Klarinet Archive - Posting 000251.txt from 1997/11

From: Roger Shilcock <roger.shilcock@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: Re: Re: Re: Ricardo Morales Recital
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 13:18:34 -0500

I hesitate to cross swords with you on this. I'm sorry for the tone of my
hasty reply, but -- you *were*, I think, talking about different woods
having different "kinds" (to use a vague word, because I can't think of a
better one) of stimulated vibration. I was just pointing out what I
thought to be obvious, but you didn't actually mention; namely, that
clarinet sound in its many varieties is overwhelmingly dependent on air
vibrating within
cavities, some of
them not even being within the instrument. You haven't *demonstrated* any
influence by the wood on the resulting sound just by saying
that
different woods vibrate differently; as other subscribers have said, the
actual smoothness or otherwise of the internal surface and the holes could
account for all of any differences which might result from differences in
material type - plastics as well, and all the rest. I don't think this is
what you meant to imply.
Do you have actual measurements on the spectra of any sound vibration
occuring in clarinet bodies? This might support what you seem to saying
pretty well.
Roger Shilcock

On Thu, 6 Nov 1997 PGAYR@-----.com wrote:

> Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 12:46:02 -0500 (EST)
> From: PGAYR@-----.com
> Reply-To: klarinet@-----.us
> To: klarinet@-----.us
> Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Ricardo Morales Recital
>
>
> Roger Shilcock wrote about my comments on sound:
> Of course different *woods* vibrate differently. Nobody is talking about
> wood. It's *air*******, for Gawd's sake.
> Eminent designer though Tom R. is, what he's saying is not common sense,
> and according to some authorities, not even provable.
> Roger Shilcock
> Roger,
> I'm very sorry. I thought we were talking about the materials making a
> difference in the sound. That means to me that we are not talking about air,
> for Gawd's sake, I haven't even heard anyone mention air -what was being
> talking about as far as I could ascertain the matter of materials making
> and actual objective difference in the playing and sounding qualities of
> instruments, or was it just a purely subjective matter and only the players
> imagination. I do not recall the word "air" in the original claim that
> materials did not make a difference. Perhaps it was there, I just don't
> remember it.
> Perhaps you have been doing some airy thinking???? But the point of my
> comments was concerned with the heard and felt effects of energy on different
> densities and thicknesses of substances: is there a real difference in sound
> or not? We are not concerned with the air primarily here, only the effects of
> the energy transmitted by the air.
> Clearly, in each action the hammer (air) andthe arm which swings it (energy)
> are the same, but are the effects they produce on difference substances
> objectively different. I was saying only that obviously it is. I can hear
> it, for Gawd's sake.
> Tom
>
>