Owning and Caring for a Wooden Clarinet

Owning and Caring for a Wooden Clarinet

 This is a subject of interest to all clarinet players at some point in their musical progress and of vital understanding for teachers or those in a position of influence and guidance for younger players. I hope the following thoughts and suggestions will be found helpful.

Why purchase a wooden bodied instrument in the first place?

The short answer is that it should sound better and almost without exception be more rewarding to play than even the best of the plastic bodied models. However, to understand the reason for the recommendation (and the expense) of upgrading to a wooden instrument a few other points might be useful to bear in mind:

• Grenadilla (African Blackwood), the wood from which most instruments are made, grows very slowly and is in short supply, and the highest quality wood, with the greatest density of grain, is rarer still.
• The billets of wood (the rectangular blocks of wood cut to size from the tree trunk and limbs) are stored and dried for years and specially treated before being turned into instruments.
• While computer aided manufacture is now common for boring the billets, the cutting of tone holes and the making of keywork, much handwork for the fitting of keys, padding and finishing remains. The workers undertaking this work are specialists who have been highly trained for years.
• Most metal parts are silver plated to a high standard of finish and the turned wood is stained and polished.
• Even the least expensive model ranges carry these costs but corners are cut to help to hold down prices at the intermediate and upgrade levels. More expensive and professional quality top end instruments receive additional finishing by hand to balance resonance and playing response as well as careful final fine-tuning. Such instruments are quality control tested by experts prior to release for sale.
• Cases, accessories and mouthpieces supplied add to the overall cost.

Care tips and suggestions

Once you have invested in your lovely instrument you will hopefully wish to take good care of it. Developing a few good habits and taking on board a couple of tips will pay large dividends in long term performance and service.

• Handle the clarinet carefully during both assembly and disassembly. Apply cork grease whenever needed and when handling hold the instrument in such a way as to avoid damaging or bending the keywork.
• Warm up the instrument before playing by holding in your hands or placing under your arm for a time and never blow warm/hot air down the tube as this will risk stressing the wood.
• After playing use a swab to dry out the instrument including the recesses of the barrel and joints - moisture often accumulates here as well. Do this frequently during a practice session and draw the swab through slowly even allowing it to come to a stop for several seconds in the top joint to allow it to absorb the moisture within and not just 'spread it around'. There are many brands of swab available and using any are better than doing nothing but my favourite, for many reasons including the fact that I designed it, is the Dryer Swab available from Woodwind & Reed and Reeds Direct Cambridge ( www.wwr.co.uk/clarinet.../the-dryer-pull-through-bbaeb-clarinet.asp ) Follow the link to read about this product. It is pictured here: 

 

• If your wooden instrument is brand new you should consider being kind to it and playing it for short periods of time - say 30 minutes maximum at a session - then giving an hour or so to recover before playing again. Following this routine for a settling-in period of a month or so can avoid many future problems.
• If, despite your best efforts, a joint becomes stiff to assemble or remove then you may be experiencing a swelling of the wood due to moisture. A skilled repairer will be able to sort this problem out but if, in the meantime, you need to remove the offending joint then here is a tip: Hold the stuck parts firmly one in each hand and exert a rocking pressure in each of the four points of the compass to try to 'break' the tension of the wood-to-wood contact that has developed. Patiently repeat as necessary. You may have to leave the stuck portions for a period of time or even overnight to allow for drying out and then repeat the process. This almost always works but is of course best to avoid through regular use of your swab.
• It is not generally necessary to use bore oil on modern era instruments (post approx 1980), as their wood has usually been pressure treated. However, for older instruments or wherever the wood has begun to look 'dry' a light oiling with almond oil or a proprietary bore oil can be helpful. Do not apply in excess as the oil can run and will eat away at pads and attract lint.
• It is very good advice to have your clarinet checked over by a skilled repairer once a year as any instrument can suffer adjustment or regulation problems from the atmosphere, handling, compression and moisture whether used infrequently, regularly or heavily. 

Having said all the above it remains to add that playing and taking care of your wooden clarinet should be a great joy as well as a responsibility. The tips above should help you to increase the pleasure you experience from playing and reduce both the cost and frustration related to maintenance.


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The tips and comments above are the result of many years of providing help and advice, my personal interest and study, and the teaching that I have done during my career. I have many colleagues and teachers to thank for sharing their thoughts and suggestions on this and other topics. In addition I am indebted to Woodwind & Reed, Cambridge ( www.wwr.co.uk ) where, in the course of helping customers, many of these concepts have been refined and have proven helpful.

Thomas Dryer-Beers

A Brief Guide Vandoren Clarinet Mouthpiece Terminology and Product Background

Vandoren Clarinet Mouthpiece Terminology and Product Guide

The Vandoren clarinet  mouthpiece range is large and can be confusing. The guide / tips below are reinforced by the Vandoren Reed and Mouthpiece Catalogue – well worth a read by all interested musicians – and my additional comments.

