I think I am meant to be a jazz or swing clarinet player, and this is happening, thanks to a trade in progress with a fellow C&F member (I am currently working on a very nice flute for him in trade for these wonderful clarinets! Thank you L. C.!!!).
Something clicked as far as my clarinet playing tonight and with it, a new insight to what we should call either the modern silver flute or our old simple system flutes - i.e., the C flute versus D flute confusion.
6 fingers down (ignoring the thumb on the modern flute for a moment) these play a D that sounds like D. On the simple system flute most of the music that works well for these is in D or G, and this flute should properly be called a D flute.
For years, I thought that the modern C flute was called a C flute simply because it was mostly made with a foot that would play down to C natural. But then in the 60s (plus or minus a decade or two) they added the lower B key and the Gizmo - and I always thought somewhat peevishly that they should now call it a B flute, to further cause confusion (such as my own).
Then along came these clarinets. I hardly listen to Irish music these days, although I have enjoyed it for years. But I am passionate about listening to Swing and Jazz, mostly centered on the music of Django Reinhardt. I play some guitar and with some inherited money actually purchased the guitar of my dreams which I play regularly. But I am still a novice at it and may remain so unless I enact some strict practice discipline and work hard at it. Frankly, I am too busy for this. However I want to play this music, and thought by trying the clarinet and soprano sax, enabled by a lifetime of playing several wind instruments, that I could come up to speed for sessions and performing quicker theoretically. A nearby group of friendly musicians who play this repertoire have been after me to do this for years, so that I could play regularly with them.
However, it appears I have been going at it the wrong way. Using clarinets of various pitches, along with such tools as the Amazing Slow Downer which can import my entire iTunes library, I’ve been attempting to play along with these Django recordings, learning entirely by ear (even though I can read music well and have for years). I’ve been adjusting the pitch of the recordings and selecting which clarinet to play as if I would be playing these in D - that is, the 6 finger down note being the root of the scale (I’m sticking to the first register for now so I don’t drive Nancy nuts! I’m still getting used to the clarinet embouchure). It hasn’t been working, and I found trying to sound bluesy or jazzy awkward and nearly impossible. Improvisation was impossible. The years of playing wind instruments seemed to have no bearing on this, in terms of accessing past skills. I wondered if the associated brain cells were even still there, or if this was a sign of inevitable dementia.
But tonight something just clicked and I started playing tunes as if I was playing them in C on the C flute - that is, 7 fingers down being the root of the scale. All of a sudden playing bluesy or jazzy became much easier and I found I could play along with about everything (I’ve been listening to a steady diet of everything Django recorded for a few years now). I could even improvise!
I then remembered that much of the music that I played on the silver flute from 5th grade until college was mostly centered around the key of C. This was hard wired into me at an early age, and the wiring is still there at age 55, thankfully. The Modern Clarinet Boehm System is a bit more complicated but fundamentally the same in the structure of the fingering as the modern flute. Once I started playing the clarinet “C Centric” it all of a sudden worked for me tonight, which was a wonderful thing.
Thus back to the C flute. For those classically trained on it, playing in the key of C works well, and feels right. This explains why an audition using Mozart’s Flute Concerto in D maybe didn’t go so well for me once, way back when. Had it been in C, I would have maybe done better in my audition and gotten into that one orchestra I badly wanted to get into (despite the usual obstacle of nepotism benefitting someone else which usually determined who got in to these things!). But the key of C feels much more natural on the modern flute than the key of D - which is why it should be called that. Even with the B key.
But playing in C on our simple system flutes, even with keys, is a cumbersome task. Playing in D - no problemo.
So bottom line - the two names - C flute and D flute - are quite accurate for these two flute types, in that these reflect well the keys that these are easiest to play in. On the C flute, 7 fingers down, closing the two open holes on the foot is the fundamental “easy” scale of the flute (the 4th fingered XXX X00 and sounding F Natural). On the D flute, 6 fingers down is the fundamental “easy” scale of the flute (the 4th fingered XXX 000 and sounding G). Hopefully this will dispel any confusion, besides my own!
Casey
