Klarinet Archive - Posting 000568.txt from 1999/05

From: "Doug Sears" <dsears@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] Tone
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 17:17:16 -0400

>>I think dark also equals dull.
>
>Now.........it is clear to me, not dark any more, or fuzzy, bright, or ?
>why Dan has a problem with this adjective!

Yes, it's a big problem, and not just Dan's. If this list could come up with
some useful terminology for referring to clarinet tone, that would be a big
contribution to the art of clarinet playing. The problem, as I see it, is that
clarinet timbre has at least two major dimensions, and a simple unidimensional
scale of dark to bright is not nearly enough to describe the variations, even if
you leave out, for simplicity's sake, the very wide range of possible sounds
heard in jazz, beginners' fuzzy sounds, and multiphonics, and just try to
describe the "classical" sound. I think it would be best if clarinetists used
the dark to bright scale in the same way other musicians do, where "darker"
means a lower proportion of the higher overtones. It's not very exact
terminology, but I think people can communicate something useful with it.

Now, the other (different) thing people seem to mean by "dark" is hard to nail
down because we've all been communicating with words instead of by demonstrating
the sound itself. I suspect what a lot of people mean by "dark" is what I would
call "woody". I think it might have to do with having less of the even-numbered
harmonics, but that's a guess. All I'm sure of is that it's a completely
different concept from the first meaning of dark. This subject just cries out
for controlled listening experiments with both recorded examples of various
clarinet tones, and with synthetic clarinet-like tones that vary the proportions
of various harmonics, to identify how many different dimensions are needed to
describe what we hear. Or has that been done? Anybody know of any research in
this area?

--Doug
---------------------------
Doug Sears dsears@-----.org/~dsears

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