Terminology- 

1) In the Catalogue tip openings are listed from narrow to open and the appropriate reed strength suggestions offered by Vandoren are a good indicator of the relative tip opening and the expected successful reed matches. Generally beginners are (or should be) advised towards more open to moderate tip mouthpieces, including B45, B40 and M30. VERY WIDE tip openings are best left for knowledgeable players with the experience to choose to match their soft reed preference or a requirement of jazz playing (5JB, 7JB). VERY NARROW (Closed) tip openings are options for more experienced players seeking a mouthpiece to suit their preference for stronger reeds.

2) Profile 88 simply refers to an option in the beak angle (slightly more acute than the traditional beak) that many players will prefer but few will know by name. I believe this should be the ‘default’ choice for many players as it both likely to be more comfortable to play and more like any other familiar mouthpiece in ‘feel’.

3) The LYRE versions of any standard Vandoren mouthpiece are variants in the length of the facing, often paired with subtle changes in the tip opening, that will affect the playing feel of the mouthpiece. Lyre mouthpieces should retain the same tonal quality and pitch of their standard non-Lyre equivalents. 

4) The 13 Series is all about pitch and is designed to help modern instruments (often pitched at 442) to more comfortably play at A440 (as is the standard practice in the USA and UK). They can help any musician with a consistent sharpness in their tuning and will reduce the amount of ‘pull’ needing to bring the instrument to A440 tuning. The 13 Series is not intended to have any effect upon tone when compared to a non-13 'traditional' mouthpiece.

Additional product background –

Mouthpieces are made from a variety of materials including plastic (associated with student mouthpieces and ease of manufacture) hybrid materials (often for cost reasons but also for specific timbres of sound), crystal (glass) and various types of metal in addition to the traditional ebonite.

The reason the Vandoren range is made from ebonite (sulphurous hard rod rubber) is that this material provides the greatest manufacturing stability, warmest sound and workability for the purpose. Vandoren use only the finest quality of ebonite for their production and have the most accurate computer machining and finishing in the business. Their products are remarkably consistent – so much so that I would assert the performance differences between identical examples (if found at all) will almost always be down to the placement of the reed during the comparison by the musician.

The original and popular Vandoren mouthpiece was / is the 5RV. Designed by Robert Vandoren for French professional clarinettists desiring a bright sound, consistent performance and a comfortable match to their mid to stronger reed strengths. Vandoren call the 5RV their ‘time-proven standard’. It continues to be popular but it can be selected for the wrong reason, i.e. it will play very easily with soft reeds and if a player is not yet ready to move to the correct reed match, performance in the upper register will suffer.

The most successful and more often recommended mouthpiece in the Vandoren range is the B45 designed by Bernard Vandoren. It is intended to successfully match the lower and mid-strength reeds more regularly in use by improving players (around GD 4-5 and above). The B45 works well in many applications and for many levels of players. Vandoren call this their ‘Universal’ mouthpiece.

The more recently introduced M30 model offers a darker tone with a mellowness and warmth not found in the other mouthpieces of the standard range and works well with mid-strength reeds. It has proven popular and I believe it is worth all players experiencing.

The Masters or CL series of mouthpieces (CL4, CL5 and CL6) are recent introductions with a specific new design derived from the older, handcrafted designs favoured by many American orchestral players. They have an ease of playing, stability of tuning and clarity of sound that is distinctive and attractive to more experienced players.

The most recent release is the Black Diamond which is the result of much experimentation, with both internal and external design changes, and is intended to offer an option that generates a richer tonal palate and offers greater control of the entire range of the instrument – notably helping with the production of the altissimo (extreme high) register.

NB - Vandoren used to make a glass crystal mouthpiece that was popular but has for many years now been discontinued due to high production costs and the inherent fragility of glass.

 

General Trial Suggestions-

When trying mouthpieces it makes sense to have some idea of what one wishes to achieve with the change. For example - what type of sound is desired or which style of music will be performed most often, what aspects of instrumental control are the concern to be addressed via a change of mouthpiece (articulation, projection, tuning, response, comfort, range, etc) and what reed strengths and brand of reed one will wish to use. Armed with these thoughts a selection of appropriate mouthpieces can be suggested. Trying them briefly and consistently with new reeds, using a familiar scale, perhaps a passage of music and a variety of articulations and dynamics can quickly establish a likely choice - which may or may not lead to further comparable mouthpieces being tried and a winner selected. I suggest that anyone trying mouthpieces be prepared to consider matching different reeds to their new mouthpiece as this very important pairing may well determine the long term success and enjoyment one will experience. 

In Conclusion - 

The potential for improved performance that is so often found with a change of mouthpiece is potentially so profound that all players would be well advised to take whatever opportunities they have to become aware of new products, gain an understanding of the various options in specifications that are available and take note of any changes to their own playing requirements or instrumental progress that might benefit from a change of mouthpiece. In terms of playing satisfaction the finding of a mouthpiece well suited to purpose is hard to beat!

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The tips and comments above are the result of many years of providing help and advice, my personal interest and study, and the teaching that I have done during my career. I have many colleagues and teachers to thank for sharing their thoughts and suggestions on this and other topics. In addition I am indebted to Woodwind & Reed, Cambridge ( www.wwr.co.uk ) where, in the course of helping customers, many of these concepts have been refined and have proven helpful.

Thomas Dryer-Beers