Bass Clarinet Quarter-Tone & Altissimo Fingering Chart

Description

This is the newly updated 3rd Edition of the most comprehensive fingering chart for bass clarinet. The 2nd Edition became widely popular and used by bass clarinetists around the world, and this new 3rd Edition adds 138 fingerings for a total offering of over 400 fingerings through five octaves in quarter-tones for bass clarinet, from written C3 to D8-quarter flat.

Author’s Notes:

Ten years have passed since releasing the 2nd Edition of my Bass Clarinet Quarter-Tone Fingering Chart, and in that time I have seen its popularity grow enormously. Many people have relied on it for their fingerings, university clarinet teachers are using it in their studios, and the chart and fingering diagram have been cited in numerous papers and publications. In that time, I have also released two editions of a quarter-tone chart for clarinet with a third releasing simultaneously to this one, and most recently a compilation of three separate charts for Leblanc, Selmer, and Eppelsheim contrabass clarinets.

The first obvious change in the 3rd Edition is to the title. I have added Altissimo to better reflect that these charts are not only useful for their quarter-tones, but also for their stratospheric range. The charts have also had a formatting revision and are now being published through AMA Editions, available in print as well as digital forms.

The next big change is the addition of 138 quarter-tone and altissimo fingerings, and some corrections and revisions to the existing ones. With these revisions come some new notations of the diagrams. One of these is the use of grey-colored keys, first used in the contrabass clarinet charts, to indicate keys which may be added to help tuning, response, and/or resonance. Rather than creating a new diagram for every possible combination, I thought it would be more effective to show the fundamental fingering in black, with the grey keys as possible additions dependent on what works best for a player and their instrument.

My original charts were made using a Buffet Prestige bass clarinet, but I have since changed to a Selmer Privilege instrument. One particular difference with this instrument is the articulated C♯/G♯ mechanism, which does not allow the key to open when either of the first two fingers of the right hand are down. Some of the fingering additions were to accommodate instruments with an articulated mechanism, and previous fingerings that will not work on instruments with one have been marked as such. The biggest obstacle with this mechanism is for written C4-quarter-sharp, which has no suitable alternative. Another difference is with the thumb key configuration. On the Buffet Prestige and many other instruments, the top key is an alternate for low D3, whereas on a Selmer Privilege and Buffet Tosca it is an alternate for low E♭3. While it’s not possible to cater to every different keywork layout configuration, I decided to remove fingerings which use this key in favor of those using an alternate one.