Tag Archive for 'reeds'

Turning Over a New Reed

Published on December 31, 2008 in Equipment and Musician's Life. 0 Comments Tags: embouchure, new year, reed, reeds.

For the new year, I’ll begin with a brand new reed. Old reeds are like old shoes; they feel great but are probably bad for your posture/playing.

I am a firm believer in plopping on a fresh reed and going with it. If it’s in the ball park, play it for the day. Use good habits of support, embouchure and air flow to compensate for any limitations the reed shows. I recommend this experiment for practicing, not performances, though that could be attempted if a higher challenge is desired.

Happy New Reed to All!!

David

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A comedy of musical omens

Published on June 4, 2008 in Clarinet, Equipment, Mastery, Musician's Life, Orchestra Auditions and The Music. 3 Comments Tags: bolero, brahms, mendelssohn, olympic athletes, orchestral excerpts, reeds, scherzo.

This past Saturday and Monday I spent 7 hours recording a CD of 10 orchestral excerpts to be used as a preliminary round for a major US orchestra, the NY Philharmonic. The hours between were spent mostly practicing those excerpts.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Playing in an orchestra is to skating in the Ice Capades what auditioning for an orchestral position is to winning the Olympics.

Olympic athletes don’t have lives; they have only their goal, to win the Olympics. They sleep, eat, play, love and breathe that goal. Nothing else matters. Nothing else can matter, for every electron of their being must be pointed in one direction consistently for years in order to achieve that goal. Or attempt to achieve it. Many do not even gain a medal.

I hired a professional technician to help me with the task of recording and then editing the CD. I’m glad I did. After 7 hours of recording, there were 2 hours of takes from which the best 10 had to be selected to comprise the final 15 minute CD. This guy was top notch. He took detailed notes of my random playing order for each excerpt. (I often gave up perfecting one and tried another, or several others, before returning to the first.)

To be able to play those 10 excerpts with the highest quality, I had tested 50 or 60 reeds and rejected most of them (at $2 a shot) to get one or two which would let my music making shine through. I had practiced those excerpts with numerous reeds, and each reed had to be played slightly differently to make it work. Each excerpt also tended to demand a different kind of reed. Now I sought the one reed to rule them all!

Recording those 10 excerpts is like performing a decathlon, the height of athletic performance for any human. One has to be nimble to play Mendelssohn’s sprightly Scherzo, powerful to lift the heavy drama of Verdi’s Tosca or Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta, rich and somber for the opening of Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony, sensual and luring for Ravel’s Bolero, and some of all of the above for Brahms 3rd symphony.

I also had to play parts one of the most deceptively difficult of concertos; Mozart’s. Mozart demands both the purity of expression of a child and the technical mastery of a great artist.

I recorded right up to the deadline, allowing several hours for my engineer to edit the CD. With the finished product in my hands, I dared not listen to it, fearing only the flaws would reach my ears, nothing else.

I reread the very specific directions for sending it, which said to clearly label the jacket with my name. I took out an indelible marker and wrote my name on the CD, instead of the jacket. Since this was to be a “blind” preliminary audition, they couldn’t see my name on the CD. I had to copy the CD to a fresh disk and follow the directions this time, labeling the outside. Not a big deal, but time was running out.

It was now 8:15 PM. It had to be sent 9 PM to have it in the NY Phil office by the next morning. To be sure it copied correctly, I put the CD in my stereo and listened to a bit of each track. My heart sank. In the first 16 bars of the Mozart Concert, I noticed a few slightly out of tune notes.

Musicians are both blessed and cursed with astoundingly powerful and uncompromisingly sharp self-criticism. Those few out of tune notes would be nothing in a live performance, nothing at all. They would be of little consequence in a recording with orchestra, when the listener is taking in the big picture and the shape of the phrase. But when there are hundreds of applicants vying for one of only a few hundred jobs in the country, those first 16 bars are CRITICAL.

I pushed aside the gloomy mood which encroached. I was exhausted, having barely eaten the past two days, surviving on nervous energy. I headed for FedEx Kinkos to send it off. I flipped on the radio, which was playing a recording of Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks. The music came to the part where Till is about to be executed, as the whole brass section plays the doomsday march to the scaffold. It was appropriate music for my current mood.

