Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2019-01-12 12:35
I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Brown’s playing, however, there were some things about the video that I found if not disturbing then at least a bit troubling.
At 3:34, I saw what looked like a worker handcrafting the baffle of a mouthpiece. I stopped the video and stared at it for quite a long time because I was convinced that it was a sax mouthpiece for which Jody is known. I finally accepted it as a clarinet mouthpiece and continued on. When Dr. Brown was asked about the consistency of the 3 mouthpieces that were given to him to try, his response of “Mind blowing consistency” really had me feeling very skeptical. And, then, when he added that he now had “3 favorites”, all I could think of was “something doesn’t seem quite right here”. Yes, he didn’t say that they were exactly alike, however, the impression that I got was that all 3 were winners to him. What crept into my mind was…I wonder if those 3 mouthpieces were actually pre-selected ahead of time before they were given to him. I guess I’ll never know.
Did you notice the wonderful “hall reverb” effect when he was playing? To my ears, that effect totally disappeared when they started talking. When Dr. Brown began playing again…I heard the “hall reverb” come in again. I’m quite familiar with using reverb on my Wurlitzer organ. It enhances the quality of the organ tones by a huge factor. Without it, (at least on my Wurlitzer), the tones sound “lifeless”. Just my observation…
Now about that rubber…I listened to his description of it at least 6 times and what I heard at 3:23 was: “And this, (slight pause), tried to recreate that pre-World War II rod rubber that Chedeville had.” Excuse me…’TRIED?” I actually felt stunned when I heard that word. To the best of my understanding of what Jody said, he never really stated that he actually duplicated the rubber that Chedeville used. To my knowledge, only Brad Behn and Dr. Omar Hendersen have actually claimed to have duplicated the Chedeville rubber.
All in all, I thought it was a wonderful video advertisement, however, I was left with the impression that the clarinet tones were “electronically enhanced” and when Dr. Brown talked about the mouthpiece’s “amazing consistency” no matter what reed was used, I really felt quite skeptical.
Just my 2c.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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