um the clarinet is basically just a cylindrical uh wooden tube uh with finger holes so that as I take more fingers off the instrument uh the pitch will rise like that and a lot of met metal keys in order to enable me to play all the notes in between those notes the chromatic notes and some of that metal work is to enable us to play trills for example quite rapidly and efficiently now if I didn't have the key on the side of the instrument that trail would come out like this which not might not particularly please either the conductor or the composer so a lot of this metal stuff although it looks complicated is actually there to simplify matters for us in order that we don't have to carry uh a case around which is as long as this instrument particularly as we usually have to carry two the instrument takes apart um and you can see there is the Bell which is the end of the clar clet called a bell because it's bell-shaped obviously you then have the main part of the clarinet in a lower joint and an upper joint and then at the very top we have a barrel and the mouthpiece and read on the mouthpiece which go on the top of the barrel well if you go to an orchestral concert you may have sometimes wondered why you see the clarinetists uh with two clarinets whereas all the other members of the woodwind section have just the one um and you'll some sometimes see us change quite rapidly from one to the other now this isn't because one of the instruments has suddenly become worn out or indeed that we're trying out different instruments in the concert um it's just that because of the nature of the fingering system on the clarinet uh most composers write for two different clarinets in order to avoid us playing in complicated keys so we have a B flat clarinet which is the shorter one and an a clarinet which is the longer one I'll just put a mouthpiece on so that you can hear the difference in Pitch so if I finger the note C on my B flat clarinet it comes out as a B flat and if I finger the same note C on my a clarinet it comes out as an A so we have to be careful to get the right instrument to do that um sometimes composers ask for a very very rapid change from one to the other for example BTO in his Trio contrasts which we've recently recorded as part of the fonia's BOK series Bok asks for a change that's this fast as you can see I slightly fumbled that change and if that was a concert I would definitely have missed it so uh you have to be pretty nifty with some of these changes that also um brings up issues with the conductor because obviously if we're concentrated on a complicated change of clarinets uh we can't watch the conductor during that time obviously we've got bars rest but those bars rest might be quite complex if it's trinsky all the bars might be in a different time for from one another so we'll quite often ask the conductor after we've had a change excuse me could you be sure to give us a clear queue at the end of that sometimes in a concert you may see clarinetists adjust their instrument at the barrel by slightly pulling out or pushing in to adjust the length of the instrument this is because we may have noticed that either one or two of our colleagues or possibly ourselves or somewhere else in the orchestra something has slightly changed in pitch and we need to microscopically change the pitch of the instrument in order to adjust that so that the Sound reaches the audience banging tune now the re which is a quite simple piece of wood you see at one end it's a piece of cane which has been cut so it tapers to a very very thin tip so thin I can even put it on my thumbnail and it will show flexibility so the very end of the read is very flexible it means that when I put the read against the mouthpiece there's a small Gap to blow air down but small enough that when that air goes through the instrument the tip of the read will vibrate and that's what makes the sound now it's very important to get the right sound that the read is absolutely right and you may sometimes particularly if you come to a rehearsal see clarinetists surrounded with what might look like hundreds of reads in order to find the right one um it can be a bit of a nightmare for us because a different Concert Hall may be less resonant than the next one uh which means that a slightly different resistance of read is required to make just the right sound um if I play a read which is too unresistant for a Hall you can get quite a rough sound on the other hand if the read is too resistant you can probably hardly get any sound through it at all and that can vary from venue to venue and playing in an orchestra where on tour we may go from Hall to Hall even country to Country different atmospheric conditions from day to day one usually needs to carry a selection of reads in order to choose exactly the right one to get the right sound in the hall on that particular day that might sound like a terrible nightmare for us but of course if things don't go quite right we can change the read and as flutists horn players and trumpeters uh are constantly saying to us of course if their lips don't feel right on a certain day they can't change them can they yeah um the way we produce the sound obviously uh to get a basic sound one blows through the instrument as warmly as possible now if I blow the air through the instrument far more slowly the sound will become softer and if I blow the air through the instrument very fast you'll get a louder sound so although on the face of it you might think that an instrumentalist has to work harder to play loud than to play soft in fact it's exactly the reverse because if you think about it things that are moving slowly are harder to control than things that are moving fast so to play for example a very high note softly the air is moving very slowly and one has to be very careful to control it in fact that very note has just featured in one or two of our Beethoven com concerts at the end of um Beethoven's eighth Symphony third movement in the trio so one has to be quite careful to control that last note because it's so soft obviously once you get behind the instrument into the player him or herself um it's quite hard for an outsider to see what is actually going on you can see the fingers move you can't see what's going on inside the person's mouth um in order to make the re vibrate properly we curl our bottom lip over the bottom teeth but the top teeth go on the top of the instrument and we then have to close the mouth so no air escapes although some contemporary composers have actually started to ask specifically for a very breathy sound uh the Argentinian composer maritzio cargle uh asks for various uh different categories of breathy sound half breathy breathy and so on so we have to actually nowadays learn to be able to control what we spent all our student years trying to avoid completely now uh I've played so far just long notes if we want to play a series of separate notes and you see I blew down the instrument several all time separately then but that sounds rather breathless and unmusical so what we do is to use the tip of the tongue against the read to stop the sound interrupt the sound uh which will enable us to keep the air going and play a number of repeated notes more musically and one can by using that method play extremely short uh there's a passage in Beethoven's fourth Symphony where he asks the bassoonist and the clarinetist to play a very very rapid staccato uh which can be a nightmare in a concert if it doesn't go quite right of course not if it does um so that's an example of quite fast tonging and there's a separate tongue stroke for every one of those notes obviously uh in an in an orchestra you'll sometimes get all the instruments of the orchestra playing together in what we call a Tutti passage where everybody's playing at once uh sometimes making a very very loud sound indeed but sometimes the whole Orchestra can also play very quietly together which can be quite exciting uh the woodwind instruments of which the clarinet is one uh will be playing a part in that but also uh the woodwind are quite often asked to act as soloists uh within the orchestra so we'll sometimes be playing as part of the group and will sometimes be playing as it were as the lead part or as a soloist for example the opening of the finale of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony we're playing very loud indeed so you would imagine that the clarinetes would be heard but the trumpets are playing at the same time and in any Orchestra with a decent trumpet section with which of course the filmonia has uh there's no chance whatsoever of hearing the clarinet you'll hear trumpet sound and a general Tooty sound around it with the trumpets leading um at the beginning of uh Beethoven's e8th Symphony the clarinetes play this now the first part of that I was part of the toty sound and you probably wouldn't hear the clarinet at all but the second part of it is a clarinet solo the clarinet has the lead part so although Beethoven writes that to be played very softly piano I'm actually playing with quite a healthy warm sound in order to be heard as the lead solo part if you've enjoyed enjoyed learning about the instruments in the orchestra why not try our iPad app the orchestra featuring esapa salonin and the filmonia orchestra fully interactive video playback lets you view the orchestra from all angles and the Revolutionary beat map shows you who is playing when follow along with synchronized scores hear the inside scoop in audio commentaries and get a 360° view of all the instruments available for download in the app store on iTunes