Klarinet Archive - Posting 000133.txt from 2008/01

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] voicing
Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:14:12 -0500

On 7 Jan, Margaret Thornhill <clarinetstudio@-----.com> wrote:

> The great challenge in all clarinet playing is the balance between unity
> and variety.
>
> Most of us would agree that "voicing", an element of variety, is essential
> to truly artistic playing.
>
> Among other things it is:
>
> 1. creating tonal "colors" to suit effects called for in the music
>
> 2. modifying tone to blend with another instrument in an ensemble
> (essential, for example,in a really good woodwind quintet)
>
> 3. modifying intonation or tone so that isolated individual notes don't
> stick out from the rest of your scale

Absolutely.

> Jonathan's description of his method of playing by voicing every note of
> the scale really reminds me more of the experience of playing historical
> clarinet where the tone, resistance and resonance of the individual notes
> is more colored than on the typical modern instrument. I personally find
> this a radical description when applied to modern playing
>
> "every note on the instrument requires slightly different oral cavity (i.e.
> tongue, throat and soft palette) shape."

What I'd say is that the period instrument requires a deal more practice to
get the voicings right, and the diaphragm actions right; but that quite a lot
does go on in modern playing too, that we don't really notice.

The voicings aren't outside our awareness in the strong sense that the action
of the diaphragm is outside our awareness, as I've been explaining in another
thread -- we can feel the flexions of our tongue muscles, after all, if we
pay attention to them -- but it is, or becomes outside our awareness in the
sense that our movements when driving, for example, are normally outside our
awareness.

I once made a post about quite how exquisitely, surprisingly ABLE our tongues
are:

http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2003/10/000046.txt

...and I rather suspect that they *need* to be that able in order to play the
clarinet well because our mouths are *too small*, in a sense; see the
'hippopotamus' post:

http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/1998/12/000764.txt

:-)

Sorry about the way the ascii picture shows up in the Archives....

Tony
--

_________ Tony Pay
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