Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Jean Went To The Tobacconist

The Setup:

One week ago tonight I was asked to play my clarinet for church last Sabbath and was pleased to find a song that fit the pastor's topic of the day quite nicely. I spent a couple hours transcribing it by hand for clarinet and another couple starting a PowerPoint slide show with words and graphics to show while I played. Beth came home and did a marvelous job of revising my slide show by adding more powerful photos. And Sabbath it went very well - praise to God!

However, on Friday night the left hand C key would not work. I took it apart, re-seated the spring, oiled the key. Nothing worked. I used an alterate fingering which my pinky finger on the right hand "catches" every time I try to play that note which made me quite anxious.

Monday I called the clarinet repair man. Tuesday he called me back. The loose rings on the bell, the difficulty assembling the bell onto the lower joint. The sticking key. ALL have one source: the clarinet has SHRUNKEN in the DRY HOUSE!

He suggested getting tobacco humidors to moisten the case. The smaller ones that he recommended were out of stock and are due in tomorrow. Jean bought a larger one (~$5) that I think has started to make a little difference - the top ring is slightly starting to stick when I turn it - so we are making progress.

This is STILL all due to the uncured wood that is used to build new clarinets. He (clarinet repair man) said that it may be two full years before this instrument is not longer very sensitive to environmental change.

On the plus side, he also said that on Monday he saw a wooden oboe that had a 7 inch crack in it from the same cause: too dry! At least my instrument has been resistent to cracking thus far. I need to stop trying so hard to play it no matter what and also need to oil it yet again - I've been playing it so little, I've slacked off on oiling the bore. This weekend. For sure.

1 Comments:

At 6:18 PM, Blogger Cheryl said...

I would never had thought of going to a tobacconists for a humidor to help with a dried out clarinet.

 

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