Klarinet Archive - Posting 000922.txt from 2000/05

From: fsheim@-----.com
Subj: Re: [kl] Tone -- online experiment
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 18:52:12 -0400

Why doesn't someone make a test CD with examples of "dark", "light",
"small", "fat" etc. tones so that we can hear them. Maybe Mr. Blumberg? I
remember Sidney Forest's tone being described as "small", but beautiful.
In my opinion , Mr. Balogh's tone (at the Belgium Clarinetfest) was "huge".

Fred (fsheim@-----.com)

At 05:03 PM 5/19/00 EDT, you wrote:
>Bill Wright wrote,
>> If 1 out of every 10 of us has (or is willing to obtain) a copy of a
>>specific recording -- say, Mozart or Brahms or Weber -- and rate this
>>recording for 'darkness' on a scale of 1-10, we would end up with 80
>>votes. This would approach a statistically significant sample. We
>>would not attempt to define 'dark', we would simply ask the question and
>>tally the answers.
>> Then, as the second part of this experiment, we would calculate the
>>median or average rating. We would ask, "If the previous recording's
>>darkness is <number>, then what rating would you assign to <another
>>widely available recording>?"
><snip>
>> Our purpose would be two-fold: (1) to obtain a rating _without_
>>providing a definition of darkness in advance; and then: (2) to obtain a
>>rating after each participant had been told that, for the purposes of
>>this experiment, a certain recording is in fact a "<number>".
>
>Interesting experiment! Count me in. Hope you can find enough people with
>access to the same recordings to make up a statistically significant sample.
>
>"Bright" and "dark" do mean something *to me*, and I'd like to be able to
use
>the words, if it turns out there's actually anything close to a consensus
>here. Suggestion: Limit the survey not only to specified performances of
>one work, but to brief, selected passages, so that you don't have Person A
>describing a particular performance as "dark" because the second movement
>made the biggest impression, while Person B describes the performance as
>"bright" because the third movement made the biggest impression.
>
>I also wonder if it would be useful to begin by asking participants to rate
>three recordings of the same work, rather than just one, so that we can
start
>out by comparing -- *this* one sounds "darker" than *that* one -- instead of
>trying to begin a graph with only one data point. For instance, a
>participant might cautiously rate the first recording as a 5, to leave some
>room on both sides, but then find out that this recording *belongs* at one
>extreme or the other.
>
>Good luck with this idea. Hope it's conclusive enough so we can stop
>bickering about these words.
>
>Lelia
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>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
>
>

---------------------------------------------------------------------
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