Klarinet Archive - Posting 000099.txt from 2007/03

From: "Jenny Connors" <jenny@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] orchestral sounds
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2007 10:11:15 -0500


Hi, I'm new to the list, and have been following this thread with great
interest.

I'm going to comment on the original question, which was whether one can
determine the gender of a musician by listening only (and NOT by recognizing
the person by style, because that would obviously give away the gender).
I'm going to say, no, one cannot determine the gender of a musician just by
hearing them play. At least, I can't. I've been pleasantly surprised over
the years to discover Irish fiddlers, rock drummers or guitarists, and
professional clarinetists that were women when I assumed they were men (and
not because I have any prejudice, it's only because in most cases, they ARE
men). The only field were I have never been surprised is jazz, because I
have yet to hear a great player that turns out to be a female (but then
again, I don't listen to too much jazz).

>> Why can't there be science that describes why and what set of
circumstances make
>> "bright" or "dark" sound for both players and listeners?....identified
through (quantitative)
>> analysis? Do you think there might be a scientific model developed
(perhaps already is in
>> the world of auditory science...I just don't know) to describe what so
many players and
>> listeners perceive as "dark" or "bright"?

I assumed that something like this did exist, because my teacher explained
to me that a darker sound used the lower portions of the "circle of sound".
I thought, and maybe erroneously, that he was referring to a sound wave.

Jenny
(amateur) woodwind doubler

-----Original Message-----
From: Forest Aten [mailto:forestaten@-----.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 9:50 AM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: RE: [kl] orchestral sounds

> This does not mean that the person expressing that idea is conning us.
> On the contrary, he or she hears a difference.
> There is nothing wrong with that. It is when that opinion is elevated
> to the level of a physical principle, that I get all woozy.
>
> Dan Leeson
> DNLeeson@-----.net
>
>
>
>

Dan,

Say you do a careful scientific analysis....of....say 40 player's
sound/tone. You then have the same players listen to these forty sounds and
make an evaluation with regard to darkness or brightness of these sounds.

Do you believe that you could go back to your scientific data and find
corollaries that might pin the tail on the donkey?

Do you think if you added more player's sounds that you might eventually
determine a "break point" (with maybe a gray area between) where
players/listeners determine recipes for sound that might work like this:
sounds with criteria from A to L = "dark" and sounds with criteria from N to
Z = "bright"? Do you think in an even more complex study, that you break
this down into Nationalistic groups and see if the "break points" that you
might find, fall at different places in the scientific data sets per these
unique groups of players? Etc.

Why can't there be science that describes why and what set of circumstances
make "bright" or "dark" sound for both players and listeners?....identified
through (quantitative) analysis?

Do you think there might be a scientific model developed (perhaps already is
in the world of auditory science...I just don't know) to describe what so
many players and listeners perceive as "dark" or "bright"?

Just a thought.

Forest

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