Author: Hunter_100
Date: 2022-09-26 17:18
I just started playing eb last year, so I know your pain. Here are some tips I can offer:
1: You need a decent instrument in outstanding condition. If you bought one of those $150 ebs online, you are going to have a lot of trouble with intonation. All the pads need to be really well adjusted and with no leaks. If you are playing on a used instrument, take it to a good shop and have them go over it to check out leaks, key heights, etc. It will be money well spent.
2: The combination of mouthpiece, barrel, and reed is really important for intonation. Get a decent mouthpiece. My clarinet came with a vandoren B40 that was perfectly ok, but I have since upgraded to a Fobes san fransisco. When I was trialing mouthpieces, I tried several of the other Vandorens and some of them had really weird tuning tendencies. I did not try enough duplicate models to say if it was a problem with the particular mouthpiece or the whole style. The point is, try some different mouthpieces and see if any play better for you. I also found that the closer facing mouthpieces like the 5RV was easier for me to hit high notes in tune, but it had wonky sounding throat tones. I found this was not the case with the Fobes though, so maybe it is just a better internal design or I tried a bad 5RV? I don't know...
I have also notice that every now and then I will get a reed that just has bad intonation. I never really had this issue with Bb. So I would try several reeds with a tuner and see if any are better or worse for your problem notes.
On my eb, if I have to pull the barrel more than about a 1 mm, it causes the throat tones to go crazy flat in relationship to the rest of the horn. I will eventually get tuning rings or a longer barrel to deal with this, but it is not usually a problem since I'm not usually that sharp. You may want to try and see how your instrument plays with the barrel all the way in. If it is better, than look for solutions like I mentioned so you don't wreck the throat notes.
3: You need to try different fingers for the altissimo notes compared to Bb. A lot of people will probably suggest you look at the Hadcock Eb excerpt book. I bought it, and for my Noblet is has been less helpful than I had hoped. I believe that Hadcock probably played a different brand of clarinet than mine, and a lot of his "suggested" fingers do not play the same on my instrument. I have had much better success looking at the fingerings on this website:
https://www.wfg.woodwind.org/clarinet/index.html
Look at the alternate altissimo, and try all of these to see if they play better. Many of them are also in the Hadcock book too. I don't have the Ridenour fingering book, I would imagine that contains a lot of these as well. Another good spot for some alternate fingerings is Michael Richards website. The website links are hopelessly broken, but the content is still there if you can figure out how to navigate to it. Check out these pages in particular:
https://userpages.umbc.edu/~emrich/chapter7.html
https://userpages.umbc.edu/~emrich/chapter7-2.html
4: You need a firm embouchure and good voicing, but don't bite. I'm sure others on this board can write this out more exactly than I could, but your tongue has to be right or the high notes will be flat, or worse they will sound the lower partials. And you need a different tongue position on the lower notes or they will sound the upper partials on accident. The eb is easier to jump around the partials in my opinion compared to the Bb.
Post Edited (2022-09-26 17:33)
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