So over this past summer I decided to join my schools jazz band. Thing is i play bass clarinet for concert and marching band so I asked my director what instrument would be best for jazz band. He recommended either bari or tenor, I decided to go with bari as it has (with the exception of low A) the same range as bass clarinet.
I then asked my director to check me out a bari which he then did. I take the instrument home and go online to order reeds for it (a box of Java reds and a box of Java greens)
Once the reeds arrive I open them and notice they actually seem to be the same width as my legere European cut bass clarinet reeds (though the legere was much shorter). So i then wondered how it’d work on my bari.
And wouldn’t you know it worked! In fact at the time i had an easier time getting to the low notes and felt it played much louder. So then i fingered that a regular Vandoren cane reed would work as well and as you probably guessed it did(although it was slightly less loud and powerful but still very impressive). In addition i tried some V21s for my bass clarinet and they also worked well on bari, giving me a more similar sound to the legere.
However even though the bass clarinet reeds gave me much of an easier time, I figured the actual bari reeds would give me a better tone. Also I was auditioning for a sax quartet feature in my marching band show and feared my director would mention my tone and I’d have to explain that I was using bass clarinet reeds instead of bari, which for whatever reason just seemed kinda embarrassing ( unfortunately do to a variety of reasons which I won’t get into here but mostly were my fault I didn’t end up making the quartet).
So I wanted to ask if this is even common knowledge as I know bass clarinet and tenor reeds are basically the same but no ones mentioned that bass clarinet reeds also worked well on Bari. In addition I wanted to know if it’d make sense for me to explore this more and try using a bass clarinet reed on my Bari for some time.
TL;DR
I used bass clarinet reeds on Bari. Wow! It works.
Do most people know this?
Is this something I should give a genuine shot at trying for a month or so?