Klarinet Archive - Posting 000593.txt from 2005/03

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] that nice dark sound
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 22:52:29 -0500

Karl, once again you have the ability to make a complex problem
very clear with your penetrating analysis. I thank you for it.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Krelove [mailto:karlkrelove@-----.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 6:44 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: RE: [kl] that nice dark sound

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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