Clarinetists of the world, rise up! You have nothing to lose but your airy tone!

I have played the clarinet since February of 2018, and over the years I have gained a bit of a reputation for being loud. Recently (more specifically, Friday, October 20, 2023), I also gained a reputation for bringing a traffic cone to our high school’s homecoming game and playing into it.

How to play loud on the clarinet

How to play into a traffic cone on the clarinet

Song recs

Along the way, I also incidentally played a few songs. Here are some of my favorites:

• English Folk Song Suite by Ralph Vaughan Williams
• Concerto for Clarinet by Artie Shaw
• Bruckner’s 8th Symphony: Finale by Anton Bruckner
• Societe Blue by Andrew David Perkins
• Still Fly by Southern University Marching Band (one of the best YouTube videos of all time)
• In Taberna Quando Sumus, a raucous drinking movement of the epic Carmina Burana
• … and many others!

To blast, or not to blast (a parody soliloquy by myself)

To blast, or not to blast: that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the band to unleash

The screaming notes of O Fortuna,

Or to bow down to a sea of haters,

And by silence obey them? To quiet: to play

No more; and by a pause to say I end

The ear-ache and the thousand-decibel pangs

That pierce the air through, in every composition.

This, some devoutly wish. To pause, to play soft;

To play soft: perchance to be lost: ay, there’s the rub;

For in that silence what brassy instruments may come

When the clarinets play quietly for a while,

Must give us pause; there’s the suspect

That makes us clarinets play loud and high;

For who would hear the tenor’s audacious crimes

(The notes flat or wrong), the percussion untimely,

The screech of despised flutes, the trumpet’s high A,

The insolence of altos and the spurns

That us clarinets of the B♭ take;

When we ourselves might our quietness break

With some mere blasting? Who would French horns bear,

And cover our ears under trombones’ leering smiles?

But that threat of loud clarinets,

The unparalleled army whose wall of sound

Every musician fears, shall strengthen our will;

No more shall we bear the trumpet bells we hate;

For our Still Fly they know not of.

Conscience shall no more make cowards of us all;

And the bright, jazzy, chord resolutions

(Formerly sicklied o’er with sounds pale and fraught)

Shall become enterprises of great pith and moment.

With this regard our bells turn towards the sky,

And play in the name of action.