Clarinet Bore Condensation Solution

CLARINET-ANDINO: Water Water Everywhere

Clarinets adopt habits of their own. (maybe they are the ones in need of psychotherapy). When counting rests, get in the habit of holding the clarinet at an angle, open tone holes up (rotated with the RH side keys slightly higher), bell on knee, barrel on shoulder. Once water forms a path in a certain direction, it will follow it again and again. So the solution, is to get the water to go where we want it to go. In that flurry of activity, how do you swab? If you drop the weight in the bell, and pull it through to finish at the barrel, you are spreading water in random patterns in the upper joint, and forming numerous tracks to every tone-hole. The goal must be for the water to stay in the bottom of the bore (thumbrest side) and run in a single stream out the bell. Always swab from the barrel to the bell, so that the trickle, stream, river, whatever, is encouraged to follow a single track out the bell. When condensation runs out the bell this is a good sign! Does your clarinet have a hard time breaking bad habits? You can start with a clean slate by lightly oiling the bore (wipe all the unabsorbed oil out) then playing for a few minutes at a time alternating with swabbing barrel to bell (clarinet assembled without mouthpiece). When the clarinet has learned what to do with condensation, the track will remain even when you put it on a clarinet peg at an orchestra gig. Your reformed habits of swabbing, how you hold the clarinet and set the clarinet down will pay off big-time the next time you play Debussy, and you will not need the cigarette paper any longer! Chris French is the reed instrument product manager for Gemstone Musical Instruments. He has a background as a professional musician, technician, educator, and musical instrument designer. A Juilliard graduate, he has performed with symphony orchestras in New York, Florida, Mexico, Los Angeles, Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana, and played for Broadway shows, movies and other recordings, and jazz festivals. As a technician and designer, he worked for another large musical instrument company improving their clarinets and flutes. “I like to look under the hood after I take an instrument for a test drive”. When the Gemeinhardt flute company (now Gemstone) was expanding its product line from flutes to other instruments, Chris was called upon to design the Andino clarinet in collaboration with Luis Rossi, the world-renowned clarinetist and clarinet-maker from Chile.

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