Clarinet Construction: Barrels, Part 1
The clarinet is known for its incredibly beautiful sound quality. Brahms himself said that “no instrument adapts itself so closely to the human voice as the basset horn” (a basset horn is a relatively obscure type of clarinet). With this said, it’s quite obvious that sound quality is extremely important to clarinetists. And, you guessed it, plastic instruments sound absolutely terrible.
One remedy used to improve clarinet tone is the usage of new barrels. A barrel is a small piece of tubing that connects the mouthpiece of the instrument to the rest of the instrument.
The barrel’s most practical use is tuning the instrument. By pulling the barrel out just a few centimeters, one can slightly lower the pitch of the instrument, which helps intonation a lot, considering the fact that most players tend to play a bit sharp.
In recent years, clarinet manufacturers found out that they can charge people an arm and a leg for “premium barrels”. These “premium barrels” are typically made out of Grenadilla wood, an extremely dense, endangered wood found in Africa.
These “premium barrels” genuinely improve the tone of the instrument by a surprising amount. I myself happen to play on a “MoBa Barrel,” a barrel made out of Cocobolo wood, which makes the instrument not only sound better, but helps intonation, too.
After I noticed how much of an improvement this simple piece of equipment created, I immediately began to think about how I could incorporate this design into the manufacturing of plastic clarinets.
I began to ask around why the barrels work — I got mixed answers.
Some people said that since the barrels were more massive than the traditional clarinet barrel, the added mass helps make the instrument resonate more.
Some people spoke about how these barrels were engineered to optimize the projection of air through the instrument.
Others said that the quality of the wood used in these barrels helped make the instrument sound better.
While the true answer likely contains all three of the reasons listed above, this doesn’t help me too much, as the instrument I plan to produce will be made out of a cheap plastic, so we’re left with the other two points — mass and air flow optimization.
In the coming weeks, I’ll 3D print a couple plastic clarinet barrel designs that all have some different variable manipulation built in. I won’t 3D print any of the barrels more than once, so this “experiment” won’t end up being all that scientific. I’ll also try them all out with a spectrum analyzer to see how each barrel affects my sound, and I’ll write a little bit about how I felt about each barrel.
Some of the designs will look quite goofy (in terms of clarinet barrels), as I also want to see if any weird designs may end up producing better results.
Hopefully we get some interesting results.
See you next week!
