 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: kenabbott
Date: 2003-02-12 13:10
Synonymous Botch had a great idea. We should have a live event where a panel of listers sit separated from someone who plays Buffet, Selmer, Yamaha, and Rossi clarinets to see if anyonbe can identify the horns. Alternatively, someone could record a bunch of .wav files, post them here and see who can geuss (admittedly, this is subject to some recording noise).
Mark - can we do this?
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Author: bob gardner
Date: 2003-02-12 14:25
it not the horn it the player. the horn is only one part of it. it would be like putting on differant reeds and then a group tried to tell which one is being played. best of luck.
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Author: Ken
Date: 2003-02-12 15:57
Impractical. The exact "same player" on the exact same "set-up" (using stock barrel) in the exact same "accoustical" environment and/or "recording equipment" would have to conduct the experiment to be even remotely measurable.
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Author: David Spiegelthal
Date: 2003-02-12 18:35
Besides, if the results came out against them, the Buffet Mafia would break all of your reeds......
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Author: nzdonald
Date: 2003-02-13 04:23
ok
get 5 players who contribute to sneezy to play the opening solo from the Shepherd onthe Rock on Buffet, Yamaha, Selmer and Leblanc.
put it on the net, and people can listen and try to work out which instruments are which and post their answers....
then after a week or so, the correct answers can be published. The big problem would be getting access to the intstruments, maybe it's an idea that could be put off until Clarinetfest and then the players could all be in the same acoustic (and play the same 4 clarinets?)
donal
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Author: Ken
Date: 2003-02-13 04:49
ALL conditions must be identical down to the reed and room temperture to arrive at an accurate consensus. And even then, the individual's "natural tone", who and what they are blowing into the horn and inherent tendencies skew the results; it's a waste of time. Each instrument is as unique as the artist who brings it to life.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2003-02-13 12:01
Actually, if there is a "tendency" for each instrument to sound as part of a distinct family (or brand), statistics will show that after some number of playings and listenings, even if (especially if) random setups (mouthpieces, barrels, and players) are used.
How many playings, how many listeners, and how to "score" the instruments to see if there are brand differences I leave up to the statistics majors out there ... (that's the hard part ;^)
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Author: Rick
Date: 2003-02-13 14:41
I'm not a stat major, but I had a couple of graduate level stat courses and Mark's point is right on. In fact reading the postings that state that everything has to be identical would imply that there is no accustical differences between brands. Further if the arguement that it is the player that makes the instrument, then you achieve the same result, the brand is irrelevant.
In essence, a person cannot claim a difference based on a brand, then state that the differences are due to factors other than the brand. From a statistical stand point, the technique of taking 1 player using their own mouthpiece and reed and lig. on five different instruments adjusted by the same player to what they feel is an acceptable tone and then using a blind panel, would be a valid methodology, what wouldn't be acceptable is only doing it once with one player. Do it 10 times with 10 different players, using the same technique, you might be getting somewhere because based on 5 different instruments, you have something like 50 samples to work with.
Now, if you really want to serious, here is how you could do it. Take a player, same MP, lig, reed etc. and five instruments. Make five good recordings of the same music, each on different instruments. Then run those samples through a back propogation neuro network and train the software to distinguish the differences, if it can. If there are differences, no matter how subtle, the BPN should find it. Sonically, this is a proven technique, since it is how submarine sonar systems work to identify specific ships and to differentiate between targets.
I use neuro-net software quite a bit and it shouldn't be all that hard to do. It just takes a while to crunch the data.
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Author: nzdonald
Date: 2003-02-15 10:31
(if anyone will still read this)
the thing is- there are differences in the instruments.... but in the end you'll end up sounding more or less the same after you have got used to an instrument and adjusted your playing etc. This "in the end you'll sound the same" logic is widely applied in a way that suggests that therefore it doesn't matter which instrument you play (or, by taking this argument to it's illogical extreeme, how good the instrument is)
sooooooooo
- i would agree with KEN, IF the players were to to be given time to adjust to the instrument (then differences would be hard to detect)
- i think that it's likely that an experienced listener COULD detect differences between SOME brands immediately upon changing over.
in a sense this would be a waste of time, i agree. in fact, i could't be bothered doing it. BUT i actually believe that if the experiment was done, some brand differences could be audibly detected. For instance- i think that the difference between the Opus and R13 clarinets is enough to be detected, but it could be pretty much "hit and miss" trying to single out, say, Yamaha from R13 (very different clarinets, and with different tonal characteristics, but not different enough to be instantly obvious).
overall, there are too many variables etc (different model Yamahas, how would you chose which instrument would be the representative etc)
BUT
there are so many problems with the "we'd all sound the same" logic..... if it were as true as that then we'd all be using old instruments from Taiwan and sounding like Larry Combs (if we practised enough that is).
it's late, i need to sleep
donal
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Author: Ken
Date: 2003-02-15 16:34
Well thought out analysis Don, when it comes down to it we're splitting atoms; there's almost a countless number of shades to a clarinet tone ... simply undecipherable or adequately compare. As a point of interest, I once played in a 9-clarinet section, (all pros; 7 played Buffets (RC Prestiges, Greenline R-13s/Festivals, R-13s) and 2 on regular Opus' (me on 3rd and the principal). After all playing over a year together and getting super tight, I one day started to detect (or thought I did) a tonal disparity between the Opus' and Buffets. I was intrigued, and for 2 weeks listened intently singling-out the Opus'. Ultimately, I gave up not being able to put my finger on it and attributed to multiple environments.
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Author: PJ
Date: 2003-02-16 02:43
While back in school some years ago, the head of the clarinet studio made it their sole purpose to have the entire clarinet section of the wind ensemble to play on the exact same set-up to achieve this uniform sound. After about a year, we all played on R-13s with the same mouthpiece, barrel, reed and ligature combo. After we all played together and had adjusted to the new equipment, none of us sounded identical. The lesson to learn there was that no matter the effort, no one will sound exactly the same due to the fact that mouthpiece deviations, slight bore differences, oral cavities, dental structures, size and placement of the tongues, the amount of mouthpiece taken in, angles of the horns, etc., were all different. Thus, equipment really had no bearing on the achievment of the same sound. It all came down to a discrimnating ear and only one example of how we should have sounded. We did, however, play very well together having worked so hard to sound the same. I suppose that we had learned each others tendencies and what not causing us to be more aware of our section mates as well as ourselves. Great concert season that year, though!
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