Klarinet Archive - Posting 000979.txt from 2000/05

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Definition on the line
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 17:43:36 -0400

On Sun, 21 May 2000 13:23:48 -0700 (PDT), Bilwright@-----.net said:

> My definition is: 'Dark' vs. 'bright' is (1) the perception that a
> tone has either less or more energy and (2) the perception that a tone
> comes at you either from a source that is larger than a pinpoint and
> therefore surrounds or enfolds you, or it comes at you from a pinpoint
> source and pierces you.

Bill, your (1) and (2) are beginning steps in a way of communicating --
the metaphorical -- that musicians use all the time.

A conductor might say, "Play the end of that phrase....like a mouse
going down a hole!" And if he or she has chosen well, everyone will
smile, recognising that the essence of one possible mousy way of playing
the phrase has been perfectly captured in words.

But we don't then go on to say, well, we must now DEFINE 'mousiness'.
There's lots to being mousy. Anyway, to say it's mousy is just one of
many ways of pointing to a musical quality. And musical qualities exist
in their own world.

Again, I think that your idea of the point source and the diffuse source
is another very powerful musical idea, even one that *might* go with the
bright/dark bipolar opposition rather well. Dusk may be diffuse, light
may be penetrating. And making these things go well with each other in
performance is what musicianship -- coherent musicianship -- is all
about.

But we don't want to squash these ideas into definitions of the words
bright and dark. Because surely you can get sounds that are bright and
diffuse, too. Think of the shimmer of brushed cymbals.

I don't think the discussion about these two words is important,
actually. I think that any difficulty it may have caused arose simply
because 'dark' and 'bright' have been associated on occasion with
'desirable' and 'undesirable' -- mainly foolishly and unthinkingly, by
not very musical people, because of reasons to do with modulation that I
went into before. I'm not talking about on this list, by the way.

Surely 'bright and 'dark' for UNCHANGED sounds just means relatively
more energetic and less energetic upper harmonics -- I suspect most
people would agree with that. If someone says that that's subjective
too, we can point out that we're in the same boat with 'loud' and
'soft'. And we know what *they* mean, don't we?

It's only when we talk about 'someone's sound' -- ie the sound of
their *playing* -- as 'bright' and 'dark' that the problems arise. So
we may say that CHANGE -- that is, modulation and combination and
sequencing of sounds of both kinds -- may result in higher order
structures with associations that are more complicated, and more
context-dependent.

By the way, mice like the dark, don't they?-)

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

... REALITY.SYS Corrupted: Re-boot Universe (Y/N/Q)

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