Klarinet Archive - Posting 000797.txt from 2000/05

From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Tone -- a neurological approach
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 12:38:31 -0400

Bill, your note on "Tone - a neurological approach" was a most helpful
and lucid description of the issue as you see it, and as you were
influenced by the book you referenced.

>>From my perspective, I see some avenues of compromise based upon that
analysis, but on one issue I see no way to bridge the gap between us.
Let me begin (and end very quickly so that I don't repeat myself
endlessly) by saying that part of the problem is caused by
miscommunication on the nature of the issue. I speak only for myself
here.

Nowhere have I said that "dark" or "bright" are useless words. What I
did say is that the words have no generally understood meaning that can
be concretized and measured. Thus, to tell a student that his sound is
not dark enough is to tell him your own personal prejudices about what
you think of his sound, and you have not transmitted any useful
information that would enable him to correct what you see as a problem.
(And I am even willing to agree that some problem does exist.) Nor is
there anywhere in the literature, an objective way for that student to
do anything that would allow him to correct the problem to the point
where you would say "Your sound is now dark enough."

If I were to say to you that your sound is insufficiently gnurfled, the
first question you would ask is "What are the standards for a properly
gnurfled sound?" So why is dark different?

I repeat a story I have told umpteen times about this problem. In
involves a test done using an audience of musical people and two
different groups of clarinet players, none of whom knew what was going
on. Only the tester knew the nature of what was really being studied.

The players were privately told that the audience expected them to play
with very dark sounds. They should adjust their reeds and select
mouthpieces that would give them the darkest possible sound. A lot of
equipment including instruments, mouthpieces, reeds, ligatures, etc.
were made available for the test and the players could choose whichever
combination gave them the darkest sound. The winner of the contest was
the one with the darkest sound and a prize would be awarded to that
person.

The audience was told that the players were directed to play with the
brightest possible sound; that is, all the impedimenta of clarinet
playing was selected to achieve that end: the reeds, the mouthpieces,
the instruments, even the music that was to be played was the kind of
music that sound best with a bright sound.

The audience was then asked to select the player with the brightest
sound (and who would receive a prize) but the should not consult with
each other in their determination of sound brightness.

In a second and later phase of the experiment, exactly the opposite was
requested of both the players (all different) and a new audience.

The end result was that the audience classified players who thought that
they were playing with death-defying dark sounds into all sorts of
bright sound classifications (on the first experiment) and vice versa
(on the second experiment).

The moral here is that the inability for anyone to communicate on
anything related to sound character was caused by the absence of any
universal standard of sound character when measure by words such as dark
and bright (or how to achieve these uncertain ends).

***************************
** Dan Leeson **
** leeson0@-----.net **
***************************

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