Till, played by the Eb clarinet in this section, screams out in fear and desperation at impending death. After squealing out an incredibly high note, the parts calls for a low one. In this performance, that low note was flat as all get out! I bellowed with frustrated laughter. Ah, the painful irony of it all.

After mailing off the tainted CD, I returned home to focus on finding the cause of the deathly smell which had permeated my house. After sniffing around a bit, I located the little corpse of a chipmunk under my piano, the room in which I had been recording. (undoubtedly brought in by my cats several days earlier) Another ominously ironic sign? Death inspired music making? No wonder it was out of tune!!

I decided I had to get out of the house. I phoned a friend to meet me at a restaurant for a bite to eat, my first real meal in two days. On the way I turned on the radio again. I immediately recognized the music which had pulsed through my veins since age 12; Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto.

I also noticed several out of tune notes.

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Why I Am a Classical Musician

Published on January 18, 2008 in Behind the Scenes, Clarinet and Personal. 1 Comment Tags: clarinetist, classical music, conductors, embouchure, Equipment, goldberg variations, ligature, mouthpiece, music directors, musicians, phrasing, Practicing, reeds, The Music.

I carve a tiny piece of wood off the base of the reed. The shaving isn’t much larger than one or two hairs of daily growth on a man’s face. Almost nothing. I put the reed back on the mouthpiece and fasten it with the ligature. I form an embouchure and play the scale I repeat hundreds of times a day to check reeds. The raspiness has gone from the reed’s vibrations. The difference is huge. Now it has a bell-like ring as it pings through the instrument. Ahh!

After 2 hours of working on reeds, I am tired. Add five hours of rehearsals today and that’s a full day. But I haven’t finished. I still need to review specific sections of this weekend’s music. And the reed I just fixed might not make it through five minutes of playing, with the time spent on it lost after that.

Why do I do this? I smile as I ask myself. “Because I love it” might be one answer. But that’s not quite it. It’s more like an itch I have to scratch. From age 12 on I had the “ring” of the clarinet’s tone in my head, an ideal to strive for. Such a goal is elusive; it shifts and hides moments after being within your grasp.

Reeds are part of the problem, but so is being human. I am not a machine. I have to eat and sleep. I get tired. I have good days and bad. Yet the goal is always there; to outdo myself. Like an athlete wishing to win the Olympics, I strive for perfection with an all too human body and life. I may not always achieve it. But the striving tenures me to strong and tenacious character.

Of course, playing the instrument alone is only part of this puzzle. I am a clarinetist because I love music. Why do I love classical music so much?

As I ponder this question, my ear wanders to a CD I have playing of Bach’s Goldberg Variations performed by Andras Schiff. It’s a new recording for me. I have at least four recordings of this piece by different performers. Each player creates something fresh with their interpretation. So while the music is very familiar to me, it sounds new in this pianist’s hands.

Bach’s variations are accessible, dancelike and intimate, humorous and poignant. One in particular, the 26th, breaks my heart each time I hear it. I hang on every note. Schiff’s version is surprisingly feminine and coquettish, but with amazing facility and control. The tone of the particular piano he plays is also exquisite.

This brilliant music, and the performance, seems to come from somewhere beyond human capabilities. Yet it reflects human emotions in a crystalline way. It says something to me which I cannot articulate. It tells me who I am and who I could be. It reminds me of my humanity and my frailty, my nobility and my baseness. It reaches across ages, like sculpture or painting, and shows me how history and art has formed me and the civilization I live in.

Classical music offers a place of sanity in a harsh world. It clears the haze of daily life and allows us a glimpse of the thoughts and feelings of great people and a connection to our higher selves. And of their vulnerabilities. Who wouldn’t want to be inside Einstein’s head, or Picasso’s or Martin Luther King’s, as they thought and felt their great deeds? Well, I do. My life’s commitment is to be the instrument which recreates the vision of great composers for others.

