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RE: B-flat basics

Author: Dave Beal
Date: 2002-12-13 18:22

Nope, it has nothing to do with harmonics or overtones. It's just a convention about how we name and write notes. When you play your clarinet with all the holes open, we call and write that as G on the second line of the treble clef staff, but it's really concert pitch F. We could have decided to write it as F, and you wouldn't have had to ask this question. But as jez pointed out, then F on the Bb clarinet would have been fingered differently than F on an Eb clarinet. (On the Eb, it would be fingered as what we now call D.) That would have required clarinet players to think harder, and we don't like to think. Transposing also makes us think, but not as often. :-)

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