more mouthpiece into your mouth. Then you use pretty soft reed, typically of strength 2 1/2. The Austrian mouthpiece facing is even longer still than the German (at 25.00mm it is already about 7.00 longer than our usual) coming in around 34.00mm.
So I have a New Year's question:
Is the length of our facing an immutable consequence of the Boehm acoustic, or was that something that was in vogue with the French at the time of the Boehm inception?
The other way to ask that is, can we have 34-37mm length facings on Boehm mouthpieces? And would that change the basic sound? For better? For worse?
.............again,
.....................Happy New Year
...............................Paul Aviles
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The Clarinet BBoard
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