Instruments of the Orchestra, a program for elementary and junior high school to be presented by the Wisconsin School of the Year, your television teacher is Professor Richard C. Schurk, and Doctor of the University of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra.

[Piano music] Hello, boys and girls.

I wonder how many of you know the name of the instrument that I've been playing on.

What is it?

The clarinet.

That's right.

The clarinet is one of the most popular of the woodwind instruments.

There are usually four clarinet players in a symphony orchestra, and in a concert band you might expect to find as many as 20 or more.

Let's see if we can find the clarinet up here in our big picture of the orchestra conductor's score.

Here it is up with the woodwinds, right under the oboe, and the flute, and right above the bassoon.

I think all of you know by now that whenever we hear a musical sound, it's because something is vibrating.

Last week we talked about the flute, and its little baby brother, the pecklele.

And you remember that the air was made to vibrate by blowing across a hole.

How many of you tried making a sound by blowing across the top of a bottle?

Could you do it?

Well, if it didn't work out very well, why don't you find somebody who plays flute in a junior higher high school to help you because making a sound on a bottle and making a sound on a flute take exactly the same kind of blowing.

On our other three woodwind instruments, the oboe, the clarinet, and the bassoon.

What is it that does the vibrating?

I'll read.

I'm going to explain about the clarinet read today.

The clarinet uses a single read.

So I thought we'd talk about it before we'd talk about the oboe and the bassoon, which used double reads.

Now a read is made from a growing plant that looks very much like bamboo.

Did you ever go fishing with a bamboo pole?

Well, a cane used for making a read is like the bamboo in a fish pole, accepting that it's bigger around, and pieces are cut off from all along the sides of the cane to make each of the reads.

Would you like to have a close look at a clarinet read?

The read itself is rather small.

It looks like this.

So let's look at a drawing of a read.

Here you can see where the readmaker has cut through the hard bark of the cane down into the soft inner part.

And in this side view here, you can see how that cut is tapered so that the read is very, very thin at the tip.

Now let's look at our real read again.

Here you see the very thin tip right here.

In fact, it's so thin and fragile that the first thing you learn about playing a clarinet is to be extremely careful of the read and not bump it against anything.

Of course, you wouldn't want to bump or drop any musical instrument but with any read instrument be very, very careful of the read.

Well, now how does the read get onto the clarinet?

Let's look at the read.

As you can see, the mouthpiece is flat along this side right here and then it curves down a little bit at this end.

So there's an opening between the tip of the read and the tip of the mouthpiece.

The player moistened the read before he puts it onto the mouthpiece.

And the read is held in place with this metal ligature.

On a time, clarinet players used to tie the read onto the mouthpiece with string.

But nowadays we use this metal ligature and we adjust the read so that the tip of the read is exactly even with the tip of the mouthpiece and then we tighten these screws on this ligature to hold the read in place.

Now let's look at a drawing of a clarinet mouthpiece with the read attached to it.

Here you can see an opening between the read and the tip of the mouthpiece for the air to go through.

And when the player blows the read vibrates like this right out here at the tip and this vibration of the read right here is what makes the musical sound.

Well now we're ready to put the mouthpiece onto the clarinet.

And I think it would be nice if we heard some real music on the clarinet.

Don't you?

We have a special guest who came today to play for you.

His name is Neil Hoffman and he's one of the clarinet players in the University of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra.

Neil is going to play part of a clarinet solo written by the composer Mozart.

[Music] Thank you very much.

Neil went to high school in Kenosha, Wisconsin and his accompanist at the piano was Pamela Green.

Pamela incidentally plays the viola and the organ in addition to playing the piano.

Now would you like to learn how to blow a clarinet?

Well if you'll watch me very closely I'm going to show you.

In the first place it's important to hold the lips and the mouth just exactly right.

The lower lip is turned in slightly above half the red.

Over the lower teeth the form of thin cushion between the lower teeth and the read.

And then the upper teeth rest lightly on the mouthpiece like this.

It's also very important to hold the sides of the mouth in very very firmly so that the air doesn't escape out along the sides.

