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Clarinet Soft Pads

RE:

I have a clarinet and would like to make it sound like the sound of the Hindustani clarinet. I read Shankar mentions a soft rubber material in one of his videos but it doesn't go into further detail.

Any information would be helpful.
 
Practice, dude. Practice.

First, I've gotta say that the gentleman in the video sounds like he's playing a clarinet. I'm relatively sure it's a standard Selmer (I can almost see the logo on the upper joint) Boehm-system horn. It looks like he's using a standard mouthpiece and a Rovner-like ligature. The style sounds a little like Turkish clarinet, but not overly so. Turkish clarinet players seem to favor clarinets in odd pitches (like G) and favor Albert/Simple System keywork and, as I mentioned, Mr. Tucker's horn and mouthpiece look rather traditional.

Mr. Tucker seems to have a whole bunch of media on the web. I just googled "Shankar Tucker" and came up with a Wikipedia entry, his website, his SoundCloud, and links to his YouTube channels. If you want to get the exact equipment he has, you can definitely shoot him an e-mail, but I've gotta tell you that the equipment might make it easier to sound like him, but that sound's going to fall apart very quickly if you don't have the technique. He might have some good suggestions on what to music/etudes/techniques to study, though. Just reading his bio page offers a few suggestions. Looks like the above video does, too (I didn't watch all 13 minutes).
 
RE:

I have a clarinet and would like to make it sound like the sound of the Hindustani clarinet. I read Shankar mentions a soft rubber material in one of his videos but it doesn't go into further detail.

Any information would be helpful.
I would think that your setup and the player on it would have significantly more effect on the tone than pad material.
(aaand Pete posted while I was typing-listen to what he said, he gives very good advice.)
 
Practice, dude. Practice.

First, I've gotta say that the gentleman in the video sounds like he's playing a clarinet. I'm relatively sure it's a standard Selmer (I can almost see the logo on the upper joint) Boehm-system horn. It looks like he's using a standard mouthpiece and a Rovner-like ligature. The style sounds a little like Turkish clarinet, but not overly so. Turkish clarinet players seem to favor clarinets in odd pitches (like G) and favor Albert/Simple System keywork and, as I mentioned, Mr. Tucker's horn and mouthpiece look rather traditional.

Mr. Tucker seems to have a whole bunch of media on the web. I just googled "Shankar Tucker" and came up with a Wikipedia entry, his website, his SoundCloud, and links to his YouTube channels. If you want to get the exact equipment he has, you can definitely shoot him an e-mail, but I've gotta tell you that the equipment might make it easier to sound like him, but that sound's going to fall apart very quickly if you don't have the technique. He might have some good suggestions on what to music/etudes/techniques to study, though. Just reading his bio page offers a few suggestions. Looks like the above video does, too (I didn't watch all 13 minutes).

Is this song a solo with piano accompaniment or are those all clarinet sounds that I am hearing?

 
If I am not mistaken, there are some other electrical sounds in there like rain sound in the beginning and the bass background. I'm not sure if there is some processed clarinet sounds in addition to the really clear, sweet, nice clarinet line. But I'm sure you could use your clarinet pickup fed through a synthesizer to make almost any sound you want.
 
But I'm sure you could use your clarinet pickup fed through a synthesizer to make almost any sound you want.
That's actually more a description of a wind controller. Which isn't exactly what OP wants (IMO) and that's not what's used in the video. Audio processing. Post processing. Looping. Effects. (You could also consider "overdubbing" part of post processing or looping.)

Mark said:
Is this song a solo with piano accompaniment or are those all clarinet sounds that I am hearing?
It's neither a solo (which means "alone"), nor is there any piano. There's a guy playing a keyboard synth. He's playing an electric bass line on it. You're also not hearing just clarinet: there's bass and a variety of percussion, in addition to all the clarinet effects I mentioned above.

It's got a nice beat. The guy has a very clean clarinet tone.
 
RE:

I have a clarinet and would like to make it sound like the sound of the Hindustani clarinet. I read Shankar mentions a soft rubber material in one of his videos but it doesn't go into further detail.

Any information would be helpful.
Soft, squishy pourous pads will give you the ability of soft transition from note to note. it's kinda like having a leak then harder pressure closes the leak or the pours get filled and lifts the air pressure to normal.

You'll want to looks for porous rubber pads. These can be found on Eaton clarinets. So you can follow the trail to their manufacturer. ie, they're not exactly cheap. But more importantly you can compensate your playing technique the opposite way and create the same type of effects. Instead of closing the key and closing it a bit more you can simply not close the key completely then close it completely. Using technique to compensate for a variation in set up.

But more importantly, he uses techniques that are very common to glissandos. Such as this quick lesson

Studying jazz will give you a lot of techniques versus learning classical clarinet. Classical clarinet is very rigid in what the outcome *needs* to be, and any variation is considered incorrect. Whereas jazz lends freedom of expression and variation of each tone to give the freedom and listening pleasure of the audience. It's up to the player to keep the audience's attention and each note variation and colorization keeps the audiences attention, which Mr. Shankar does very well for Hindu music.

In other words, it's more than just pads. And you're more apt to learn more about techniques to get to his playing style than just "pads".

As a matter of fact you may find some similarities in Artie Shaw's playing techniques
such as this young player has especially at the beginning.

Then once you learn all that, you can adapt it to any other musical style/genre out there.
 
In Short, I think Mr. Shankar Tucker was classically trained, as he said he was.
Then later on, he caught on to Hindu music which lends itself to jazz techniques quite nicely. Thus he added jazz techniques though first through odd mechanical techniques using classical playing techniques, then later through actual jazz playing techniques.

I was classically trained clarinetist, but also a jazz saxophonist. So I had exposure to both at the same time.
 
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