bass clarinet

[BruceH]

Is there a baritone clarinet?

[Rosco]

Is there a baritone clarinet?

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I think strictly speaking, the bass clarinet should be thought of as a baritone instrument...

There is a clarinet in between 'regular' clarinet and bass, the bassett horn. See here

Edit: For some reason, this link doesn't take you straight to the page. Scroll down and click on 'Back to the Clarinet family' and follow the link from there...

Edited August 25, 2005 by Rosco

[Rosco]

Also check out the Sub-Contra Bass Clarinet!

[Cali]

pharoah sanders sometimes plays an instrument that looks like a short soprano sax (or a clarinet? hard to tell), but it sounds like a bass clarinet.

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Pharoah has a bass clarinet.

[l p]

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Pharoah has a bass clarinet.

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[Michael Fitzgerald]

The clarinet family (see album of the same name by Bluiett) consists of these modern instruments, high to low:

sopranino

soprano (regular clarinet)

alto

bass

contralto

contrabass

They alternate between B-flat and E-flat keys. The naming is confusing since there are no tenor or baritone items as there are in the saxophone world. So, a bass saxophone is FOUR times the length of a soprano, where a bass clarinet is not even TWICE the size of an alto. The bass clarinet is relatively equivalent to the tenor saxophone (they can even share a reed).

The instruments in other keys (A, C, G, D, A-flat), including the bassett horn (F) and the basset clarinet, and the unique octo-contralto and octo-contrabass are not really relevant.

Without more information, I'm not sure what the instrument Pharoah Sanders has is, but I do know that he has recorded on a Spanish shawm-type instrument, built by Lorenzo Sancho of Segovia. This is a double-reed instrument, like the oboe.

Mike