On Sound

[ Originally published on my Facebook Artist page]

 As a musician, I find that when people talk about me--whether in private or even on the bandstand addressing an audience--the thing they mention invariably, and almost always first, is my unique sound. When I was a youth, my sound separated me from other kids in a good way--it was the driving force that got me noticed, won auditions, and gave me the chance to play in both jazz bands and symphony orchestras. In college, my professors generally were excited to work with me, but considered my sound controversial, and always tried to make me more conventional, to fit a mainstreamed type of idea. As a professional, I've always developed my tone along the lines I felt it needed to be expressively, even resorting to vintage instruments long out of production to achieve my voice.

This approach, while not exactly mainstream, has paid off, in that these days I think most musicians who know and hear me understand why I've made the decisions I have...and the reaction of people who are moved to tell me how my sound has effected them is deeply gratifying. So I figure my first real post here should be about that thing most associated with me: my sound.

I've always taken sound itself to be the soul of playing. Your distinct sound is your calling card, your identity. But that sound is always in motion, in context. Many players suffer under the concept of an 'ideal' sound, as though an instrument's sound could exist in a vacuum--and this is true whether you are a jazz musician or a classical musician (or any other kind of musician). I've known tenor sax players who wrecked themselves trying to sound like Trane, and classical clarinetists who did the same with whatever great player they admired. Exacerbating this can be a culture of teaching 'proper' sound on an instrument, which while in some circumstances can be justified, is not necessarily the healthiest way to look at things.

The truth is that sound, like a human being, is constantly relational, and also like human beings, no two sound exactly alike--unless we're talking about a very low level of artistry. So instead of searching for an 'ideal' sound, I like to encourage people to become sound collectors--to give the magpie or mockingbird instinct some freedom. Instead of enjoying only a few artists close to your ideal, find the beauty and soul in players you wouldn't ever play like yourself. [post continues below photo...]

detail of Reform Boehm Clarinets c1951 by Fritz Wurlitzer

For a brief time in my career, I was employed as an artist representative and coach for Wurlitzer Clarinets America. My job was to demonstrate and teach the wide variety of tones a clarinetist could achieve on Wurlitzer Reform-Boehms. At the time, there was a dominant myth (in America at least) that German clarinets only yielded one sound...so to counteract that I would show off my mockingbird skills by playing like Johnny Dodds, Benny Goodman, Pete Fountain, Sidney Bechet, or Edmond Hall on a Wurlitzer. Of course I'd never sound exactly like those great players, who are each inimitable--but similar enough to demonstrate the range of colors one could get. It was also fantastic training--in those years I developed a palette of sound from gruff and dirty to smooth and clear. That period of my playing career was one of the most thrilling because it was like real field work, collecting and making discoveries every day. Since then, I've tried to encourage others who were frustrated with their sounds to do the same. Instead of always refining, refining, refining towards some 'ideal' concept that never arrives, but tightens a noose around your playing, open up--experiment with anything and everything. Become a collector of odd sounds, and a virtuoso mockingbird. All of those will eventually feed your own art, when you decide to direct those things towards a singular expression.

Beyond that, always remember the search for a personal, expressive, artistically satisfying sound is a lifetime's journey, and is actually related to how we view other people, how we interact, whether we become dismissive and prideful about what we do, or whether we're looking to share something beyond the notes or our technical proficiency. The ultimate goal: to let our souls sing. Bless you on your journey.

-Eric

Artie Shaw's Clarinet Method

Artie Shaw was reluctant to talk about clarinet technique, and throughout the long course of his musical retirement, tended to stress an indifference to the clarinet itself. In many interviews he compared himself favorably to Benny Goodman, referring to the latter as a technician, while emphasizing his own, ostensibly more musical concerns. "I played music, he played the clarinet," is a famous summary of Artie's thought. Those who have listened critically to both men can only come to the conclusion that this was more of a Shavian evasion, or a continuation of the rivalry, than anything else. Both of them played the clarinet musically, neither was anything close to a mere technician, and neither of them was anything less than technically brilliant.

Yet of the two, and despite his protestations, Shaw was actually more revolutionary in a technical sense. His range was superior to Goodman's, his control of the instrument more complete than any clarinetist on record, and his technique seemingly unprecedented. In the clarinet repertoire preceding him, one might find demonstrations of range comparable in the Spohr and Tausch concerti, but never the use of glissandi--the near complete flexibility that was Shaw's trademark. Accompanying this was a consistency of tone and fluidity of approach that seems to defy the rules of normal clarinetistry.

