Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-09-03 05:40
Thanks people, some good thoughts.
GBK, I actually have wondered how often I use that key. The answer is, quite a lot. Besides scales and patterns, I practice a number of fairly difficult etudes in whatever keys, so I have need for that key frequently.
I will mention that before I broke the spring the first time, on my A instrument, I was practicing a technique that might have contributed to the break. Since several of the Bb notes on the instrument (throat, clarion, and altissimo) can be tricky when sequenced with some other notes, I dreamed up a "Bb exercise". Part of it involves clarion Bb slurring between alternat fingerings, trying to make the transitions as inaudible as possible: first by alternating lh sliver and rh side, then adding the forked fingering into the rotation (both directions), and finally adding the trill fingering (TO oxx! ooo), so four fingerings alternating as smooth as possible. Why? Oh never mind.
Anyway, taking those four fingerings in different orders led me to experiment with sliding from the lh pinky fingering to the trill fingering - and back. Those are both doable, sorta. BUT, when sliding off the lh sliver key makes it close suddenly with a snapping sound. I sort of ignored that.
Until, that is, I had the first lh sliver spring break. After getting it fixed, I decided not to pursue that slide any further, to avoid such sudden snappy closures of that key. BUT, my stupid fingers had "learned" to do it, and a couple times in sight reading or playing not fully learned music, I'd mistakenly play the wrong clarion Bb, namely the lh sliver one, and then need to slur to Ab or G or something just below - and that finger would slide off that key again and I'd hear that snappy closure. This was rare.
But that's what I was doing when I broke the second spring, this time on my Bb clarinet. So-o-o, I undertook to ban that technique altogether, to unlearn it, as it were, and I've been pretty successful with that annoying chore. It means favoring the lh-side key clarion Bb's more. However, despite that, the third break of the spring happened, on the A clarinet again, this time without doing the evil slide or having done it for a long time. So a fairly new spring did break with fairly normal use.
My tech didn't think that slide would cause the break, but now he's not so sure it mightn't. I think this is a great example of the kind of mess one can make while self-teaching.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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