Into the Black Hole (part 1)

I got it into my head recently to buy a book of English country dance tunes, and to try to play some of them.

Unlike contradance or morris tunes, which seem to be almost universally in G and D major, maybe A major, or their relative minors, the ECD tunes are in a variety of keys, flat as well as sharp. So using a diatonic instrument like a melodeon or a pennywhistle isn’t the way to go, unless you have several melodeons or pennywhistles in different keys, and the skills to sight read on all of them.

I don’t.

You can certainly use a pennywhistle to play some of the tunes, but for the rest, a chromatic instrument, one that can be played in all the keys, is a better choice. A fiddle, a piano, a flute. An oboe, as one of our local musicians uses. Or a clarinet.

I’ve hardly touched any clarinets in recent years, but I figured maybe for this I would. I got out both my B♭ clarinets and started trying some ECD tunes. I have an Evette clarinet, bought on eBay back around 2005 or so for, I am not joking, $10.57 — I replaced a couple of the pads and it was fine at the time, but a few years ago I discovered carpet beetles had been eating the pads, and I spent $300 getting it repadded, cleaned, lubricated, and adjusted. I also have a Ridenour TR147, likewise an eBay buy, and cheap though not as cheap, but I’ve never had work done on it; it’s okay as it is.

I’m not. Sheesh, I’m out of practice. With everything pushed in all the way I’m still flat over the whole range of both instruments. That I’m assuming is due in part to my soft reed — a Légère synthetic, strength 2, because I’m pretty much a fifth grader. (I do have some cane reeds of various strengths, which I intend to use too, but it’s just been the Légère so far.)

The throat notes sound bad. Maybe slightly less bad on the Ridenour than the Evette. Maybe not.

I had a couple of mouthpieces but only one I put much faith in, a Fobes Debut, and I’ve been using a Rovner ligature. Out of curiosity I went back on eBay and bought several used mouthpieces, more on gut feeling than anything else, just to see how they’d affect things. Three of them definitely affect things badly. With them the tone is veiled and diffuse in the chalumeau register. The other three work better, two more so than the third. I haven’t compared them for intonation yet, and I don’t have either the chops or the ear to evaluate them much better than that, but I’d say the Fobes is at least comparable to the best two of the lot.

“Best” meaning “best for me at this stage, with my reed, my ligature, and my Ridenour clarinet”. One of the “bad” ones might be excellent under other circumstances.

So I’ve got work to do. I also have a problem which is not a problem as long as I’m playing by myself for myself but will be a problem if I want to play with other people: I’m in the wrong key. But that’s a subject for part 2.