Because of his expressed ambivalence towards the clarinet and technical discussions, I've often wondered if he even realized, fully, the degree to which his playing surpassed the models before him. We have no record of the great virtuosi of the 18th and 19th century, and therefore can't know what Heinrich Baermann or Franz Tausch would have sounded like--perhaps they also had Shaw's flexibility, and perhaps the use of portamento was common and unreported in solo repertoire. By the time Shaw hit the scene, though, there seems to have been no player able to do what he did.

With these persistent questions (which are unlikely be fully answered), I was lucky enough to stumble across and purchase a copy of Artie's 1941 book on clarinet technique. These are so rarely on the market that, as of this writing, the only copy available on Amazon is offered for $295, a hefty price for a relatively slim, 89 page volume.

Almost half of this book is still in print, in the form of two volumes entitled Artie Shaw's Jazz Technic. Volume 1 is a facsimile of the original Method's pages 38-63, while Volume 2 collects fourteen etudes found on pages 64-77. Missing from the current volumes are the opening exercises dealing mostly with diatonic scales and chords, and six transcribed solos with piano accompaniments at the end.

The opening exercises are very instructive. While I don't possess an encyclopedic knowledge of method books prior to 1941, my collection has quite a few, and I've never seen one that works through each key by starting on each scale degree, successively, in modal style (even if this is not explicitly stated). In many ways this book looks like a harbinger for the later, popular saxophone method written by Joseph Viola.

Also telling are the selection of transcribed solos, especially the inclusion of "Dr. Livingstone, I Presume" which contains Shaw's most open reference to Klezmer. This is made all the more significant for the odd fact that Shaw was later to disavow the tune as silly--and to distance himself from klezmer as such. Anyone who has read his autobiography, The Trouble with Cinderella, however, knows that Artie wrestled with his Jewish identity. This more or less constant contradiction in his life--boldly and even proudly putting forth obviously klezmer rooted music, such as Dr Livingstone and Nightmare--only to evade analysis of it as such should be treated, in my opinion, as neither disingenuous nor dishonest on Shaw's part. Instead, I believe he was a man who struggled with the weight of his own brilliance, and who didn't always understand the roots of his genius. The result was often that his explanations seemed to contradict his work. Seeming contradictions are often paradoxes in disguise, though, and the more we get to know Shaw's work, the more paradoxical it inevitably becomes.

This aside, the volume also contains a least a little bit of prose from Shaw regarding clarinet technique, unavailable elsewhere. Early on, he thanks Arnold Brilhart, the musician, mouthpiece maker, synthetic reed pioneer, and collaborator on the volume. It's likely that Brilhart served as a sounding board and perhaps even primary notator of the volume (perhaps even penning the opening exercises and transcriptions no longer available in the current facsimiles).

On page 2, however, we are given something a little out of the ordinary: a glimpse at why Shaw bothered writing a book on a subject he seemed so little interested in discussing afterwards. I believe it is proof that he did know how extraordinary his own approach to the horn was--and that it was worth suggesting to others, even if only in truncated form. Some quotes show his concerns:

This book is not intended to replace any of the standard clarinet methods now in  use. [...] [But] is to provide a different type of exercise for the student whose aim is to play not in the symphony but in the dance band. 

[There] are certain idiomatic and technical differences between [classical and jazz playing]--certain arbitrary and traditional criteria that should be stripped away from the former--that make the publication of such a book as this not only permissible but desirable.
[...]
There are several conceptions regarding the so-called "proper" way to play the clarinet. Most of these exist because of the rigidly academic approach to the subject. It is in the hope of clearing the air of a few arbitrary prejudices, as well as providing the student with a system of exercises designed to promote the freedom and flexibility of technique vital to unhampered performance in the jazz band, that I am offering this new CLARINET METHOD.

Freedom and flexibility are hallmarks of Shaw's style, not found in classical techniques. It is nice to see that he recognized his achievement consciously, even if he was ambivalent to it or less interested later in life.

Tellingly, this is not a jazz method book--it has nothing in it to suggest instruction in the art of improvisation. Instead, it's meant to expand the player's approach to the clarinet in order to gain flexibility of expression. Thus it is a rare glimpse behind the veil of a man who denied much interest in the mere means of expression, so preoccupied was he with the result. Ultimately, this method only scratches the surface of Shaw's approach. To me its main value is its proof that Artie knew how unique that approach was. In the end, to get such a glimpse is a rare enough thing when dealing with a mind so enigmatic, and so worthwhile, as Artie Shaw's.