Klarinet Archive - Posting 000577.txt from 2005/03

From: "Keith" <100012.1302@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] RE: klarinet Digest 23 Mar 2005 09:15:00 -0000 Issue 5895
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 05:47:51 -0500

You have it! I think this is the key. The perception of higher frequencies
diminishes severely with age. At my advanced age I will hear mostly dark
tones. But to my friend Dan, who is as old as Methuselah and probably taught
him how to cook pizza, ALL clarinet sounds are dark, lugubrious, treacly,
chocolate-fudgy, crude-oily, tarry and asphalty. He couldn't perceive a
bright, edgy, rapier, cutting-and-thrusty sound if you played it into his
ear in a bathroom. On an eefer. No wonder he denies the meaning of such
terms! As well ask a blind man to distinguish between red and blue!

As a scientist, and even a metrologist, I deny that I understand anything
that I cannot measure, and I will keep trying to measure things not measured
before. But as a teacher and a student, I am aware of the power of imprecise
analogy and metaphor to reach into minds and set them on a new path.

For example, I know very well the scientific use of the word "focus". In
these terms, the phrase a "focused tone" means little or nothing. But as a
metaphor it is valuable to me in tone production, in a way that "spin the
air", and other metaphors, are not. That's just personal and others will
find the opposite. Finding the right metaphor to reach the individual is a
powerful part of teaching.

So it does not matter a stale pepperoni whether a committee of fifty
clarinettists agree on the usage of bright and dark. If it improves the
sound of an individual in a certain piece of music it can be useful. A
teacher might say "for this piece, you need a brighter, more edgy sound",
and, as Tony suggests, the student would experiment with embouchure, reed
and oral cavities so as to emphasize higher partials.

Of course, s/he could also say "I want you to produce more higher partials
in this piece". To which the response might be a certain lack of focus ....

Keith Bowen

> Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 20:18:43 -0800
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> From: ormo2ndtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
> Subject: RE: [kl] that nice dark sound
> Message-ID: <26744-4240EE23-5861@-----.net>
>
> 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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