Sometimes the simplest things: I did a lot more messing around and I think I have come up with the solution to my squeaking problem: softer reeds.
I had gone down the path of getting #4 reeds, since the medium hard LaVoz seemed to work well, and my normal #3 Van Doren sounded terrible. Now however, the Van Dorens sound great and all the other reeds are so-so. This mean of course that I blew some cash on all the other reeds that I bought, but if this is the end of the reed/ligature search, I am quite glad of that.
As my teacher Kirt always said, don't be a slave to the reed, make it work for you.
I played the bass with the band last night, first time,and everyone seemed to like it a lot, so hooray! more bass clarinet in my future.
I was very impatient, totally like me, while I was waiting for the Bonade, standard style ligature to come in the mail, along with the pricey Alexander reeds.
Well, like many things it was a mixed bag to say the least. The new ligature was a total bust actually. It seems that the diameter of my mouthpiece is just that tiny margin too small, or the ligature too large, to get that super tight seal that you are supposed to have along the length of the reed. I mean to say, I could play with it, it is not like the reed was falling off, but wasn't what I hoped it would be. And it goes without saying that the ligature did not improve the sound of the horn, or make it easier for me to get into the upper range.
I had purchased this ligature since I didn't feel the single ring of the Bois was doing the job but I was mistaken. The only other alternative is what I would have purchased right away if it didn't cost so much. What I use on my soprano horn is the Van Doren optimum, and I think its great. It is also easy to put on (well, not easier than the Bois) but this ligature would be solid all the way without a doubt.
So the magic Alexander reeds? Well, they are good, no doubt, but are they that much better than the LaVoz? At this point I am not certain. What I am certain of is that I seem to squeaking more, not less, than last week. This is either due to me being still so new at this that its all a mysterious struggle, or the horn may just be getting banged around a bit from playing. I will glad next week to get it tuned up so I know its good all the way.
The other certainty is that I have to go back to what my teacher Kirt just pounded into me at every lesson: make the gut hard before you play so there is firm support for the tone. Also I have to get back into the habit of making sure that the tongue closes the opening of the reed before the start of each series of notes when I have to draw a breath.
So that is a good thing all the way, back to the basics.
I am also playing scales a bit, and that can never hurt either.
One last thing, I was given a CD by the Edmund Wells Bass Clarinet Quartet
far and away the most creative, crazy, tuneful and best played bass clarinet music ever. I could go on and on about these guys, but you must hear them for yourselves. It gives a totally different way of thinking about this instrument - just the range of notes they get out of the horns is astounding.
Its good to be inspired!
Its been a couple of weeks now, and I am getting more used to the bass. As I may have noted already, I did take the horn to my tech, and he gave it a serious look around. He checked he pads and ran the light through the horn to look for leaks and the verdict: the horn is in just about perfect shape! Of course there is the one ripped pad that needs to be replaced, and there are quite a number of little tweaks and adjustments, including bits of missing cork, that have to be corrected but other than that I am golden. It will only cost me $50 to have the whole horn set to rights.
This reminds me of when I first started playing my horn, when I realized that all the bad sounds are my fault, not the fault of the instrument. My tech did tell me that all bass clarinets are much harder to play in the upper octaves, and usually don't sound as nice higher up than lower down. Makes sense, they are bass instruments anyway, right? However, I have been doing more reading, especially at http://thebassclarinetguru.blogspot.com/ where the author asserts there is no reason at all that the upper stack can't sound as good as the lower, if you know what you are doing.
For my part, I have found that the upper register is a hell of a lot more challenging, and it sure as heck takes a lot of air. Again, I am reminded to when I started playing the clarinet, how I felt I had to blow my brains out to get any sound at all. Now, the soprano clarinet seems pretty easy compared to the bass, so I guess that is a measure of how far I have come in the last few years.
I am still not sure about the Bois ligature. I have ordered a standard Bonade lig as a test, and also ordered some very pricey Alexander Classique reeds to see how they work. Its still strange to me how, even with having #4 strength, the Van Doren reeds that work great on my other horn just sound awful on the bass. Well, we will see how the Alexanders work out.
One thing for sure, I no longer have buyers remorse. One web post I read stated that, aside from the way the neck attaches to the body and some slight keywork changes, the LeBlanc and the Noblet are almost identical horns. Then it all gets down to the actual piece of wood the horn is made from, and that is always a crapshoot. To me, the lower notes sound great on this horn, and at some point when I get the upper to match - well, its a great horn and I am so thankful I went for this particular instrument, keeping up my crazy lucky streak of buying horns off ebay.
Now when I practice I go thru the pieces for the band, on the soprano of course, and then go for the bass. I am trying to work out something for a new song we are playing called Abe Gezunt, which was a bass part that I heard in my head a month ago the first time we played thru the song. We will just have to see how this works out