Klarinet Archive - Posting 000599.txt from 1999/05

From: Rachael <davidor@-----.il>
Subj: Re: [kl] Tone
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 03:52:04 -0400

It seems to me that Fanie DeVillers did some research on clarinet
acoutics, and
control parameters. His research was reported in the Clarinet Magazine
a few issues
back.

Rachael Orbach
davidor@-----.il
Jerusalem, Israel

Doug Sears wrote:

> >>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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