h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I assure you, I really can't dance. .. my stage and public space presence for such events as entail dancing is confined to palying clarinet, sitting behind sound consoles or hiding in darkened corners.

Ummm... well okay, you play and I'll dance and be one of your groupies. What do you play in? An orchestra or a band?

Sadly, I don't play in anything at the moment. .. but I'm a symphonic clarinettist; I play in symphony orchestras. (my userspace has details.. *points*)

So those Buffet's are A clarinets right? And cost a bundle too I bet. I think it's kind of cute how you've named them.

The one is a Bb, the other is an A. *nods sagely*.. and yes, they're worth somewhere in the region of $5000 - or a little more; they're irreplacable, because they 'don't make them like these any more' - my pair of instruments are about 20 years old. I do rather love them.. ..which probably contributes to my having named them.

Do you play any instruments?

Not really unless you count drums or rattles.

I just remembered one of my friends had two clarinets, one for orchestra and one for symphonic band and I remembered the A was for orchestra and I thought you said you had a B flat that wasn't a Buffet, but I should have know probably that you wouldn't have two As if they're that expensive.

Thank God you're not a bassoon player, right?

Maybe you can explain something. Why would they have two keys that are only a half-step apart anyways?

Well, see, it's like this. The Bb clarinet is what's sometimes referred to as a 'soprano' clarinet; it's the bog-standard instrument, insofar as an instrument can be bog standard. If you're playing in a band or orchestra in the west, you're most likely to be required to play on a Bb instrument. The implications of the instrument being a Bb, as opposed to an instrument which plays in C (such as the flute, oboe, piano, or most of the rest of the symphony orchestra) are that the music it plays is specifically designed for the instrument, in terms of the key; in order for the notes which the clarinet plays to be correct, it has to be shifted in the opposite direction notationally to the direction in which the pitch of the clarinet differs by nature of the fact that it's a Bb instrument. If a clarinettist were required to play an oboe part, he or she would have to transpose the music, meaning that not only would he or she have to deal with the technical complexity of the music as written, he would have to translate the music from C notation into Bb notation on the fly.

Whilst transposition is a necessary evil, it becomes extremely challenging for the clarinettist, and so in order to avoid unnecessary difficulty, symphonic clarinettists have Bb and A clarinets - many composers write music which alternates between "Clarinet in Bb" and "Clarinet in A". Whilst it's perfectly possible to play each part on the wrong instrument, it would be a bit like trying to drive a car whilst at the same trying to placate a screaming child in the backseat; perfectly doable, but not something you'd be inclined to do on a mountain pass whilst being assessed for your driving technique (analagous to how it feels to be playing on concert).

The A clarinet also has a darker (slightly) tone than the Bb clarinet, and a lot of music doesn't sound right unless played on it, although tonally it would be identical were you to play the same music on the Bb but transpose a semitone down. *smiles*.. I find my two clarinets a pleasure to play because whilst they're both (in theory) technically identical, it's a quite different experience playing the A clarinet to playing the Bb.

Does that answer your question?

And I have, actually, played the bassoon in a mozart piano concerto - or, the bassoon part, anyway.

So, yes, I have a pair of clarinets (an A and a Bb, Cainnech and Vartouhi, respectively) which I play in symphony orchestras and as solo instruments, and I have a Bb called Titania - as my space indicates - which isn't often played, sadly (since she's technically up for sale). I hope that some of this made sense.

I guess I'm not well versed enough to understand what you're saying exactly.

I know there are different keys for native flutes, but that makes a lot of sense because they only have five or six holes so to even get every tone in the 12 tone octive would require two or three.

But it was my understanding that the clarinet could get all twelve tones on either half of the barrel so I'm still not sure why there are different keys, especially since they are so close to C anyways.

Sorry I'm so dense.

I also heard that a bassoon costs as much as a new car. That's why I mentioned it.

well - ah - more simply, there are a plethora of different keys which instruments can play in; much like the gear shift on a car, you can - in theory - shift between them; it's quite a mathematical system. The key signature at the beginning of a line of music is basically an indication as to how offset from the key of C the music you're playing in is; as the key rises, you have more 'accidental' notes to play; since the standard scale doesn't have gaps between the notes which are sonically identical, in order to preserve the same pattern of gaps between the same notes as you play in a key which is more offset from the key of C, you have to alter some of the notes; the gap between the second and third note in the scale, for instance, has to be TWO semitones, and so if by shifting your key (and scale) up, this interval falls such that the gap is only a semitone, you either shift the upper note up (to add a semitone to the gap), or the lower down. Shifting the note up is a 'sharp' accidental, and shifting it down, a 'flat'. The spattering of bs and #s which you see at the beginning of a line of music indicate which notes need to be altered to preserve music's tonality.

Fundamentally, the Bb clarinet is offset such that it's ALREADY offset from the key of C when playing in what a clarinettist calls the key of C.. so certain pieces of music are easier to play (since it requires less further offset in one direction in order to play in a key which is more offset from C than that clarinet is) and some are harder than on 'normal' instruments.

Think of it this way; you have a coridoor lined with rooms. They're all different sizes, and different shapes. Now, you only have ONE set of furniture, and it needs to go in a certain position. On some sides of the coridoor, it's easiest to put the furniture in a west-facing room, on others an east-facing room. It depends on the size of the room. The keywork on a clarinet is so complicated that some notes are easier to play than others, and if you use an instrument which plays with a semitone's separation then if the room on one side of the coridoor is too small, you simply shift to the one on the other side and the furniture suddenly fits - ie. the music's playable. That's an approximate analagous explanation.

Does that make any sense?

*nods*.. a good bassoon costs almost $20,000.

Okay, I think I get it now. It's really about the fingerings then. You try to keep it simple or nongymnastic if you can right? And everybody's actually playing the same tones but their notation of those tones is different maybe.

*nods*.. something like that. When you're playing a passage in mozart's clarinet concerto which requires several co-ordinated finger-movements per second, it's nice when the finger movements required are as ungymnastic as possible.

Is there anything that you'd like to teach me? I'm sure that you're a much better educator than I am (god forbid that you're not, I don't know that you'd be able to find a more confusing person to explain music theory to you than me.. )..

Well, actually, whether I'm any good at educating people or not, I do owe you a lesson on something, but I don't know what I know you might want to know.

Maybe we can figure that out somehow?

owed as a result of this, or do I sense underlying purpose?

Which part of the united states are you in, pray tell? I haven't managed to work this out as yet..

As a result of this. What other underlying purpose would I have?

I'm going to college in Denver, Colorado.

I don't know, but I couldn't resist asking.

Ah, ok. Down and on the right, as it were. Not too far from where I should be in a few weeks time.