Unlike painting or literature, classical music is experienced directly in time. Though I enjoy recordings of great pianists and orchestras, I relish hearing one as it happens. A live performance reflects a unique snapshot in time, much like sports are reality in action. Just like the excitement of a supportive crowd in sports, the audience affects performers with their attention and enjoyment. In a live performance, the history of today day can cue a great performer to fresh new depths of expression and heights of emotion for those listeners.

Orchestral performances are an intersection of many parts. First you have the music itself and the history of its style, something like recreating Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Then you have the particular orchestra and conductor, the “repainters”, if you will. Each member of the orchestra brings their own ideals and experience to the table, which then has to amalgamate into one voice. Then there are the acoustics of the hall, and the audience’s interest. It comes together each time to form a unique experience. When it all gels and the energy builds towards perfection, a particular performance can become an epiphany for all concerned.

Back to my own life and career. I may fix numerous good reeds at home, but few withstand the test of playing in my hall. The acoustics are deplorable, sadly, for the orchestra and especially the audience. This is not a concert hall, but a movie theater. It is not meant for the sublte voice of great music. I need a dense, resonant tone to carry my musical intentions to the odd corners of the cavernous room and the ears of listeners. Dozens of hours of work are usually spent to find the right reed for the hall, one which responds in the weather of that day and the demands of that night’s music.

Recently, I have been experimenting with other aspects of tone production, especially mouthpieces. When I first got this job 18 years ago, I had a great combination of reed type and mouthpiece which fit perfectly with the hall. I thought it was all the practicing I had done before winning the audition. I was naive. When that mouthpiece warped, ruining it, I searched for a decade and never found one with such beauty of tone. In the process I became a better musician. But it wasn’t without its cost in tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours and stress. Somehow I wonder if it’s worth it. I warn students of the gravity of choosing a music career.

All this thought and activity is before I play a note in a concert. In a live performance, a musician is naked. Even beyond practicing clarinet, I have worked a great deal behind the scenes to make it seem “effortless” on stage. I have studied various techniques for focus and presence in order to overcome fatigue and stress from so many hours of repetitive practicing. In truth, much of my daily life since age 12 has been working toward the present performance. The goal may be ideal, but a human plays for it. Personally, I play better when I know I am being heard and appreciated. A great conductor helps bring my focus together, and a great audience.

When the concert finally begins, the first note is a commitment to the rest of the piece and to my colleagues. Egos may clash on and off stage, but conflict usually disappears as the conductor raises his baton and we come together to go beyond ourselves. All my work may or may not pay off this time. Even the best athletes fall.

Is it worth it? All this for the love of great ideas!? I guess that tiny shaving of reed is worth a great deal to me.

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Trying out new equipment

Published on December 12, 2006 in Equipment and Mastery. 2 Comments Tags: articulation, Equipment, ligature, mouthpieces, musicians, reed, reeds, stradivarius violins, The Music, tone.

Musicians are as reliant on their equipment as they are their arms and legs. Great equipment is half the battle to playing well. But the search is not so easy.

I’ve been trying out new mouthpieces for months now. Actually, I’ve been searching ever since I started playing clarinet. The perfect mouthpiece is an extension of your body, your musical soul. The more it matches you, the easier it is to make music with it. The less it matches, the more fighting you do just to get past its limitations.

The old mouthpieces from the 40’s and 50’s are still unmatched. Like the Stradivarius violins, there is something mystical about those old mouthpieces. Some say it’s the hard rubber they were made of, and how it’s aged and tempered over the decades of aging.

But the material only accounts for some of the qualities in a good mouthpiece. There are the interactions acoustically between the facing, where the reed vibrates, and the baffle, where the vibrations expand, and the chamber, where the sound is sent into the bore of the instrument.

The facing is the flat table where the reed is held by a ligature, a device to fix the reed in place. (Even the ligature has multiple designs to help with tone and response, but that’s another post) The facing consists mainly of the tip opening, which is the space between the tip of the reed and the mouthpiece. It’s where the vibrations (flapping of the reed) begin. The length of the facing is how far down the flat table the facing begins to curve away from the reed. The length of the facing gives depth to the sound, since the reed is vibrating further down. The shorter the facing, the more flexible it is at the expense of depth, and the longer it is, the less flexible but deeper it sounds.

