Choosing a clarinet (last post, continued)

This is a long overdue post.

So the concert went acceptably - I only played in one of the two pieces, though it was indeed a major work (Dvorák Symphony No. 9, "From the New World"). I played second clarinet and my teacher played the first part. The other piece was the Fauré Requiem.

Now about the choosing of the new clarinet. I was terrified to go pick out a new clarinet by myself. Okay, maybe not terrified, but pretty darn scared. When I picked out my first new R13 at the end of freshman year, my teacher had come with me to help me do it. This time, I was on my own. At the last lesson I had with him before I went, I asked Mr. Kirkley to give me the things that I should look for in the new instrument. First priority was its scale, in other words, having good tuning of each note on the instrument in relation to the other notes. Then, I needed it to be free-blowing, but just a hair more resistant than my ideal, as the instruments tend to free up over the course of a year. Finally, if it came to this, I would pick the instrument with the best tone out of the ones with good tuning and ideal resistance.

Now, these are criteria by which I think I never would have been able to judge three years ago. However, I was surprised at my aptitude a couple weeks ago. There were 13 instruments to try - all Buffet, all R13s. I tried them in groups of three (the last group was four though, since 13 is a prime number and nothing goes into it evenly :-P). I liked one each in the first two groups, none in the third, and two in the fourth. From these, the tuning test rendered the two from the last group as the two finalists, and due to one slight tuning advantage, I chose the one whose tone I preferred slightly less. Now mind you, all of these instruments are the same model, so we're talking minute differences. They all sound like clarinets, but the ease with which one can get the desired tone is what varies between instruments (in addition to tuning and resistance). So in sum, the one I chose had a slightly better scale, slightly better consistency of tone through all the registers of the instrument, was a little less resistant, and had a touch more brightness in the tone (American and German-school clarinetists generally prefer a dark tone).

Sorry for that quasi-technical, maybe boring, likely unsolicited lesson in clarinet qualities. The importance of this is that I realized that, believe it or not, after four years of studying the instrument, am developing some sense of independence as a musician. I am now able to analyze and make choices based upon certain minutiae. Dorky as it may sound, I think this helped me realize that I'm a real musician now. Theme related to the title of this blog: I found out I know more than I thought I did. What a pleasant feeling.

Now onto other things.