Klarinet Archive - Posting 000575.txt from 2005/03

From: ormo2ndtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: RE: [kl] that nice dark sound
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 23:19:48 -0500

Thank you, Dave, for the thorough and understandable explanation! It
answers (for me, at least) a number of questions about the potential for
'brightness' or 'darkness' to be influenced by the recording technique
and equipment.

I've wondered (and probably there's no practical answer to this
question) whether the perception of 'darkness' and 'brightness' can be a
combination of multiple factors --- such that two people can arrive at
different conclusions because one of them hears 'factor-A' more
intensely than the other person does, and vice versa for the 'factor-B'.

For example --- this is for the sake of illustration, this is not a
hypothesis! --- one factor could be the ratio of low partials, and
another factor could be the smoothness (or slope) of each partial's
ascent toward its peak. Thus one person might equate smooth curves on
a graph with 'dark' while another person might equate preponderance of
low partials with 'dark', and the two of them might never agree on a
tone's description if it both was smooth and emphasized high partials.

This is much the same reason that I chose "love" for my analogy, since
the emotion of "love" (and hence its definition) is clearly driven by
many different factors, some of which are contradictory and many of
which have different effects on different people.

Thanks again for explaining the electronic part, Dave.

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