 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: clarchick
Date: 2011-09-19 01:43
Ok, my teacher was trying to show me the difference between a "dark" sound and a "bright" sound, because I asked due to my director going crazy over this. Honestly, I still don't get it. Please, if anyone has audio examples of each, please share! Thanks,
Post Edited (2011-09-19 01:44)
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2011-09-19 01:57
"Bright" has a prevalence of higher overtones, "dark" has the higher overtones somewhat suppressed (damped). Anthony Gigliotti vs. Karl Leister, perhaps. Just my interpretation.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2011-09-19 02:07
And yet, Gigliotti always described his tone as dark. "Bright" may well have some vague meaning to many people, especially outside the realm of "classical" music. "Dark" covers so many different sound qualities, it may as well be taken to mean simply "the way I sound."
Karl
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Author: Barry Vincent
Date: 2011-09-19 03:53
I approach this concept with the general concensus that plastic clarinets are bright in tonal quality and the fun is to try and remove this 'brightness' (some would say 'thinness ' ) by experimenting with various mouthpieces/ reeds & barrels. Up to a certain point I have been successful trying to do this but there are limits. The aim is to try and get a more 'full bodied ' (dark ) tonal quality out of a plastic clarinet. David's viewpoint is another way of looking at it .
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2011-09-19 04:39
I don't have audio samples but you can try to find recordings of British clarinetists like Gervaise de Peyer and Jack Brymer for a "brighter" sound and recordings of German clarinetists like Karl Leister or Sabine Meyer for a "darker" sound.
In the end it's one way of describing timbre which is, IMO, heard by each human subjectively. For example, we don't actually know that "red" looks the same to you as it does to me. There are spectral analyses of the colors of the rainbow which can be measured but ultimately we've agreed to call shades which are at those frequencies (?) "red" or "blue" as a society. As a kid we get told what "red" is so we learn from our experiences that way.
Listening to the above players will start to give you a range of what "bright" and "dark" mean as far as clarinet tone goes.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2011-09-19 06:40
if that helps - think of a "presence of overtones" gauge, and then we'd have
pure sine wave <-- dull -- dark -- neutral -- bright -- shrill --> sawtooth wave
--
Ben
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2011-09-19 07:07
What is bright/dark to one person isn't necessarily the same for others- eg. to me Jack Brymer has a dark sound!
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2011-09-19 09:34
My thoughts exactly Liquorice. I don't think I've ever heard Brymer and De Peyer play bright.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2011-09-19 11:07
Just as an example of how differently people hear, I was listening to a recording of the Munich Philharmonic and I turned up what turned out to be (for me) a thin sounding example of a clarinet solo. A saxophone playing colleague of mine said, "That's a really dark clarinet sound."
You get the picture.
My thought about this is that we bandy these terms around when speaking of sounds that lack substance vs. those that have a full sound. My recommendation if yours falls in the former category is to use MORE AIR. You do this by using a full tank (as it were) and pressing with your abdominal muscles to ensure a steady stream of air. On top of this it helps to focus up at the top (in your mouth) by thinking the sound "EEEEE." One way to think of 'focusing' is the difference between the way you'd blow on your hands coming in out of the cold to warm them up (warm, unfocused air) vs. how you'd blow on a hot cup of coffee to cool it down (fast, focused air).
..............Paul Aviles
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2011-09-19 11:20
Paul, maybe your saxy friend was closing their eyes while you were staring at the sun...
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Author: srattle
Date: 2011-09-19 12:36
It's very interesting.
Often, when evaluating my own playing, I think in these terms, but actually when I hear other players, bright and dark doesn't really come into pay much, except for extreme situations.
In all these clips, there are things that I could imagine calling bright and dark about each player. More important though (I think) is the amount of focus each player has in their sound. And even more important to that, I notice MUCH more than sound, is the level of intonation, which sadly no amount of darkness or brightness can fix
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2011-09-19 12:38
Gigliotti's earlier recordings were extremely bright to me. As he got a better grip on his equipment, the tone darkened in his later years.
Ricardo's tone is dark
The tone on my Gigliotti Mouthpiece (though somewhat dark) is not nearly as dark as when I play my Backun (which I prefer, and it blends with Ricardo much better when playing duets).
Both are really well in tune.
