Klarinet Archive - Posting 000607.txt from 1999/05
From: James Pyne <jpyne@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Tone
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 08:44:50 -0400
Tone / Doug Sears
Doug,
I am very much in accord with your assessment of the problems that
musicians deal with in trying to talk about attributes of tone quality. We
have done a good deal of work on timbre here at OSU. This has involved the
writing of sound visualization programs (PC based) for use in timbre
research and relates to many of the important factors that you identify,
such as the need for a timbre vocabulary.
Also, I will separately post an excerpt from documentation I prepared for
collaborative colleagues (software engineers and others who were not
trained musicians) a couple of years ago. It outlines part of what my
research initiatives have been involved with.
As to "dark": I think that the term "dark" has become very much over used
and perhaps pedagogically overemphasized. Possibly this has been in
reaction to the shrillness of tone that can so easily be produced,
especially in the upper registers, on the clarinet. It is unfortunate that
the labels "shrill" and "bright" have been invested with similar meaning
and are indeed often used interchangeably. My experience as both
clarinetist and acoustician points to the fact that, in order to create an
effective instrumental "voice", abundant resonance (a kind of positive
brightness) should be present. If resonance is sacrificed for "darkness",
uncommunicative dullness can result. "Shrillness" and this positive
"brightness" (life, core, ring, etc.) are not at all the same thing, though
both involve the production of higher order harmonics. For example, when a
singer cannot control loud tones and "screams" we have a rough equivalent
of "forced shrillness" often encountered in loud upper-register clarinet
tones. The spectral attributes that relate to this objectionable quality
can be identified in computer visualizations. And these are in fact similar
for both voice and clarinet.
Clarinetists, in order to avoid shrillness, sometimes err on the side of
producing a dull quality. Whether that would be preferable to shrillness is
a matter of taste. But certainly we are not easily moved by a singer with a
dull, lifeless voice. So, if the singer (or clarinetist) is to communicate
most effectively, uncontrolled brightness should not be removed but
+transformed+ into controlled brightness (resonance). Mr. Moennig's work
(he prepared my clarinets in the late 50's if memory serves) allowed this
"warm" resonance to be more attainable. I believe that beauty of tone can
come in many different shades, as with the variety in great singers. But at
the center of excellence for clarinet tone there must be, as with the human
voice, a fascinating resonance. This is the essence of "bel canto" and very
difficult to achieve in both singing and clarinet tone-production.
---Jim Pyne
> 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
>
>
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
James Pyne, professor
Clarinet Studio/Research Group
School of Music
The Ohio State University
1866 College Road
Columbus, Ohio 43210
pyne.1@-----.edu
Tel: 614 292 8969
Fax: 614 292 1102
http://www.arts.ohio-state.edu/Music/Clarfest
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