Online Clarinet

One tube, six rings, seventeen keys

A clarinet is a single tube of wood about two-thirds of a metre long with a reed at the top, and every note is a state of that tube: which of its holes are covered. The standard modern instrument — the Boehm-system clarinet — has a thumb hole, six rings under the fingers and seventeen keys around them, and the drawing on this page has every one of them. Tap a note and it shows exactly which are down.

You can play it two ways. In Notes, tap the note you want and watch the fingering; the strip above the keys marks the three registers, and the drawing tells you how each note relates to the others. In Fingers + air, you play the clarinet itself: tap the rings and keys to put fingers down, then hold the air button and blow. The note you hear is the one that fingering really plays — including fingerings no chart lists, which sound roughly where a real clarinet would put them and are marked as off the chart.

The register key and the twelfth

Finger low E3 — everything down — and blow. Now press the register key, under the left thumb, and blow again. You get B4: not an octave up but a twelfth, an octave and a fifth. Every other woodwind jumps an octave, and the reason the clarinet does not is the most important fact about it: a tube closed at one end only resonates at the odd harmonics, so the next note up from the fundamental is the third harmonic, nineteen semitones higher.

That one fact builds most of the chart. The clarion register, B4 to C6, is nothing but the chalumeau fingerings from E3 to F4 with the register key added — fourteen notes, all learned twice over. It is also why a clarinettist has to learn new fingerings for the upper register where a flautist or a saxophonist would reuse the ones they know.

The break

Between the two registers sit the four throat notes, written G4 to B♭4, played with the thumb hole open on the few small holes and keys at the top of the tube. They are thinner than the notes around them, and the clarinet here plays them that way. Then comes the break: from B♭4, played with just the register key and the A key, to B4, played with nearly everything down. 9 keys change in that one semitone — try it in Fingers + air. It is why teachers tell you to put the right hand down early, while you are still on the throat notes, which sound almost the same with it down: the jump over the break becomes one movement instead of 9.

Clarinet fingering chart, low E3 to high C6

Every note of the standard range, in written pitch, with the concert note it sounds on a B♭ clarinet. T is the thumb hole and R the register key; the dots are the left hand’s three rings, then the right hand’s (● down, ○ up); LH and RH keys are the left and right little fingers. Where the chart gives the same note with either little finger, the second column has the other — clarinettists alternate them so that no finger ever has to slide from one key to the next.

Four clarinets, one set of fingers

The chips above the clarinet pick which one you are holding. They all read the same part with the same fingerings — the chart itself says its fingerings are the same on every size of Boehm clarinet — and each sounds the written note somewhere else. That is what makes them transposing instruments, and it is why a clarinettist can pick up any of them.

The B♭ is the clarinet almost everyone plays. The A is its orchestral twin, a semitone lower and a shade darker, and many of the great clarinet pieces are written for it. The E♭ is the small one that sounds above what it reads, bright enough to be heard over a whole band. The bass clarinet is read in treble clef and fingered exactly like the B♭, an octave and a step lower. The sound of each is modelled on its size rather than recorded.

Written pitch and concert pitch

Everything on this page — the keys, the labels, the song tabs, the chart — is in written pitch, because that is what a clarinet part and every fingering chart use. The drawing names the concert pitch as well, the note a piano would have to play to match you. On a B♭ clarinet, written C sounds B♭, a whole step lower. The key menu is in written keys too: written C is concert B♭ on the B♭ clarinet, the band key most method books start in. It changes the numbers in the song tabs, not the clarinet.

How to play it

Hold a note to blow it and let go to stop — a clarinet sounds only while air goes through it. Slide along the keys without lifting to slur from note to note in one breath; the voice hears that the air never stopped and leaves the tongue out of the next note, which is what a slur is.

In Fingers + air, tap the rings and keys on the drawing to put fingers down; tap again to lift one. Then hold Hold to blow. Change fingers while you blow and the note moves without a new attack. Turn on Keep blowing to leave the air on while you finger — the easiest way to explore with one hand or a mouse. The caption under the drawing names every fingering as you make it, and says when it is one the chart gives, an alternate, or something no chart lists.

On a computer keyboard, in Notes, the letters run up a semitone at a time from Q, which is written G3. In Fingers + air the keyboard becomes the clarinet’s two hands: F, D and S are the left hand’s rings, J, K and L the right hand’s, V the thumb hole and C the register key beside it, A and ; the little fingers’ E and F keys, and Space is the air. Hold V, F, D and S and press Space: that is middle C. Add C and it becomes the G a twelfth above. Every key on the drawing shows its letter.

Songs to play

Press Play a song under the instrument and pick one. In written C the clarinet plays 22 of the 22 public-domain songs here; in C, F, D and B♭ it plays all of them. Play plays a song for you and shows each fingering as it sounds, which is the fastest way to learn them. Practice waits on the next note and marks the keys it needs in gold before you play it, and it works in Fingers + air too — put the gold keys down, lift any marked to come up, and blow. Play along closes a ring on each note in time with the music.

What it sounds like, and why

A clarinet’s low notes are hollow and woody and its upper notes are clear and round, and both come from the same physics as the twelfth. The reed closes the tube, so in the low register the tube strengthens the odd harmonics and starves the even ones — close to a square wave, but only up to a point. Above about one and a half kilohertz on a B♭ clarinet the open holes below the note let the sound out, the tube stops choosing, and odd and even harmonics fade out together. A low note has many harmonics under that line and sounds hollow; a high one has few and sounds round. The voice here is built that way rather than as a plain square wave, and the A, E♭ and bass clarinets move the line with their size. Vibrato is off to start with, because an orchestral clarinettist almost never uses it; jazz and klezmer players do.

More instruments you can play here

The online trumpet is the other tube here whose notes are fingerings, and the online ocarina and the online harmonica are the other wind instruments. Got a real clarinet that sounds off? The clarinet tuner listens through your microphone and walks you through the barrel and the long C.

Frequently asked questions