[Dixielandjazz] Vibrato

[LARRY'S Signs and Large Format Printing]

Since you brought up Hitler.  He and I share at least one thing.  We both
hated "Mac the Knife".  Hitler being Hitler was able to ban the tune as well
as the rest of the Three Penny Opera.  I had to play that tune again last
night - the Bobby Darin Arrangement.  What a drag.  Oh if I were only the
god of music...........

You are right on when you said that about the material.  Most clarinet
players use hard rubber mouthpieces.  I played on a glass mouthpiece and
didn't care for it.  Also the bore, lay and table of the mouthpiece are
important too.

I play on a custom Wells made by Frank Wells of Chicago. (deceased) That
mouthpiece is magic.  I have no idea what the opening is or any of the other
technical characteristics.  I actually found it in a box of old discarded
mouthpieces and it cost me nothing.  It was like finding gold that everyone
else had missed.
Larry Walton
St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Charlie Hooks" <charliehooks2 at earthlink.net>
To: "DJML Dixieland Jazz" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 11, 2005 11:14 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Vibrato


> Vibrato usage among classical clarinetists has varied greatly over
> time.   We now, of course, admire (I certainly do) the clear white
> column of sound produced by Larry Coombs of the CSO (my favorite
> player) and by all international class players.  But it was not
> always so.
>
> The great English clarinetist whose name escapes me at midnight now
> (and I'm too lazy to break and look him up) has written a book on the
> clarinet in which he recounts having met in his youth an aged
> musician who had worked with Muehlfeld, Brahms' clarinetist.    "He
> had a marvelous sound," the old man said.  "The vibrato--as wide as a
> cello's."   "Surely," objected our modern player, "you don't mean the
> cello!"   "Ooh, yes," the old man remembered, "very wide and
> powerful."
>
> Interesting.   I really should look up that book tomorrow, somewhere
> on my shelves, and cite it for you all: every clarinetist should read
> it--along with the text of a German clarinetist, Oskar Kroll, who
> published under the 3rd Reich's rule and is less well known that he
> should be.   In it he discusses experiments made by the Germans on
> materials used in clarinet construction that might be of interest to
> the list:
>
> The material used in constructing the clarinet body, they discovered,
> made absolutely no difference to the sound: they tried glass; they
> even tried concrete.  No difference.  But the material of the
> mouthpiece made total difference.  Wood, rubber, metal, glass--all
> gave totally different sounds.  I can't recall whether they tried
> concrete.
>
> Charlie Hooks
> ____________________________________________
> "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long
> plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die
> like dogs.   There's also a negative side."--Hunter Thompson
>
>
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