All rights reserved.
Blog
New Favorites: Mouthpiece, Ligature, Mobile App & Clarinet Technique book!
No comment
This week I’m taking some time to explore some of the new gizmos I acquired at ClarinetFest®2012. Here’s what I can pass along to you:
First off is the new Vintage mouthpiece by the Rico company. As a Rico Artist, I was given a few of these to preview but with no pressure to tout them to my friends and students. I’ve been playing on a Vandoren M30-13 Series 88 for several years now and loved the fact that it worked well with a medium reed (3 1/2 Vandoren V-12 or 3 1/2+ Rico Select Classic) and was fairly vibrant, free-blowing, flexible but dark. These new Vintage mouthpieces are a totally different style, based on the Caspar and Chedeville mouthpieces of long ago – French flexibility and German dark core – the ‘American’ sound in the classical clarinet tonal world. Here’s a good website for more information on those original mouthpieces if you are curious: http://mouthpiecemuseum.com It took a few days to make the adjustment, moving from a less resistant mouthpiece and harder reed to a more resistant mouthpiece and softer reed but I think I’m going to keep at it. I’ve been playing the 1.10 facing this week with a 3 1/2 strength in the Rico Select, Rico Select Classic & Vandoren V-12’s. More about the 1.05 facing in a subsequent post. It’s an even tone, a little more resistance to blow against but more flexibility in the reed. Rehearsals with the OWU reed trio next week, we’ll see what my colleagues think of it. The Rico company has been transformed since it was bought by the D’Addario company several years ago, pouring lots of $$ into research and product development. The Rico Reserve and Reserve Classic reeds have been a great success and these Vintage mouthpieces hold a lot of promise since they employed some of the best mouthpiece makers and artists in the world with cutting edge digital analysis of model mouthpieces to create this line. Check them out.
I also bought the new gold-plated Vandoren M/O ligature – it has a darker tone than my Optimum (must be the gold), with two thin, horizontal rails touching the reed bark. The single screw in the back is light but seems substantial, certainly a time saver to have one to manipulate in a quick rest.
The new mobile app was demonstrated in Rachel Yoder and Kellie Lignitz’ session, Pedagogy 2.0: An Exploration of 21st-Century Innovations in Clarinet Teaching. They contribute all things clarinet technology on a blog, http://clarinetcache.com The app I’m playing with this week is TonalEnergy Tuner by Sonosaurus. It’s $3.99 at the app store but I think I’ll get my money’s worth out of it. It shows frequency/partials, intonation, waveform, has 6 tuning systems including equal temperament and pure/ just intonation (with a great green smiley face when you are spot on), a tone generator (to practice tuning intervals or matching unisons & octaves), and a simple metronome with subdivisions. I’ll be using it for my own practice and in lessons but also as an acoustics device for Music Appreciation demonstrations. It’s great fun, give it a try.
I also ran into John E. Anderson, retired clarinet prof from University of Minnesota. He’s taken many of the standard technique books and literature for the clarinet and created cleaner and more organized versions. I bought his Clarinet Essentials presumably for my students but it is a good warm-up for me as well. He’s taken the most often-used exercises from the J.B. Albert 24 Varied Scales and Exercises, the Carl Baermann Complete Method, op. 63 and the Hyacinthe Klosé Celebrated Method and a few items of his own, arranged them all by keys (major, melodic and harmonic minors) and put them in an easily read and spiral bound volume.
So Clarinet players, if you are in the market for a new mouthpiece, reeds, ligature, mobile app or technique book – these have my two thumbs up!