Klarinet Archive - Posting 000826.txt from 2000/05

From: Roger Shilcock <roger.shilcock@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: [kl] Tone -- a neurological approach
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 03:49:01 -0400

2 quick points:
1) What's to stop the student asking the teacher what he/she means by a
"dark sound"? It may actually be demonstrable;
2) It's quite difficult to remember the various qualities of a number of
essentially similar sonic episodes in succession. It's hardly suprising
that the audiences proved to be suggestible when asked to compare them.
Roger S.

On Wed, 17 May 2000, Daniel Leeson wrote:

> Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 09:38:31 -0700
> From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
> Reply-To: klarinet@-----.org
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: Re: [kl] Tone -- a neurological approach
>
> 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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