Klarinet Archive - Posting 000042.txt from 1994/01

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Tom Ascher's comments
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 1994 16:13:09 -0500

One has to be very careful when receiving comments such as the ones
Tom Ascher made. They were "I'm just a simple country fellow and
don't know very much, and you are so smart and terrific and good
and noble and ..."

When someone says that to me, I grab for my wallet, first thing. My
father once told me: "Son, you are going out into the world. And I
don't have much money to help you with, but I will give you some important
advice. Some day a man will come up to you with a pack of cards that
has an unbroken seal on it. He will be you $100 that the jack of spades
is going to leap out of the pack and squirt apple cider in your ear. Son,"
my father said, "don't take that bet because as God made little green apples,
you are going to get cider in your ear."

Tom, I am not sure that people hear a difference between wooden and non
wooden clarinets because they think they are supposed to or because such
a difference exists. I have no pipeline to the infinite and only give
my opinion on the matter. But a counter opinion of "but wood clarinets
sound better to me" is not much of an advance over my argument. How is
that betterness measured? Can you detect that difference of quality in
a blind test? I assert you cannot and suggest that such a test can
certainly be arranged considering the clarinet faculty on this list.

It is pointless for me to say "yea" and thee "nay" or vice versa based on
opinion. No one will win that argument. But I suggest a test to establish
some truth here and it matters to me not one whit when people say "but
it sounds better to me" because it does not sound better to me. And thus
we are nowhere and no truth has been established. I'm AC/DC and will go
either way based on evidence but right now, I'm suggesting that the medium
has the least influence on the character of the sound.

Isn't anyone else going to defend my honor against the rapacious Tom
Ascher who attacketh me with apparent impunity?

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
====================================

   
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