Klarinet Archive - Posting 000592.txt from 2005/03

From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] that nice dark sound
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 21:47:11 -0500

Maybe here is where the problem has been all along. Why, in general, does
anyone *need* to describe sound character? **Most** of the time in actual
practice, either one is selling something and making a sales point of its
ability to produce a "dark" sound, or a student is trying to learn to
produce a "dark" sound because others consider a "dark" sound prerequisite
to becoming a great clarinet player. So most of the time you see *those*
terms (bright, dark, rich, pure, etc...) it's either in an ad (XYZ
Mouthpieces produce a darker, richer tone) or in a question ("What can I do
to make my tone darker?") In such cases the words are useless and, to the
extent they actually induce someone to spend a significant amount of money
or equally significant but unsuccessful amounts of time and effort, they can
even cause harm.

If a conductor asks me to "darken" the tone of a solo, or the violins to
brighten their sound in a particular passage, we have an idea of what he
means and, if what we do in response doesn't turn out to match what he had
in mind, he stops and says so (if he's competent enough to care). Then he
may try another word or a longer explanation. In this sense, the instruction
isn't much more of a problem than asking players to shorten staccato notes
or to play a passage more this-way or less that-way. The "descriptors used
by composers, conductors, performers in actual playing" are not, after all,
like the legal vocabulary in a bridge auction, where the only words
permitted are the numbers 1-7, the four suit names, no trump, pass, double
and redouble. Conductors and players often go beyond louder, softer, longer,
shorter, smoother, faster, slower, etc... to describe what needs to be done
in rehearsal and when meanings aren't clear the only real cost, other than
an ultimately muddled performance, is time lost in clarifying and
re-wording.

We would probably all be better off if manufacturers stopped using those
descriptors (but they can't, of course, because there'd be little else
meaningful to say in print), because *as they are used in ads*, most of the
words we're talking about genuinely have no meaning - everything anyone
makes is "dark" and supremely "responsive." And students and inexperienced
players would be better off if they stopped asking how to make their sounds
"darker" and started wondering more about how to control their sounds to be
more "appropriate" to musical context.

Thanks, Dan. I don't think I ever thought of this debate in those terms
before.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: dnleeson [mailto:dnleeson@-----.net]
>
> Bottom line is that the descriptors used by composers,
> conductors, performers in actual playing appear to me to be a
> different phenomenon than the descriptors needed to clarify sound
> character, and many things in performance can be measured (and
> often are).
>
> Dan Leeson
> dnleeson@-----.net
>

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