The baffle is the inside, curved “beak”, where the sound expands into the bore. The swoop of the baffle, how deep or flat it is, affects the speed and expansion of the tone. It also affects response in articulation.

The chamber is the transition from the beak to the round bore of the clarinet. The size and shape of this transition further affects how the sound forms as it enters the instrument.

Each of these areas interacts with another, and so is dependent on the others. One type of baffle may work with one facing, but not another. One chamber may hinder a deep baffle, but not if the facing is very open.

Then there is the interaction between the player and the mouthpiece. Each mouthpiece has a certain character. The craftsman does his best to make each “blank” into the best mouthpiece it can be. The player then chooses between these various “works” and finds the one which best matches his playing.

Reeds are another maddening variable. One mouthpiece may work well with one reed, but may be fussy about reeds in general. So when trying mouthpieces, I have to try many different reeds on them over a period of time to test its consistency. I also need to test mouthpieces in the context of the orchestra to see how the pitch settles and how the response and tone work under pressure.

The process of trying mouthpieces can take years. At some point, a sane person needs to just put away all but one and work with it, get reeds to match it, and give it time to become and extension of the body which plays the music.

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The Spirit of Performing

Published on October 21, 2006 in Mastery, Technique and The Music. 0 Comments Tags: Clarinet, good music, learning music, Performances, performing music, phrase, reeds, spirit, squeak, subjective interpretation.

When performing music, I have to balance a “subjective” interpretation from an “objective” one. This means I need to pay attention to the notes on the page and composer’s markings as much as my own interpretation of them. But both parts of the interpretation are important to good music making. The spirit of the music must be recreated, not just the notes and markings.

This week I had some trouble with my reeds warping. Those little pieces of cane don’t like the dry weather of approaching winter. So it feels like I’m going to squawk all the time. Not a pleasant feeling when you need to be relaxed to phrase beautifully. A squeak on a clarinet is not a pretty thing. EVERYONE hears it. I used to have a giggling fit when ever someone squeaked. Now, as a pro, I look innocent, hoping everyone thinks it’s my stand partner who did it. UGH!

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The Life of a Musician is…

Published on October 13, 2006 in Behind the Scenes, Off the Record and Personal. 2 Comments Tags: audience appreciation, ego, great music, miscellaneous, musician, Performances, Practicing, reeds, rhythm, The Music.

You can’t even fart on the job. You go deaf from playing for decades among instruments as loud as a jackhammer. You are naked. You fight to control little pieces of wood which last only a few days at their peak. Then you being again. If you have a bad day, everyone knows. You sit next to the same people all the time, sometimes for 20-30 years. You are all incredibly full of yourselves, otherwise you wouldn’t be where you are, yet most of you are also insecure from years of self-deprecating thinking, “It’s just not good enough!” “I failed to play perfectly, again!” “And again”.

You wake up in the morning after practicing 6 hours the day before, and it feels like you have to start all over from the bottom, pushing up the boulder inch by inch, striving for the top of the mountain whose height disappears beyond the clouds. it seems hopeless sometimes, spending all that time for what? to play 25 or 50 notes perfectly in tune and in rhythm, when thousands of others can already do the same. What the heck are you accomplishing by doing that????? Oh yes, you can be proud of your accomplishments, especially to people who ask you “Do you get paid to do that?” Yes, I have really been asked that, more than once.

Yet you know that somewhere up the mountain, beyond the clouds, is some effervescent reward, a glass of champagne without the liquid, a feeling of speaking a language of gods, or at least understanding it deeply. If you have any sense, you are in awe of those who make great music, or if you are truly a great musician, you are humbled by your gift. But the striving to reach that reward seems disproportionate to it. It’s so ephemeral.

There’s the glow of basking in audience appreciation, but that’s usually popped moments later by the memory of the imperfections of your performance. It’s never perfect. Yet we strive and agonize for decades toward it. Perhaps it’s ego, proving your greatness, your superiority. I’d rather be a doctor or a lawyer for that. It must be the music, when we remember to listen as we play, when we notice Schubert’s exquisite melodies for the first time after playing them for 20 years. Perhaps that makes it worth it. Perhaps not.

