[Dr G]

Follow-Up. My main piece is a Richard Hawkins - One of his pieces from before he got involved with Bachun. Awesome sound with clarity and the 'ring' we all want. Perfect for the solo stuff but in the blistering loud contemporary Wind Ensemble I find myself - I could use more volume.

Have you received feedback from people in the audience that they cannot hear you? Or have you recordings that show you down in the mix?

Sometimes, just sometimes, getting louder is not the answer. There's a limit to how much sound you can get from a clarinet, and the resistance that you have to exert to get there is likely not linear (you have to work a lot harder for not much change).

Yeah, this comes from a guy that suffered pleurisy in the '80s from trying to play louder than everyone else. (I should have just used more gain on the microphone.)

 

[Dr G]

I used to use one on a Selmer Series 9. I had a trumpet player tell me not to play so loud. A trumpet player......

Maybe they just didn't like to hear your clarinet.

 

[Dr G]

Here's the problem - Both conductors are brass players. They have Plexiglass behind the French Horns to help with projection. So the trumpet need to play louder to balance the horn sound. It's supposed to be a wind ensemble; however, there are 8 trumpets and only 7 clarinets. We are getting hammered!

That's way out of balance. Is the music scored for that instrumentation, or are they just doubling random parts? Does anyone ever listen to the band and report on the quality of its performance?

Here's the part that really gets me - when you can finally hear the clarinets. The conductors will ask us to player softer. Really? Okay I see how it's gonna go.

I can imagine that tone and intonation are suffering by the time the clarinets are sufficiently loud to be detectable.

The conductors need to get their heads out of their brass, so to speak, and consider the balance rather than the volume.

G'luck with that ensemble. I was in a band years ago that had "issues" that were similarly entrenched. My wife finally helped me realize that I wasn't enjoying playing with that band, and I quit. The band still sucked years later, but at least I didn't have to deal with it anymore.