The Ethnic Clarinet
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Author: xhevahir
Date: 2020-06-01 03:17
Hi, I'm new here and I was hoping somebody could give me some insight into the style of playing shown in this video from--I think--Armenia: https://youtu.be/dSvZfC8_ZNU . Apparently the clarinetist's name is Arsen Arakelyan. Anyway, his playing is full of portamento and squiggly ornamental notes, (although, since the style so heavily features such notes, "ornamental" seems like the wrong word for them). I've read that Albert system horns are preferred in that part of the world partly because the unkeyed tone holes allow that kind of slurring, but his horn seems to have rings on nearly all of the tone holes. Do people use some special mouth techniques to do this? Thanks for any info.
P.S. It looks like a lot of the other discussions mention the gtc-music1 website, which is down. Is that website permanently defunct?
Post Edited (2020-06-01 06:39)
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2020-06-02 18:30
I wish I could tell you how it's done physically. I can't play that way (yet) and I've been working on it for 25 years. The one thing I have NOT done is the thing that I believe will help most: sitting down with a person who plays this way and having them describe what's going on in between the notes.
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Author: Ralph Katz
Date: 2020-09-26 06:01
He is great! It looks to me like he is playing on a German system clarinet, with a barrel mounted acoustic pickup. The pickups are doing a great job, but they block out audience noise, which would be fun to hear.
Schools don't teach the technique to get this sound. A very soft reed, and a mouthpiece not specifically designed for it are starting points. For classical players, this mismatch would be a killer. The player manipulates the reed with lip and breathing. That's all I can say.
A klezmer player told me that Simeon Bellison saw him at a wedding, and during a break asked him how he did what he did. Bellison was the player's teacher's teacher. The response: "I don't know - I just play."
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Author: Wunderbober
Date: 2023-05-28 10:10
I play similar style.
What do you need.
Vandoren 7jb mouthpiece.
Rico 1.5 Reed.
Pickup microphone
I play German system clarinet, but I think-it is not very important, you can play such a music on boehm too.
Good luck.
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