Klarinet Archive - Posting 000894.txt from 2000/05

From: "Paul Miller" <paulplaysclarinet@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Tone -- a neurological approach
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 13:40:24 -0400

Mark wrote --
> Huh? First you say there's a possibility of maximal confusion
("brightening" instead of "darkening" when trying a mouthpiece) and then say
there's minimal confusion. It can't be both ways. There needs to be some
commonality between the people involved to make any sense of the words.
Face-to-face it's still hard (because one or more of us must make the mental
switch from _our_ idea of darkness and brightness, whatever they mean, to
someone else's idea) , but as soon as there's any separation of the people
in time or space the words are laden with ambiguity.
_______________

I said minimal RISK. The mouthpiece example was tongue-in-cheek. The
dark-bright scale is different for everybody, but I'm saying that the risk
is minimal because 99% of musicians have similar ideals of what it is to
"darken" a tone. In almost every discussion there is room for
misunderstanding, why should our dark-bright discussion be absolutely
crystal clear? (How could it possibly be any clearer?) You say there needs
to be some commonality between people... um, in case no one noticed,
professional and amatuer musicians all over the world have been using these
words for a long time. My old high school band director who was almost 70
remembered his high school band director using those terms.

So, I'll just lay it right out.

One, musicians worldwide have been using dark and bright for years and years
to describe tone color with a high rate of success.
Two, it is impossible to set a standard of a dark tone, because you must
convince people that you're right before they will accept your definition.
Three, Bill and Mark's argument rests on the idea of risk. To pull the
support out, see point one -- the risk is minimal.

Come on -- give me a real reason that we shouldn't use "dark" or "bright" in
our conversations about tone. Is it because a small percentage of people
you talk to might have a different definition? Do you honestly believe that
a large portion of the musical population doesn't know what you mean when
you say "brighten your tone in this passage." Mark, you said, "I need
something more concrete, like 'listen to X in their recording of Y'." and
Bill said , "Unless, of course, they are all sheep who insist upon following
the crowd to a specific location on the scale in the misguided belief that
only a particular number on the scale is desireable." Mark, not to rip on
you, but you illustrate my point -- an absolute definition of dark or bright
would lead people to emulate as closely as possible what would be considered
"acceptable" recordings of dark or bright sounds.

At which point, innovation and artistry are lost. I cannot accept a
concrete definition of a dark sound because my concept of sound changes with
practice. I will not accept a concrete definition of dark sound because
that would mean that I have to conform and become, as Mark said, a sheep.

So I challenge you to give me a solid reason why we should not use "dark" or
"bright" (and not the risk thing again) and to come up with alternatives.

-- Paul

> Maybe I'm just dense.
>
> Mark Charette@-----.org
>
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