Sometimes though the microphone can bring out more upper harmonics in a recording than others. Even the position in the hall can somewhat do that.
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
Post Edited (2011-09-19 12:47)
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Author: chris moffatt
Date: 2011-09-19 13:38
If you can alter the "brightness" of a plastic clarinet by altering mouthpiece, reed & ligature combinations, maybe it ain't (just) the plastic. just sayin'
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2011-09-19 14:20
So by now, clarchick, you should be starting to get a hint that "brightness" and "darkness" are in the ear of the beholder. And differences of opinion on what is "bright" and what is "dark" may be as much due to personal definitions of the two terms as how people hear. So, when your band director "goes crazy" over your (section's?) sound, s/he's not really being helpful. And, as it turns out, asking for our advice on the matter isn't helpful either because the only one whose concept counts in this case is the band director and none of us has any idea what that person's personal concept is. So, what I think you need to do is find a tactful way to explain to the band director that you don't know what s/he means by the terms. (And you can support your position by telling him/her that you asked this bulletin board and your private teacher for advice and we couldn't help you because we don't really know either.) At the end of the day, the band director needs to be able to give you specific instruction on what you need to change about your playing and how you need to change it to achieve his/her desired sound. And it may take sitting down with you and/or other members of your section and having you try playing in different ways to find what s/he wants. Trying to verbalize what that desired sound is using hazily defined terms is doomed to failure. MOO.
Best regards,
jnk
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Author: TianL
Date: 2011-09-19 16:55
take a reed that's 1/2 more than the strength you used to play. play it, and then thin both side of the reed by a lot and play it again. The latter will give you a brighter sound.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2011-09-19 17:52
TianL wrote:
> take a reed that's 1/2 more than the strength you used to play.
> play it, and then thin both side of the reed by a lot and play
> it again. The latter will give you a brighter sound.
Except that most players who play very heavy reeds say it's because the sound is darker. And that players who use very light reeds get a brighter sound.
The bottom line is that, except within a very small circle of colleagues or musical acquaintances who have all through repeated shared listening experiences come to an agreement among themselves about what "bright" and "dark" mean, the terms aren't useful in any practical sense. A conductor who wants to get a meaningful result from his/her directions needs to be able to verbalize the desired change more clearly or he/she simply causes a lot of blind experimenting until people stumble on what he/she wants by accident.
By the way, there's a third descriptor, "dull," that Gigliotti always suggested people confused with "dark." And for him, many of the world's best known "dark" clarinet tones would have qualified rather as "dull." It's not so much what we as individuals hear, it's how we define the terms to begin with. Most "classical" players wouldn't ever admit to sounding deliberately and consistently "bright," (certainly none I've ever met) though they might "brighten" their sound for a specific passage.
As has already been pointed out, this discussion (and you can find others in the archives both here and on the Klarinet listserve) ultimately shows only how diverse people's personal definitions are.
Karl
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Author: Iceland clarinet
Date: 2011-09-19 18:12
Well it's more easier I found for myself to get a "dark"(I really prefer other words to describe the clarinet tone) sound with a closed mouthpiece rather than open one but it also depends a lot on the design too. But what I find with Gigliotti and some other players is that when you play on such closed mouthpiece with long lay it gets to the point that it isn't getting any "darker" and the flexibility is out of the window.
You just have to listen to Gigliotti and immediately you can hear that he is using very closed mouthpiece with long lay and stiff reeds.
That being said I've both heard players using V-12's #4 and 4.5 reeds and closed mouthpiece (1.10 mm or closer) sound more "bright" than player using open mouthpiece(over 1.20mm opening) and V-12's#3
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Author: kdk
Date: 2011-09-19 18:36
But he said go to a heavier reed to start with, then thin the rails to make it vibrate more easily. That's not the same as a lighter reed (#4-1/2 no matter how much you thin the rails won't ever really feel like a #3-1/2 out of the box). As a matter of fact, I can't really know what Tian means by "brighter," as this whole thread has shown, but I think his "brighter" could be exactly what Gigliotti meant by "darker" - more core, more life, more "ring." But those words are also vague, though I think less so than "dark" and "bright," and may not be at all what Tian is talking about.
