BQOD

16. February 2010 · 2 comments · Categories: BQOD

There’s always a place for the E-flat clarinet. Nobody wants it, because it doesn’t work. It’s something like a French horn — excuse me, a horn, you don’t call it a French horn — because if you hit a note hard, it tends to shatter. With the E-flat clarinet it’s a double-reed. It’s like blowing — playing through a straw.

2 Comments

  1. Tim Dowd
    February 16, 2010 at 10:12 am

    Being able to play well with considerable force/volume on the horn was my first indication that I was approaching the outermost limits of mastering the instrument (but then I got a day job). While it is difficult, it is certainly not impossible to “hit a note hard” without it shattering.

    The rest of it is kind of…well, it doesn’t make sense to me (particularly, the first two sentences seem to contradict each other). Maybe this is about the Eb oboe? :)

  2. Tim Dowd
    February 17, 2010 at 1:18 pm

    (Oh, and by “approaching the outermost limits” I mean that I was far from mastery, not that I only had a little further to go to achieve it.)