Klarinet Archive - Posting 000905.txt from 2000/05

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Tone -- a neurological approach
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 14:35:08 -0400

On Fri, 19 May 2000 11:04:59 -0700 (PDT), Bilwright@-----.net said:

> As a simple exercise, please:
>
> Suppose a person was playing with his/her 'normal' tone, and at a
> certain moment in the music this person wanted to 'darken' the tone for
> a few measures before returning to 'normal'. What would the person do
> in order to obtain this 'darker' moment?

...as in "sombrer le son subito" (Stravinsky 3 pieces)?

Here, I'd make the sound less 'bright'. What's 'bright'? Well,
energetic, clear, brilliant, outward. So less energetic, quieter, less
upper harmonics, perhaps less attack.

I've said here several times that the 'sound' that a good player makes
isn't in fact one sound, but many sounds, just as the sound of my voice
isn't just one sound, but many sounds. (I'm a 'good' speaker, as are we
all.) So many things can change to 'darken' a passage.

I haven't contributed to this debate partly because I think that to
characterise a sound *in itself* as bright or dark can be a misleading
thing to do. Because you can play 'brightly' with a sound that
naturally does 'dark' very easily, and vice versa.

This is because we are very sensitive to change or modulation, so a
modulation of one particular sound can begin to represent something
other than what it represents to us when we first encounter it.

The sound when we 'sombrer le son' in the Stravinsky might be anything
but 'sombre' if we came across it in the slow movement of the Mozart
concerto, after all.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE www.gmn.com/artists/welcome.asp
tel/fax 01865 553339

... I've got 256K of RAM, so why can't I run Windows 3.1?

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org