Klarinet Archive - Posting 000104.txt from 2007/03

From: Tim Roberts <timr@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] orchestral sounds
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:51:29 -0500

On Wed, 7 Mar 2007 10:11:15 -0500, "Jenny Connors"
<jenny@-----.com> wrote:
> 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.
>

Although it is colorful, the term "circle of sound" doesn't mean anything.

It is true that a note played on any instrument consists of many
different frequencies. If you play A440 (our long B) and look at the
note on an spectrum analyzer, which tells you the frequencies that are
present, there is a big spike at 440 Hz, but there is also a much
smaller spike at 880 Hz, a bigger one at 1320 Hz, a smaller one at 1760
Hz, and so on, including some surprisingly high frequencies, and with
non-exact multiples in the mix as well. It is this "mix" of frequency
multiples that gives each instrument its characteristic sound.

When a tone has a high proportion of those higher frequencies, it is
said to be "bright". So, one might infer that a tone without those
higher frequencies is "dark". The problem is that those terms cannot be
quantified. Is "bright" a bad thing in a clarinet tone? Why? How
"bright" is too bright? How "dark" is too dark? What units do we use?
And, perhaps most important, what can I do to adjust my own tone in a
specific direction along that bright/dark scale? These questions cannot
be answered in an objective way, and that makes it very difficult to
talk about them.

--
Tim Roberts, timr@-----.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

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