Contrabass Clarinet Quarter-Tone and Altissimo Fingering Chart

The most comprehensive fingering chart for contrabass clarinet, with separate charts for Leblanc, Selmer & Eppelsheim extended range contrabass clarinets. It contains over 150 fingerings for each model over a five-and-a-half octave range in quarter-tones from written C3 to B8. Author's Notes: Following the success of my clarinet and, in particular, bass clarinet quarter-tone and altissimo fingering charts, I have produced new charts for contrabass clarinet. The focus of these has been the extended range low C models produced by Leblanc, Selmer, and Eppelsheim. Due to the non-standardized design and keywork functionality of these instruments, completely separate charts are required for each model. Players with low E models such as those by Vito and Leblanc may also find these as a useful starting point to discover necessary fingerings, however, they have not been tested on these instruments. One striking difference of the contrabass clarinet fingering charts to those previously for clarinet and bass clarinet is the lack of quarter-tone fingerings in the chalumeau and clarion registers. The reason for this is that suitable fingerings are just not available in this range. Fingering changes can result in timbral and microtonal changes, but in the contrabass register the pitches are too far away from each for effective true quarter-tone fingerings. If quarter-tones are needed in this range, a combination of fingering, embouchure, and voicing adjustments need to be made. As this introduces far too many personal variables, it is ineffectual to create fingerings for them. The upper register is far more flexible, however, so the quarter-tones begin there.