Clarinet! I feel all lonely and depressed here is a whole site of people like Irish music just as much as I do. The only problem is... they all play fiddles, flutes, whistles and traditional Irish musical instruments.
I live in San Diego, California, and i've spent years looking in music stores for a tin whistle or a fife that I could possibly buy but no... and those stupid judges in parades for common marching band do not like it when someone plays something besides the traditional wood wind instruments or the common brass . So I decided on clarinet .
But enough with my ranting... if any of you know how to convert (concert?) D music to concert Bb? Or better yet, is there a site that provides irish, clarinet sheet music?
I know, it's a search for a needle in a haystack but if I have any hope in finding one, i'm sure its here.
Thanks a bunch
"Then came the soft whisper of a clarinet that made those playing brass tremble with fear..."
You will find that almost all irish music is written to played on any instrument. People who play in lower pitches (flat pipers or concertina players) just play the same fingering as they would in concert pitch so it's down to you to translate what you see in the sheet music available anywhere to your instrument's "natural key".
Just don't expect to find many sessions where people play in Bb. Learning the tin whistle is not so hard - and they are cheap, so I reckon in the long run you'd be better off getting something more "traditional".
Loneclarinet wrote:I live in San Diego, California, and i've spent years looking in music stores for a tin whistle or a fife that I could possibly buy but no...
Clarinet just isn't a traditional Irish instrument, any more than bassoon, oboe or cello would be, so you're never going to find such music online, and if you try to play IR Trad melodies on a clarinet, it just isn't going to sound right.
As suggested above, buy a tinwhistle online, it's really easy to play and to convert from clarinet (I used to play clarinet years ago, and it sure helped in picking up tinwhistle), and if the Parade Judges expect irish tunes to be played on a clarinet, they've lost touch with the music.
Flute would be accepted in a marching band, and is great for Irish music (though it should be a wooden one in D) - maybe convert to flute?
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that schwing
In my younger days I played clarinet (although not ITM), and now I play ITM on the wooden flute. I have also heard a few people attempt Irish trad tunes on the clarinet. My take on this is that the clarinet can be used to play Irish trad tunes that will sound Irish. Of course, to get the true Irish sound the player would need to use many of the ornamentation techniques that a wooden flute player would use, but since the clarinet is an open-holed instrument like the wooden flute most of these ornamentation techniques should be readily available.
The big issue in my mind would be keys. (That's key signature of the tune, not the keys on the instrument.) The clarinet is what's called a "transposing instrument", which means that the note the player thinks they are sounding is not the actual note that sounds. In other words, if I'm playing a B flat clarinet, I look at the page, I see a C, I finger a C and play it, the note that comes out will be a B flat. On an A clarinet, the other common orchestral instrument, the player thinks they are playing a C, but an A comes out.
Given that, consider that most Irish tunes are in the keys of G, D, A and their associated minors. Thus to play these tunes and have them sound in their "correct" keys, the B flat clarinet player would have to play in A, E and B, respectively. These are not the best keys to play in on a clarinet, so playing these tunes would require a bit of skill on the part of the player. Likewise, to play in G, D and A on an A clarinet, the player would be playing in A# (B flat), F and C. These keys are not bad on the clarinet, but then again how many clarinet players actually have an A clarinet at hand? There are a lot more ex-band clarinet players around than ex-orchestra clarinet players, simply because bands use as many as 20 clarinets while orchestras use one or two. And band clarinets are all B flat instruments.
One place where the clarinet could work well would be on Irish tunes in keys like D minor and G minor. Fiddlers love these tunes, and on the B flat clarinet you'd end up playing them in E minor and A minor, which aren't bad keys at all. Another aspect of the clarinet that would be nice on some Irish tunes is its low range. The clarinet goes down to G below the treble staff, which on a B flat clarinet is equivalent to the F just below the fiddler's open G string. This would open up all those tunes that require fiddlers to use their G string. Flute players are stuck bumping notes up an octave in order to play those tunes, which sometimes sounds okay but other times doesn't.
