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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000071.txt from 2007/07

From: herb fawcett <herbgosia@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [DR-L] Re: Instrument Choices
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 22:05:19 -0400

The truth of what you say would depend on what you mean by an OK instrument.
Some students sound abut the same on almost anything, but some of the darned
bassoons I have met would frustrate the best of players. In general, I
believe what you say (given the thing is playable and better than the
rankest Schreiber) and the player will make it sound the way he conceives
the sound.
Tweaking engines is fun in itself, and I have tweaked a bunch, but it is
only really worth the trouble if one is racing. It's sort of like - thoughts
aren't of much value until they are translated into some action.
Herb

On 7/13/07 3:53 PM, "jimkatz@-----.ca>
wrote:

> I tend to come down on the side of "It's the musician, not the horn." As
> a student, I was looking to buy a bassoon, and my teacher played about
> five of them to help me choose. To my ordinary ears, the same passage
> sounded pretty much the same despite radically different instruments.
>
> (In the end I bought the one that had been used by the first chair of a
> great orchestra, just for ego sake.)
>
> In the end I guess some instruments will be a little easier to play, or
> better for this or that, but over a very broad range, wouldn't you say
> that a skilled musician can make any okay instrument in good repair sound
> good?
>
> I think the constant chasers of the next-even-better horn are like the
> guys who spend every weekend tweaking their car engines for that tiny
> extra bit of speed at the end of a year.. Their view of the point of
> diminishing returns is a lot different from mine.
>
> Jim Katz, Montreal
>
>
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