Who am I?
Hey there! My name is Nicolas Kosanovic. I am a sophomore at UNLV that’s studying Mechanical Engineering. In addition to being a regular nerd, I also happen to be a gigantic music nerd! I play clarinet in several musical ensembles on campus, most notably the UNLV Marching Band and the UNLV Wind Orchestra.
When I was a wee freshman here at UNLV, I entered the University with no major and no plans for the future. All I knew when I got here was that I liked Math, Physics, and Music, and not much else.
With no real idea of why I was here, I joined the UNLV Marching Band and the UNLV Wind Orchestra for no real reason.
And thank God I did.
Playing in ensembles with people who not only know what they’re doing, but genuinely care about the end product is breathtaking. On top of that, I got to play on one of the University’s own professional-grade instruments, which was a great experience on its own.
Later that semester, I had realized that the professional-grade instrument I was playing was in need of some small repairs, so I sent it to the shop and grabbed one of the student-grade instruments out of the University’s instrument locker.
Oh. My. God.
The difference in quality between professional-grade and student-grade instruments is obviously going to be large, but these two instruments were so ridiculously far apart quality-wise that I began to laugh after trying the student-grade instrument.
Everything from the keywork, the timbre, the materials, and even the playability went down by an order of magnitude (don’t even get me started on how horrible this “thing” was with pitch). I just passed it off as “a student-grade instrument playing like a student-grade instrument plays”.
Later, I stumbled upon a YouTube video from the excellent Bass Clarinetist Michael Lowenstern, in which he reviewed an incredibly cheap, brand new student-grade Bass Clarinet made by the Las Vegas-based music store, Kessler and Sons.
I couldn’t believe my ears.
This instrument sounded incredible! It had stellar pitch, a titanic sound, and excellent keywork! Lowenstern even did blind playing tests with his own professional-grade instrument, and it’d take a sharp ear to be able to hear the difference between his own instrument and this brand new instrument.
I found the video super interesting, and decided to do some more research. Oddly enough, it was made from the same type of plastic the aforementioned student-grade instrument was made out of, so the materials don’t seem to be that much of a limiting factor. I thought that it must’ve been the design of the instrument, and with that, I began to 3D model my own clarinet.
I’m about 10% of the way done with 3D modeling an entire clarinet now. I’m always excited to think about the end product, however far away that happens to be. Now, I know that I want to engineer cheap, quality instruments to help students’ abilities to make music, rather than hinder their abilities.
And with that, I’m now a Mechanical Engineering student who’s taking a statics class.
