Clarinet repaired on The Repair Shop

Rocker

A clarinet was repaired on The Repair Shop last week.  The repairman did a fine job of the repairs and he played a line or two of Stranger on the Shore before handing the instrument to it's owner.

I have Stranger on the Shore on a CD and I ripped it to my computer.  Acker Bilk played it in B flat, Google informed me that the clarinet is tuned B flat and is also available tuned to A.  A concert clarinettist would need two to cover all bases.

Using Audacity I altered the B flat tuning of the tune to A and to my ears at least, it lost something of it's character in the process.  I can make a barely passable stab at it on the electric guitar but I plan to try to play it on a slide guitar I have [hanging unused on the wall at the moment]. 

EricTheWeary

There are several types of clarinet although I don't know to what extent most players would need more than one. We do have a pro clarinetist on here so I'll wait to he corrected! 
We have a couple of clarinets in a cupboard gathering dust, perhaps I should have made it my lockdown ambition to have learned a bit. 

octatonic

Calling @Bron_Yr_Aur ;

oldhorsemurphy

Stranger On The Shore was one of my Great Nan's favourite songs and it was the reason I learnt to play clarinet and later on, Sax which I still play 30-odd years later. 

The guy in Bristol who works on my saxes for me used to repair Acker's clarinets for him (Acker lived in Pensford, just outside Bristol). Apparently he wasn't too rigorous in cleaning his instrument after playing and by all accounts it was absolutely vile to work on and required at least one tetanus shot to be safe! 

merlin

I play clarinet as my main instrument for a living. Clarinets come in many shapes and sizes. What is the question exactly....?

I generally play instruments in C and G. For the theatre show that I'm Music Director, which was shut down last March and starts rehearsing again in just over two weeks....I'll be playing Bb and Bass, which is also in Bb. 

Rocker

Just a general comment on the clarinet that was repaired on The Repair Shop program on BBC @Merlin. ;; I know nothing about the instrument but I found that Stranger on the Shore was played, on the recording I have, in B flat.  Google told me that there are clarinets tuned to A too so I adjusted the pitch of the recording to A.  Somehow, to my ears anyway, it did not sound quite 'right'.  Perhaps some tunes sound better in certain keys, in the case of Stranger on the Shore, that key is B flat.  The clarinet looks an interesting instrument, all those stops and things......

TheMadMick

It's probably to obvious but a Bb instrument when fingered in the key of C actually plays Bb. Same for a A clarinet which will play in the key of A. Could never understand why it was done this way. Most brass instruments and saxes are in either Bb or Eb.

Rocker

Thanks @TheMadMick, I know nothing about the instrument other than recognising the sound.

UnclePsychosis

TheMadMick said:

Could never understand why it was done this way. 

If I remember right---and Merlin can correct me here---its a combination of factors. 

Historically, because it was difficult to make finger-pads with air tight holes, it was difficult for wind instruments to play chromatically. This problem is even worse on the clarinet than, say, the flute, because the clarinet overblows at a twelth (the flute overblows to an octave) so you need to be able to play "more" notes before repeating fingerings. The technology to do this didn't really exist properly so you ended up with a whole bunch of clarinets in a whole bunch of different keys (because it was the only way to switch to a different key). 

Over the years, and as fingering systems improved, this consolidated into fewer clarinets---mainly the ones in Bb and A. This is partly because of historical inertia---they have 300-odd years of repertoire that (on paper at least) calls for them but also because switching clarinets makes it a lot easier to play some parts than dealing with some horrific fingering in a "difficult" key.