Klarinet Archive - Posting 000154.txt from 2007/03
From: "Michael H. Graff" <mhgraff@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Bright and dark sounds
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:20:41 -0500
Karl,
Thanks for the comments. I did not mean to draw a precise parallel between
light and sound. I was responding to Dan's comments about the limitations
of language as applied to the description of tone quality. In the case of
light, saturation is used to provide added description to the quality of the
color of light. It seems to me that Dark and Bright (no matter how
unsatisfying) have been used to describe a similar, but rather complex
relationship. It is clearly oversimplified and of course not very useful
for providing verbal feedback for someone that does not share a common
perspective of tonal characteristics. Thus, most people to develop a
concept of tone aurally and then seek to create that sound on their
particular setup. I think it can be generally agreed that one's sound
concept has a significant impact on sound created somewhat independent of
equipment, i.e they figure out how to achieve their desired tone quality
through experimentation. However, some equipment can be more compatible
with what someone is trying to achieve and thus provides a simpler means to
achieve the desired end. Clearly, this is more of an issue for a young
person who has not developed a mature sound concept. However, Dan's
anecdote about the conductor who had an idea of what he was looking for but
did not have the language to communicate this to an experienced musician
illustrates that our language is incomplete in this area.
Mike Graff
-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Krelove [mailto:karlkrelove@-----.net]
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 7:39 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: RE: [kl] Bright and dark sounds
Mike,
One difficulty jumps out of the parallel you make to color. Most children
can identify colors visually very early. There is no way to know that
everyone sees the same thing when they see "blue," but whatever they see,
they see it consistently when light falls within a particular range of
wavelengths. The names for colors are words we _only_ use to identify color
- they don't compare light of a certain wavelength to a sound quality or a
tactile sensation. But when we try to use words like "dark" and "bright" to
describe musical tone, we aren't using an inherently sound-related
vocabulary. We're instead trying to compare sound to light and borrowing a
light-related name to describe something that has no visual component at
all. We know what a dark room is or a bright light shining in our eyes. What
we don't have is a consistent association between those visual qualities and
the sound qualities that we're trying to describe.
We do have a vocabulary for describing sound. It includes words like high
and low, which every music teacher knows is confused by children with two
others, soft and loud. The sound lexicon also includes names of instruments
(young children *can* learn to recognize a trumpet and differentiate it from
a clarinet or a violin or a rock scratching on glass), which describe basic
distributions of harmonic components in a musical tone. Some auditory names
describe relationships between pitches. We can learn what all of these names
mean fairly readily so long as they refer to specifically sonic qualities.
But getting people to agree on any table of equivalence between the visual
and the auditory, sound and light, seems always to lead to a dead end. Maybe
it's because we don't really all see the same thing when we look at a red
balloon. We agree on redness because the name doesn't refer to anything else
we'd have to also agree about. How many people would agree to call red a
"loud" color and, say yellow a soft one? Or call the combination of yellow
and red "discordant" or "dissonant" while describing the combination of
yellow and blue as "consonant?"
The funny thing is that so many musicians seem so intent on making such
associations between the sounds they want to describe and the visual effects
those sounds make them think of. I don't know very many visual artists well
enough to approached the subject with them directly, but I suspect even if I
did, they'd look at me and wonder what I'm talking about.
All of this makes me wonder whether it really is important that "someone
should take a shot at defining the particular characteristic that
constitutes this value of tone so we can all talk about this in the same
way."
Think of all the well-known clarinet players whose playing is either
self-described or described by others as characterized by a "dark" sound.
Consider the range of differences among the tones they produced. What is the
point of trying to argue that they're right or wrong by imposing an
equivalence that doesn't seem to exist in nature?
Karl
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael H. Graff [mailto:mhgraff@-----.net]
> Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 5:47 PM
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: RE: [kl] Bright and dark sounds
>
> The issue is that we have not developed a common language to define tonal
> characteristics.
>
<snip>
>
> it takes some agreement on terms and then learning what we mean by this,
> much in the same way we learn what red is and learn the range of saturated
> values of red, i.e. by experience and feedback from others.
>
> This is clearly difficult to do, but someone should take a shot at
> defining
> the particular characteristic that constitutes this value of tone so we
> can
> all talk about this in the same way.
>
> Mike Graff
>
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
