The Clarinet BBoard

Re: Ridenour sucks at making clarinets

Author: SecondTry  Date:   2025-11-12 04:33 OmniClarinet314 wrote: > Typical Ridenour supporter lol! Always projecting. > Yes it's been my observation that Ridenour clarinets do project well. > Was it my fault that kids with $10k clarinets were trashing on > me for not making state on a sub-$1k piece of crap? Very poor > sportsmanship. Therapy time. You cannot control the actions of others. You can control your response to it. Choose to not let the opinions of others dictate your happiness. Do not give other people, particularly those acting poorly (like you are here) power. How is it other people in the same situation as you might have acted differently, been less phased? If its because you held low opinion of yourself, that's not the instigator's fault. You are projecting your faults on to an instrument and vendor unfairly. I doubt your instrument was as bad as you think it was, anymore than if it was, it was one instrument, and you seek to trash the entire company. I wrote recently about a visit I made to a major woodwind shop having tried a few Buffets there, some Toscas. Whether because they were out of service from too many people trying them, or inherently bad instruments, should I trash Buffet despite IMO there new instruments being light years less consistent than those from RCP or because some I played were bad? > I can't let go of the fact that I could have made first chair all-state in high > > school. Instead I had to go through humiliation and it makes me so mad to > see people like Ridenour saying that expensive clarinets are unnecessary. And suppose you would have made first chair. How different would your life have been? You need to be speaking to a professional about this. You need to learn ways to deal with unfairness you are having a hard time processing, and as a result, I strongly suspect, lashing out an instrument and its maker. Anecdote: The year I made All State in my State, before indoor plumbing, Jon Manasse couldn't attend because he had other musical obligations. Teaching at Julliard today, one of America's most prominent players, exactly how did his failure to even be part of the festival, let alone not sit first chair affect him? > Should I accept a challenge from someone who talks trash about Buffet and > Selmer? And already ridiculed me before I posted a video? You ask the wrong question. You should accept a challenge because you have made claims. Who put you up to that challenge or why is irrelevant. Tom practically worships Buffet and Selmer compared to your trashing of him and his clarinets. > I'd say I was a victim of the BS saying that "instrument doesn't matter and > that only the player matters". I'd agree, but only because the truth is that the player matters far more than the instrument. Sure, that instrument has to have pads that seal, hold a reasonable pitch, etc. Your repairman found no issues of this sort. The funny thing is that the thing most young players, as David alludes to, are a victim of the opposite: branding that places far too much emphasis on the instrument. If anything these differences are best only appreciated by the more refined the player, which you were not at the time. > That's not a good thing to say to a high school student. My second clarinet > teacher told me that to try to mask his own deficiencies in teaching and I > believed it. We've been thru this. You are not the only one to face life's adversities. In fact everyone does, even if not equally. Again, the same Michael Loewenstern you cite got bumped to bass clarinet (did you understand that...did I get the spelling of bass right?) because a teacher thought he utterly stank at Soprano clarinet. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. And yet he made Lemonade out of those lemons, becoming amazing at both bass and Soprano clarinet. > Ridenour has many people who don't like his clarinets. I'm with the majority > here. A bad product is a bad product. Far more people like his clarinets than not. You are not with the majority. He makes quality instruments of which I am seriously beginning to wonder if the one instrument you had was even bad. Do you still have it? I'd like to try it. Let's reverse this challenge. Rather than you playing your R13 I'd like to play your RCP clarinet. >I practiced a lot every day, and I still wasn't satisfied with my tone quality. I >wonder why. If that was what Kal thought, then he wouldn't have been able to >help me. Opperman was a teacher's teacher. The man was brilliant at quickly diagnosing problems. If he thought you stank he would have first played your instrument and made an immediate assessment of how much the problem was you or the horn. If you, he'd then go to work at addressing your weaknesses. We have no idea what you practiced or how, or for that matter what a lot is. This statement alone means little. I have to ask, do you play double lip? I ask because, for all the differences I have with Kal on the necessity of this embouchure (which I am by no means against and play non-exclusively) the thought that Kal wouldn't have been able to try to help you when he would have had you switch embouchures flies in the face of the idea that there's nothing he couldn't have done. Of course I'm assuming that your self assessment on his inability to help you on the RCP clarinet doesn't lie in poor belief in your skills. > Yes. If his clarinets were as good or better than an R13 as advertised, I > wouldn't have had to endure this garbage. Indeed, lets blame Tom, who doesn't charge R13 prices, that his line of wares is junk because you, a novice at the time made this assessment based on a single instrument as a young player. > My first clarinet teacher is also to blame for recommending me a bad > clarinet. There is a personality disorder, I pray you don't have, as it makes everyone's life around you harder, including, most notably yours, where everything is everyone else's fault. Let's keep a tally here: you instrument and teacher were terrible, the kids at all state as well, and your parents couldn't afford better than an RCP instrument. Tell me, how did the Russian students I talked about with truly terrible instruments (and lack of decent reeds, don't get me ever started) ever make it? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ One final anecdote. I taught a software class once that student's evaluated on conclusion. Every student gave me a stellar review but one. My manager asked me about this, not simply because of the bad review but the anomalous nature of it. I explained that this student just didn't get it, despite my getting thru to everyone else. I suggested he call her to discuss, and that when he did, he'd get a lot of nebulous explanations. Indeed he did. It was far easier for this student to blame others. Nobody today is evaluating you based on your All State experiences except maybe you. Move on. Stop using it as a crutch. Maybe you'd like to hear some of the sob stories, I am sure no less legitimate of your fellow posters here. Post Edited (2025-11-12 04:42)

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