The Endless Transformations Of The Bass Clarinet.

Hi welcome on my website. As a student, improvisor, interpretor, maker and researcher working with the bass clarinet in many different contexts, I approach the horn with certain sound ideals and self defined ethics, as a standard for the initial approach on a daily basis. Tone and Technique are always the beginning point of daily excersizes or studies. I have always had a fascination for what makes a sound, or what comes before a sound. Apart from extended techniques, multiphonics, slap harmonics, quarter tones, clicks, tics, flatter & double tongue i have come to apreciate more the rumbling, the noise, the breath, keys and spit that are part of the body bc.

I move between purely accoustic works and almost exclusive digital process and content.

The past 15 years I have worked with open source software on max & pd platforms that enabled me to go deep into the grains of the bass clarinet sounds; the software became a reflective entity who even co writes the outcome of the processes. I built Nvrnmnts or Flexible Spaces and work with samples and live interaction and i let the software abstract and harmonise and even melodise the base material somewhere in the process and feed it back.

The environments within the software I construct function as compositions or schemes, constructs etc, where I, we engage in interactive processes, with live interactions and improvisation; with prepared loops and samples and the ever changing process outcome of what i call the infinite machines, the ambient machines, i further bring the self machine and the bassclarinet machine to life.

My most recent project is a further step into the digitalisation of the bass clarinet project; i build a sample library and feed it into Elektron Digitakt, A sampler and Sequencer, and out of wich comes a further stage in development of the endless transformations of the bass clarinet. I am also heavily involved in live looping as part of my live setup, together with contact mics, resonators and filters.

This website takes you to several stages and (online) places of interest concerning my work from now and the past.

Thanks for checking it out. write me for comments, thoughts or collabs at henkbakr@gmail.com

Henk Bakker Rotterdam 2026