Klarinet Archive - Posting 000600.txt from 2005/03

From: "Vann Joe Turner" <medpen@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Thanks Karl and Patricia (was, that nice dark sound)
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 15:41:48 -0500

Karl,
Thanks for your post. I found it both insightful in how marketing uses the
term dark, and an acknowledgement that it does refer to something that we
can hear and produce, just can't talk about very much.
Quote 1: "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 ty 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."
Quote 2: "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)."

Patricia,
Thanks for the reminder that "dark" is just one color which mastery of the
horn requires:
"I do think that, by limiting ourselves to thinking in terms of one sort of
sound or another as being more or less desirable, we lose sight of the
myriad possibilities the clarinet is capable of producing....There are many
many possibilities, not just one or two, and in view of thinking of the
types of sounds the instrument is capable of producing, it really seems to
me that, sometimes, these endless discussions of exactly what defines "a
nice dark sound" is, well, irrelevant."

I've learned from both of you. Thanks.

Vann Joe Turner

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