I have touched on this subject before; but it is a particularly sore topic with me right now, following an experience a few days ago.
I am referring to a bad habit of a few clarinet players. Sometimes they play the melody for all or most of the ensemble work. In other words, they duplicate the trumpet-player's job.
My worst experience of this was several years ago. The tune Hiawatha Rag was announced. As you probably know, this is a lively and interesting number, played at a bright tempo.
For a pleasant video of the tune played well:
It's not easy, because it has a special introduction, followed by Theme A, which involves some pretty runs, and then Theme B - with a kind of marching motif. Then Theme A is played again before the band moves (with a change of key) into the final 32-bar Theme C, on which solos are improvised. To finish, you play a coda that is extracted from Theme A.
Immediately after we started, I noticed the clarinet man was playing nothing but the trumpet part - my part. So we were on exactly the same notes. How pointless. I tried hard to switch to a sort of clarinet part on my trumpet, but I was struggling. When we came to Theme C, the clarinet was still tootling away on the precise notes of the melody. As this is the main theme and frequently improvised upon, I found it a bit easier to create a sort of 'clarinet part' on my trumpet at this stage.
Goodness knows what the clarinet player thought he was doing.
(In the video mentioned above, by the way, the clarinet takes the first time through Theme C as a solo. This is fine and had obviously been agreed by these good folk in advance - to give the trumpet a break.)
(In the video mentioned above, by the way, the clarinet takes the first time through Theme C as a solo. This is fine and had obviously been agreed by these good folk in advance - to give the trumpet a break.)
And now, at a recent gig, with a different clarinet player, I had another bad experience. Most of the gig went well, and the clarinet man did his job efficiently. But in two of the tunes, I heard him doggedly playing the melody. These were easier tunes than 'Hiawatha Rag', so I managed to improvise some sort of counter-melodies without too much difficulty when I realised what was happening. But then he would suddenly drop the melody and start to play a more conventional clarinet part. This made the band sound poor: for a few seconds nobody was playing the tune. I would rapidly get back to it, only to find that he followed me - on exactly the same notes!!
So may I appeal to clarinet players? If you are tempted to do this kind of thing, please discuss it with the trumpet player first. Nobody minds the clarinet taking the lead in an ensemble occasionally but this should not happen in a way that takes fellow musicians by surprise and causes problems for them.
So may I appeal to clarinet players? If you are tempted to do this kind of thing, please discuss it with the trumpet player first. Nobody minds the clarinet taking the lead in an ensemble occasionally but this should not happen in a way that takes fellow musicians by surprise and causes problems for them.