And it also is better if we don't puff our cheeks out like this.

We hold them in like this.

Now if I hold my mouth just right and put the mouthpiece just far enough into my mouth I should be able to make a nice sound on the clarinet.

Let's try it.

[Bell] Do you remember the last week I talked about that little old-fashioned flute with the six holes along the sides?

Well here it is again.

Do you remember we said that whenever you blow into an instrument the air tries to get out just as soon as it can.

And when I close more and more of these holes with my finger it made the air go farther before it could get out.

Now as I close more and more holes did that make the sound higher or lower?

That's right it made it lower.

Well now let's see if it works the same way on the clarinet.

Here you see six holes along the top of the clarinet just the same as we had on the little flute.

There are some keys around them but there are just our six holes just the same.

In the back we have another hole which the thumb is going to cover.

Now would you like to finger a learn how to finger a scale on the clarinet?

All right will you please pick up a pencil with your right hand?

The last time we used a pencil we pretended it was a conductor's baton.

Do you remember?

Well now we're going to pretend that it's a clarinet.

Let's put it with the eraser and hop like that.

Now take your left hand and grasp the pencil between the thumb and first finger way up here near the end.

Now I'll show you how that looks on a real clarinet.

I'm going to close that thumb hole and this hole right here.

Take your right hand and put it about halfway down the pencil the way I put my thumb about halfway down this real clarinet like that.

Now let's see what that tone sounds like if we blow it.

These other fingers now should be stretched out hanging up over here like this because we're going to use those to close the holes.

So when I put my finger down you put your finger down and put the eraser end of the pencil between your lips not too far in but just to help hold it and pretend you're blowing gently along with me and put your fingers down with me.

Alright here we go.

We'll play this tone once more.

Now put one finger down to imagine you're closing a hole.

Now we'll keep these three fingers covering those holes there and now we'll use our right hand.

We're going to put the first finger down first.

Now you do what I do.

We have six holes covered now and if I want to go any lower I've got to use this key right here which closes a hole with a pad over it so far down that I couldn't very well reach it with that little finger.

So would you please put your right hand little finger down on your pencil?

Alright, we'll try that.

To play the very lowest note on the clarinet I need this key right here which closes a hole way down near that end.

So would you please put your little finger down too?

We'll play this lowest tone.

Well you just learn to finger scale on the clarinet.

You can put your pencil down now.

So far I've only been talking about the lower tones on the clarinet.

As you heard earlier today it can play higher too.

Now how do you suppose we play higher?

I'm going to show you.

Back here right above this thumb hole is a special magic key.

Let's use to play the high notes with and if I press that thumb hole and then tip my thumb so that that key opens a hole we can play a higher tone.

Now watch this.

Isn't that sort of interesting?

These other keys are used to play the sharps and the flats.

So the clarinet player learns how to hold his mouth and how to blow and which fingers to put down to get all the different tones.

I hope some of you may want to learn to play the clarinet sometime.

Would you like to see some of these other clarinets different sizes that I brought along to show you?

Here's an interesting one.

It's a little E flat clarinet and because it's smaller it plays higher tone.

Down here we have an alto clarinet and here is a bass clarinet.

Now because this bass clarinet is so much larger than our regular clarinet we could expect it to play lower notes.

So let's just cut it away and listen to this.

Well what have we seen today now?

We've seen this bass clarinet and this alto clarinet and our little E flat clarinet say I almost forgot something.

I brought something very special along.

I'll bet you've never seen a clarinet this small.

Look at this.

This is a tiny A flat clarinet that's used in bands in Italy.

Well now we've talked about the clarinet read and the clarinet mouthpiece and the ligature.

Next week we're going to talk about the ovals which are in the woodwind family and have double read.

And we're going to also talk about another single read instrument that doesn't appear in our score.

What do you think it is?

Wait and see.

See you then.

Goodbye.

[Music] This has been instruments of the orchestra, a television program for elementary and junior high school pupils.

Your television teacher is Professor Richard C. Church, conductor of the University Symphony Orchestra.

This has been a Wisconsin School of the Air presentation.

[Music]