Coming close to the sublime musical language of gods is what we all strive for. EVen a small taste is enough to keep one coming back. When we remember this, the discomfort of daily life as a performer is worth it. Until then, it’s because, because, because we always have. Obsession has its sporadic rewards.

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Tone

Published on January 4, 2006 in Clarinet. 4 Comments Tags: reeds, tone.

I spent a few hours last week with a long time colleague. She played in the Kennedy Center Opera House orchestra with me while I was there from 1983-89. I’ve always respected and liked her, both as a person and a clarinetist. It’s been at least ten years since we’ve seen each other. I was in the DC area for a few days. So we got together.

I’m not much for shop talk. I’ve always believed in striving for my own ideals and finding my own way. I chose to spend more of my life and time doing other things such as gardening, writing, traveling, reading. Music is only a piece of the whole picture for me.

Lora is one of the few clarinetists I like to talk “shop” with. She had recently gotten a new “Vintage” mouthpiece from Brad Behn, who claims to have recreated the old hard rubber of the famous “Chedeville” mouthpieces from the 50’s. I wanted to compare it to my Lelandais Chedeville, which I love, but which is also getting old and worn. Over the years I’ve tried many new mouthpieces, some of which I’ve used for months and which are excellent. But I always come back to the Lelandais. There’s something in its sound, a color and resonance missing in all the others.

So we started warming up. We have very different tones. Hers is more round than mine, but more fuzzy. Mine is perhaps more pointed and clearer, but less deep than hers. We tried the new mouthpiece with different reeds and ligatures. Some combinations worked better than others. That’s another post. But it was fairly clear this new brand of mouthpiece would be a strong contender against the inimitable old Chedevilles.

Why is tone so important to us? Of course, it’s crucial to have good tone along with the other skills of a musician, technique and musicality. But tone is not as easily measured. It’s subjective. Each listener will have a preference. So will each player. And there are different schools of tone. The French were famous for their focus and clarity, using lighter, flexible tone to express themselves. The German school stove for a heavier and darker, more earthy sound. Karl Leister is one of the great German clarinetists, whose sound is rich and dark. I use the past tense with those schools, because the lines have been blurred by easy access to recordings and foreign equipment. Most players can now pick and choose who they wish to emulate, rather than subscribe to a particular school.

Tone becomes a personal stamp, the most basic way to appeal to a listener. I have always emulated Robert Marcellus, whose tone is unforgettable. But even he once said to me, “Don’t try to sound like me, just follow your inner ear.” And Loren Kitt once advised me, “No matter what mouthpiece you play on, you’ll eventually sound like yourself. So play what’s comfortable.” …sound like yourself…inner ear. So what is the ideal sound I wish to produce?

Marcellus described the clarinet sound as “pear” shaped, deeper and wider at the bottom, more pointed at the top. I like that image. I strive to produce a “diamond” dense clarity from my sound. I want a sound which will ring in the back of the hall, even if I’m playing pianissimo. I often lament that I desire such a “clear” sound, because clarity is hair’s breath from “edgy” or “bright”, two qualities I abhor. Harold Wright had an incredibly dense, pure sound, with no edge. (he played a Lelandais) And his tone was flexible and light, like a flute. Though I respect and love his sound, I still have my own ideal, not quite like his. I want deep, resonante, clear tone, the way my inner ear guides me.

Tone is the Holy Grail. When I’m in the sweet spot, with the right reed, and the stars are aligned, I never want to leave. I just want to feel that perfect sound vibrating, emanating from me. It’s like chocolate. Once you taste the good stuff, there’s no turning back. I’ve been addicted for 34 years. And I don’t plan to quit.

At one point Lora said I needed more “body” in my sound. She was right. I was focused on “focus” to the exclusion of “body”. That’s why I like her. She can criticize me gently and effectively. I think she also came away with some new ideas about sound. She preferred the ligature I was playing, which helped focus her sound. I enjoyed and benefited from talking shop over coffee with a good friend. It doesn’t get much better than that.

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