Things That Bug Me 2.0 (Ligatures and the mayhem surrounding them)

So, I LOVE ligatures. They're, by far, my FAVORITE piece of equipment. Why, you ask? They're not SUPER expensive, they're easy to change out, you can collect them in mass quantities without need for a storage unit, and they're cool lookin'!

I've always been a connoseiur of metal ligatures. ALWAYS. The first ligature I EVER played on Bass with a simple stock metal lig that was in the case of the school instrument I was playing in middle school. When I went back to Bass in High School I had a similar lig and a mouthpiece in a plastic bag that I took to Band Camp just in case I changed instruments at camp (which I did.) Honestly, I never thought any further than that. Ligatures are supposed to be metal, that's it. They're all metal, right? I got an inverted Bonade right after marching season my Sophomore year and played it until about halfway through college. At that point Rovners were all the rage. Now, I'm not knocking Phil's hustle. If you've got a good business and a product people like I'm all for it. Fabric ligatures just never appealed to me. By the time I graduated from college you could look down a line of any section of Clarinets and Saxophones and 98% of the ligs would be Rovners (Once again, not knocking Phil's hustle, I just never got into the fabric ligs.)

After I graduated I didn't play "hard-core-alot" for about a year. By that time I had acquired two GORGEOUS Gold Harrison-Hertz Ligatures. The crappy part is that they are no longer made under that name and are VERY expensive on Ebay.

Now, these ligatures are gold plated and respond like crazy! More than that, they have this robust sound that I can't explain. It may only make a difference to me, but it makes a DIFFERENCE! I've also acquired a Rovner MarkIII and a Bois (both of which are not horrible, but not robust like the Harrison.) I was really liking the Bois until I ran into reed issues (because it's like 20 degrees here and SEVERELY dry), and I discovered that, for me, the Harrison hits 'em outta the park every time. I played fairly regularly in ensembles for about 6 years and always stuck to the Harrisons. One has Gold that's still very bright and relatively untarnished while the other has a much darker finish and has a band that's been silver-brazed back together. They were (and still are) my work horses.

So, why is the metal ligature so responsive for me? I've always read and heard that metal ligatures are more responsive and that Gold plating makes ligatures even more responsive. Conversely, I've also heard that fabric ligs dampen sound and provide less response. Yet, people who produce fabric ligatures tout the robust sound of their ligatures and responsiveness. Maybe it's just a personal thing. I see and hear great response from kids who use fabric ligs all the time. Maybe, it's because I was brought up playing a certain way and it's hard for me to give up the feel of the olden days.

I'm gonna keep it real. I'm a monster (my high school band director likes the term "killer", as in "If you're sitting next to a "killer" then you might not be able to hear yourself.) I like playing that role. I've always been the beast. I've brought down whole brass sections. One time, the whole band. I've overthrown fascist dictators with my sound (well, not really, but it sounded good when I wrote it.) You get the idea. I can play REALLY loud. I can't remember a time when I didn't just blow my brains out in every rehearsal and performance. Everyday I'm searching for that sort of sound, just more refined and mature, but still BIG. I have this attachment to metal ligatures and the days of old when I did that everyday in rehearsal.

Nowadays I'm not in rehearsal everyday, in fact, I haven't been in a full-on band rehearsal of a group I'm playing in in a year and a half. I sit in the rehearsals of the band I tech and that's nice(because I get to work up a little bit of a sweat, but not too much), but I'm not "in charge", I'm trying to teach an upperclassman how to be "in charge". Which brings me to another point.

The sort of domineering tone I'm talking about is the kind of thing that can turn a band in the right direction. It can turn your section in the right direction. We always here that Bands are built from the bottom. Well, if you're playing Bass Clarinet, you're in the bottom of the band. You can't get much lower. On the other hand, Orchestras tend to be built from the top. The First Chair is taking the lead in everything. Pushing the section along. It's a different style of playing.

Playing Bass Clarinet is a combination of those two things. That "domineering tone" keeps the rest of your section in line. They can hear what you're doing and they follow you. If you're REALLY good, other people in other sections will follow you. Now, you control time in the group to a certain extent. In the case of a disaster you have a good chance of dragging enough people along that you can avoid a crisis(i.e. completely stopping in the middle of a performance.) Leading from the front is always a good thing. Besides having a certain amount of control over time you can control phrasing, overall expression, and expression of different melodic components in the music. While you're ducking in and out of the texture all the melodic components of the music get to shine around you. Now that's fun.

Back to ligatures. You may be asking "Do you make your students play on metal ligatures?" Nope. I don't intervene unless they have MAJOR issues that I think may be corrected by a small equipment change. 99% of the time you change you, not your stuff(Like in that new movie "Bride Wars", in the trailer Kate Hudson says "You don't alter Vera to fit you, you alter yourself to fit Vera!". When you get to a point where you know what you're doing then I think you can tinker with your stuff and look for something that fits the tonal profile you want. My point...you can affect your tonal profile with ligatures, even if people don't think so. Then again, tonal profile is a whole other post.