The Oracle of Apollo Snippets from the life of Apollo Lee

Working the Clarinet

Recently, I bought a metal clarinet mouthpiece from a seller on eBay. It arrived while I was battling a bacterial throat infection. For some reason, lots of eBay mouthpiece sellers ship “brand new” mouthpieces with moldy old reeds in them. I’m guessing the “brand new” mouthpieces aren’t as brand new as they’re advertised to be. Or, mouthpiece sellers are dumping their old reeds into tested mouthpieces. Or, perhaps, some idiot complained about how they received a mouthpiece that didn’t come with a reed (they’re usually pictured with one) and left the seller negative feedback. But, I digress.

If you buy a woodwind mouthpiece from eBay, you should definitely inform the seller that you don’t want his old moldy reed. You should also heavily disinfect the mouthpiece as soon as you get it.

Today, I tried out my new metal clarinet mouthpiece. It sounds really great. Unfortunately, my embouchure is out of shape enough that I chomp down somewhat on the mouthpiece of all my instruments. The new metal mouthpiece flaked near the rubber pad on the top. This indicates to me that the mouthpiece is brass with a silver plating. Fair enough. I can expect more flaking, unless I’m really careful with where I put my top teeth.

I also realized after blowing for about an hour that I hadn’t disinfected the mouthpiece (because it was sold to me as “new”). It sounds really good, but my throat’s somewhat scratchy now and I’m hoping it’s nothing but a lesson in disinfection.

So, today’s hour of clarinet practice yielded the following lessons:

1. Thoroughly disinfect all mouthpieces on all reed instruments immediately.
2. The clarinet is a responsive instrument. I do not need to hold it in the death grip I’m used to using. My ring finger on the right hand locks up at the middle joint, which is an indication of weak fingers and too tight a grip. My technique will come back to me.
3. More long tones would be good, as well as practice playing through the throat and remembering the notes in the chalumeau register, which are different than in the clarino.
4. After a while, I get bored and start blowing through standards that I’m not focused on.

I don’t think I got much done today, in terms of agility practice, scales, theory work, tune work, or tone practice. After an hour, I needed water and felt scratchy. I attempted practice on the flute and blew through some Cole Porter tunes, but my position on that instrument is weird today.

Tomorrow, flute and bass clarinet practice.