UNPLANNED DOWNTIME: 12th Oct 23:45
Clarinet repaired on The Repair Shop
A clarinet was repaired on The Repair Shop last week. The repairman did a fine job of the repairs and he played a line or two of Stranger on the Shore before handing the instrument to it's owner.
I have Stranger on the Shore on a CD and I ripped it to my computer. Acker Bilk played it in B flat, Google informed me that the clarinet is tuned B flat and is also available tuned to A. A concert clarinettist would need two to cover all bases.
Using Audacity I altered the B flat tuning of the tune to A and to my ears at least, it lost something of it's character in the process. I can make a barely passable stab at it on the electric guitar but I plan to try to play it on a slide guitar I have [hanging unused on the wall at the moment].
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. [Albert Einstein]
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
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We have a couple of clarinets in a cupboard gathering dust, perhaps I should have made it my lockdown ambition to have learned a bit.
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I generally play instruments in C and G. For the theatre show that I'm Music Director, which was shut down last March and starts rehearsing again in just over two weeks....I'll be playing Bb and Bass, which is also in Bb.
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
Historically, because it was difficult to make finger-pads with air tight holes, it was difficult for wind instruments to play chromatically. This problem is even worse on the clarinet than, say, the flute, because the clarinet overblows at a twelth (the flute overblows to an octave) so you need to be able to play "more" notes before repeating fingerings. The technology to do this didn't really exist properly so you ended up with a whole bunch of clarinets in a whole bunch of different keys (because it was the only way to switch to a different key).
Over the years, and as fingering systems improved, this consolidated into fewer clarinets---mainly the ones in Bb and A. This is partly because of historical inertia---they have 300-odd years of repertoire that (on paper at least) calls for them but also because switching clarinets makes it a lot easier to play some parts than dealing with some horrific fingering in a "difficult" key.