Is there a way to make a clarinet sound smoother?

• Dec 27, 2013 - 22:57

When I use a clarinet (E flat) the notes sound very "separate" rather than sounding a steady sound that changes pitch to the next note. A real clarinet has a smooth sound where the volume is constant, and doesn't decay, the way a piano does for example. A pedal on a piano gives the smoother, continuous tone, but it doesn't work for a clarinet. It just holds the notes and "adds" the next ones, building up the volume and sounding awful. I tried bringing up the reverb on the mixer, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.
Any ideas are welcome.
Thanks. This forum has given me a lot of help and it's appreciated!


Comments

What you are referring to is a technique called "slurring", where the player does not use his tongue between notes as he otherwise might (a technique called "tonguing"). The playback in museScore is always slurred; there is no way to get slurred playbacked. But FWIW, the way you would indicate that youw ant this is using the curved lines called a "slur" in the lines palette. A player would normally tongue everything by default unless there is a slur mark connecting the notes.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Ah yes, I realize I accidentally wrote "playback in museScore is always slurred" when I meant to say it's always *tongued". Sorry for the confusion.

So, you should add slurs where you want the "smooth" sound - this is what will tell a human performer to slur rather than tongue - but realize that for now at least, MuseScore won't play it back any differently. Someday, though, MuseScore might implement slur playback, and in that case, already having the symbols in your score will hopefully allow your scores to take advantage of it. The point being, if you don't use the slur symbol, neither human performers nor MuseScore would ever normally slur.

Try selecting a group of notes, right-clicking and then setting "offtime offset type" to User and "offtime" to 50 (experiment to see if you get a setting that you like). This slurs the notes into one another.

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