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ViewsClarinetFrom Music-Web EncyclopediaThe Clarinet  Single-reed woodwind instrument used orchestrally and in military and brass bands and possessing a distinguished solo repertory. It is usually made of African blackwood and has a cylindrical bore of about 0.6 inch (1.5 cm) terminating in a flared bell. All-metal instruments are made but are little used professionally. The mouthpiece, usually of ebonite (a hard rubber), has a slotlike opening in one side over which a single reed, made from natural cane, is secured by a screw clip, or ligature, or (in earlier times and still often in Germany) by string lapping. The player grips the mouthpiece, reed down, between his lips or lower lip and upper teeth. The instrument that is often referred to as simply a clarinet is tuned in Bb and is about 26 inches (66 cm) long; its notes, made with the finger holes and key mechanism, sound a semi-tone lower than written. The cylindrical pipe, coupled to a reed mouthpiece, acts acoustically as a stopped pipe (closed at one end). This arrangement accounts for (1) the deep-pitched fundamental register; (2) the characteristic tone colour, caused largely by the virtual absence of even-numbered tones of the harmonic series (produced by whole and partial vibrations of the enclosed air column); and (3) the “overblowing” (effected by a thumb key) to an upper register at the 12th (third harmonic) above the fundamentals, instead of at the octave (second harmonic), as in other woodwind instruments. A high register, using fifth and seventh harmonics, extends the compass just over three and one-half octaves upward from the D (written E) below middle [edit] The Clarinet FamilyClarinets come in many shapes and sizes from tiny high pitched sopranino clarinets to the largest contrabass instruments which can play lower than a double bass.
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