Klarinet Archive - Posting 000349.txt from 1997/10

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: klarinet-digest V1 #301
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 12:44:21 -0400

> From: MX%"klarinet@-----.56
> Subj: Re: klarinet-digest V1 #301

>
>
> > On Thu, 9 Oct 1997, Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu wrote:
>
> > If you cannot recognize the sound (or do so to a
> > > lesser degree when you are not playing), you have to consider the
> > > possibility that your "recognition" is not at all aural, but is
> > > due to other factors such as brand name influence, physicality of
> > > the instrument, the feel and placement of the keys, and other
> > > psychological factors, etc.
>
> You kind of left out an important part of the equation here.....that is,
> psychological factors aside, what about the way the darn thing blows?
> Resistance in an instrument is all important (anyone who disagrees with
> this either does not understand resistance in the horn, or labels it as
> something else....we call that semantics). That has literally nothing to
> do with brand name, feel and placement of keys, and the other ambiguous
> etc. you mention here. This is not a psychological factor, this is a
> musical factor....one that is realised by the performer.....BOTH aurally
> and in terms of the way it feels (not with the hands but the air column).
> My recognition with a person other than myself would naturally be "to a
> lesser degree" because I have reduced a part of the test by 1/3 to
> 1/2.....that is, the resistance factor. By the way, I would think that
> you could concede that the sound is different when the reed is rattling
> around and vibrating within one's head than it might to a person sitting
> two feet away? Put your fingers in your ears and eat a crunchy
> peanut......sounds like a cow munching doesn't it! Take your fingers
> out....the amplification of the sound is created by eliminating the
> outside influences .........same concept with blowing and hearing as
> opposed to simply listening.

Well, I agree that the player is not an objective observer of his or
her own playing because the sound reaches him/her in a way that
is different from the listener. But the sound is not different.
It is the same sound, but heard differently.

So far, all I have out of this discussion is that you are making
subjective judgements on factors such as how the instrument
blows, what you suggest the resistance is to you, how you hear
the sound, etc. I recognize that each person must, of necessity,
make decisions based on their own experience, but to escalate
those decisions and conclusions to the level of a general truth
is not acceptable to my way of thinking. That doesn't
necessarily mean diddy-squat to you and I'm not offended by it,
but I argue that you have not made a verifiable technical
statement in this entire discussion.

The way dialogue goes is that the person who makes the assertion
(i.e., the LeBlanc has a sound that is different from the
Buffet) is obliged to give objective reasons why that assertion
is true. Stating that it is true because s/he hears it to be
the case is not satisfactory. You can say it, of course, but
it has no weight. Stating that it is true because other people
think it is true (citing university professors) is equally
unsatisfactory. These mechanisms do not establish truth. They
establish folklore which is often confused with truth, and, in
fact may very well be truth. But it is not truth until it is
established to be so in some universally agreed to objective
way.

Look at the depth of our disagreement here (and I appreciate
how thoughtful you are in citing your rejection of my
hypotheses - I hope I am doing the same). I have stated
on several occasions in the past (in fact we had a lengthy
go around on this 2 years ago) that, while the clarinet
nature of the sound of the instrument is derived from both
the instrument and the mouthpiece, the character of the sound
is derived from the players physical characteristics: head
shape, nasal cavities, sinuses, teeth, tongue, etc. To
a considerable extent, the character of one's sound is as much
a matter of good luck as it is practice, but whichever it is
the instrument itself lends little to the character itself. But
a clarinet sound itself (you close your eyes and you know it
is a clarinet even if it sounds terrible) is derived from the
instrument and the mouthpiece. The abstraction that we try
to achieve as a "beautiful sound" is mostly unrelated to the
instrument. Once the air column leaves the bottom of the
mouthpiece, the sound character is almost fully formed.

Now with that view (which clearly you do not hold), it should
be clear that we are at diverse ends of the spectrum on this
issue and are not going to get very far in resolving it. It is
not that we are at different shades of grey. We are at black
and white positions.

So I suggest that we move on to other things in life because we
are not going to get very far in this one. Perhaps, the best
thing about the discussion is that we have both had the
opportunity to voice our opinions and maybe others on the list
will start to think about these important issues. That's the
best we're going to hope for.

>
> Roger Garrett
>
=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
=======================================