Posts tagged instrument shaped objects

Buffet. Yamaha. Selmer. These are three of the well-known companies reputed to crank out the best clarinets, and sadly, they’re never found at the most ennui-laden place (in my opinion), Walmart. One time, when I did my shopping trek in this vast, ultra-luminous, and stentorian purgatory on earth (Get the picture, parents whose autistic children have sensory-related burdens?), I eyed a display case with musical instruments, and one of them was a clarinet, and like most of the rest, it was manufactured by a lesser-known brand. A few years later, I searched for “clarinet” on Walmart’s website and found the same brand of the single-reeded stick! I read the reviews and agreed with the reviewer who rated it lowly.

The clarinets on display at Walmart are examples of clarinet-shaped objects (CSOs), a subcategory of the maligned-by-legions-of-band-directors’ instrument shaped objects (ISOs). Because I had played clarinet throughout middle school and in my freshmen year of high school (in my ill-fated youth orchestra audition), I’m familiar with the Selmer and Yamaha (I own the latter’s YCL-20, purchased in 2003, in 8th grade.) ones, but the knock-off B-flat sopranos are manufactured (likely in Third World nations, particularly China) with pot metal keys and cruddier-than-ebonite plastics and are sold under names ridiculously unheard in many professional players’ and band directors’ ears.

I generally agree with parents whose children play these instruments and found them awful and whose local repair shop have to bear the heavy-as-a-contra-alto-clarinet cross of fixing it beyond repair. They reported leaky keywork, rough mouthpieces, and squeaky intonation, as well as incapability to play in the clarino to altissimo registers. Despite the flaws that make the CSOs abominable, big-box retailers like Costco, BJ’s Wholesale, Kmart, and the aforementioned Walmart still tout them, bedecking the case with the ludicrous instruments. There are also already cheap and inferior versions of transverse C concert flutes, B-flat trumpets and cornets, and alto and (sometimes) tenor saxophones in the market under those brands not well respected, but I don’t think the future’s too distant for “bargain” bass clarinets, trombones, F horns, oboes, and other band instruments.

If I were a band director, or a band composer/arranger regardless of level, I’d strongly recommend players to avert the CSOs and rent to own (even buy if extra affluent) an instrument from your local music specialist retailer, as many band directors have mentioned since those instruments hit the big-box market time and time again.

So what do you think of off-brand clarinets, if you have touched a clarinet in your life or if you are a school music teacher?