Still though, despite all this, I'd say clarinet has the potential to be at best a "niche" instrument in ITM. I would strongly recommend that a clarinet-playing ITM newbie pick up and learn another instrument such as whistle or flute first before attempting ITM on the clarinet.
Then again, if you really love the sound of the clarinet and don't plan on playing it in sessions or with a band, what the heck. My main enjoyment in playing the whistle is upstairs in the bedroom with the door closed. I can switch at will between D, Bb, low F, C whistles as the mood suits me. If you can learn by ear, get software that can change the pitch of a tune down to Bb and just learn it. Or memorize from an unaltered cd and work out the tune for yourself. If you goal is to play in a session or band, I'd get a whistle or flute or something else.
Tony
http://tinwhistletunes.com/clipssnip/newspage.htm Officially, the government uses the term “flap,” describing it as “a condition, a situation or a state of being, of a group of persons, characterized by an advanced degree of confusion that has not quite reached panic proportions.”
Here is a link to a CD of Scottish music played by a wonderful Maritime group with a clarinet player: http://www.marquisclassics.com/169_celt.asp . Maybe when you hear it you won't feel so lonely!
Here is a link to a CD of Scottish music played by a wonderful Maritime group with a clarinet player: http://www.marquisclassics.com/169_celt.asp . Maybe when you hear it you won't feel so lonely!
Cara
They certainly got an all-star lineup for that. James Campbell, Erica Goodman David Greenberg. If Dave Young is the jazz bass player from Toronto, that's another star. I've never heard of the harpsichord player.
I am also a clarinet player who loves Irish music, and I felt lonely myself in years past. I played a lot of Irish music on my clarinet - by myself, for my own pleasure. (I also reasoned that since you can play Irish music on a flute, and flute and clarinet are both woodwinds, you ought to be able to play it on a clarinet.)
However, you would be well advised not to play a clarinet in a session, as your music would be in a different key than everyone elses. (Barry Foy, in his Field Guide to the Irish Music Session, includes clarinets on a list of instruments to NOT play in session.)
I learned to play the pennywhistle so I could play Irish with other musicians.
I think John Kerr's advice is excellent.
For a source of Irish music that is well suited to the clarinet, get "The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem Song Book." A lot of the songs there are in key of F, which is a piece of cake on the clarinet.
A good clarinet player shouldn't have much trouble playing the tunes correctly as far as style an ornamentation.
Transcribing the tunes to get them in the right sounding key is a hassle but a skill that gets easier with practice.
I think the major problem with playing a clarinet in session is likely to be its volume, as clarinet is one of the loudest woodwinds. You'll have to really hold back to balance flutes and whistles.
peeplj wrote:A good clarinet player shouldn't have much trouble playing the tunes correctly as far as style an ornamentation.
Well I wouldnt exactly put it this way, it has to depend on the background of the good clarinet player of course. If the good clarinet player is brought up on a steady diet of Irish tunes and has a lot of exposure to good players of the particular musical idom, I'd agree. But if the good clarinetist is classically trained, like most clarinet players are, the Irish style of playing tunes may not be the most intuitive thing to them.
Pat Cannady wrote:
The clarinet does NOT belong in a session!
Amen
OK, I'll bite. There is a "trad" band in the Twin Cities that are comprised of clarinet (gasp), piano accordion (gasp), and bouzouki/octave mandolin (gasp or not) who have been at it for quite some time, and have a CD or two to their credit, if that counts for anything. They are very good at what they do (ITM/Welsh), even if their thing is not to my taste. I've seen them at sessions on the rare occasion, and they've done very well, even if it seemed as if a klezmer band had invaded. I liked the 'zouk, anyway.
Good on you, Loneclarinet, but get a whistle if you want to play at sessions!
here is a whole site of people like Irish music just as much as I do. The only problem is... they all play fiddles, flutes, whistles and traditional Irish musical instruments. 
. So I decided on clarinet 