Karl
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Author: John Peacock
Date: 2011-09-19 20:56
It's a pity no-one has taken up Fishamble's audio examples, since this is the only way of making the debate concrete. The sound is probably influenced by different acoustics, but that doesn't matter: we can still say what we prefer to hear, and why.
Rather than trying to be exhaustive, let's concentrate on nos 3 & 4: Frost and Bliss. I'd say that Frost is obviously nicer than Bliss on this evidence (doubtless someone will disagree). Why? Frost's tone is smoother, more balanced in high and low harmonics, whereas Bliss has a cutting edge to the tone, with too many high harmonics and a lack of body. If I had to pick shorthand terms, I would describe Frost as "warm" and Bliss as "thin". I think this isn't such a hard distinction to make consistently: Brymer is warm, Stolzmann is thin, for example. Sabine Meyer is warmer than most German players. etc.
Does warm/thin map onto dark/bright? Don't know. I discussed explicit examples, and without this calibration the words are meaningless. It may be that some people mean to imply a more subtle distinction within players who are (say) all warm. Certainly, I would generally describe the best Viennese playing (e.g. Boskovsky) as a warm sound, but it's very different to Brymer. How would you describe it? Dense vs ringing? That might be dark vs bright, in which case Brymer is bright. But I'm sure some people use "bright" to mean "not warm", in which case he's definitely not bright.
This suggests that at least two distinct qualities are needed to describe what we do, or do not, like about clarinet sounds, possibly referring to high and mid-range harmonics. Maybe plot players on a square of warm/thin vs dark/bright? I know that makes the problem worse, and I repeat my earlier plea: refer to explicit clips, saying which you prefer and why.
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2011-09-19 21:14
Really, timbre is, for professional orchestra players, whatever the music director wants (and gets).
richard smith
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Author: TianL
Date: 2011-09-19 22:12
Karl,
yes that's my point. To me, if you thin the rails of the reed, that makes the tone brighter and more brilliant (I would never be able to understand how someone could call that darker). Also, I said to start with a heavier reed just because if you start with a lighter reed and then thin it, it won't make a difference that's as obvious (since both reeds are too light to the player).
and, i would like to emphasize that it's a lot easier to define bright/dark on a relative basis. This way, everything else stays the same. Otherwise, if the two players have two distinct tones, then besides bright/dark, they also have other parts to their sounds that contribute to the difference. In that case, it's much harder to say which one's got brighter/darker sound.
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Author: clarchick
Date: 2011-09-19 22:22
Wow, I really started a thread here, haha! Thank you for all of your ideas. I think it will take time for me to figure this out. The director keeps yelling at us to be "dark, get darker!". To me, what he wants is dull! We are so confused....teacher wants one thing and director another. What do we do? We get graded on this!
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2011-09-19 22:35
"And yet, Gigliotti always described his tone as dark." Russianoff used to say to me when we discussed my tone. just don't sound like an Oboe lit.ke the guy in Philly.
As far as I'm concerned Gigliotti got about the brightest sound I ever heard at that time.
My take is this. A low instrument like a bass clarinet or tuba sounds darker than a high instrument like a piccolo. The top notes on a piano sound bright, the lower notes sound dark. Dark is more mellow, bright can sound like scraping your finger nails on a black board. That's an extreme but it gives you an idea. I had a student from Curtis once that insisted that Gigliotti had a dark sound and that I had a bright tone, I had to laugh at him. I heard him after he graduated and he sounded so bright it was difficult to listen to. He's since mellowed I'm happy to say. Think mellow and warm for dark and edgy or giving you chills for bright. ESP
eddiesclarinet.com
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
Post Edited (2011-09-20 00:18)
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Author: kdk
Date: 2011-09-19 23:06
John Peacock wrote:
> ...Frost's tone is smoother, more balanced in high and low
> harmonics, whereas Bliss has a cutting edge to the tone, with
> too many high harmonics and a lack of body.
I think this is partly the crux of the problem. Is Frost's tone really more balanced from low to high or is it missing high frequencies that Bliss's tone includes? What are the actual ratios among the fundamental and the various harmonic components? Does Bliss actually produce less fundamental? What does "balance" mean among the harmonic components of the sound? With all respect, because you clearly hear the same differences between the two sounds (and, I assume, the other examples on the list) that I hear, I think you may be then leaping to a harmonic definition that really can only be demonstrated with actual data from an analysis of the sound. The assumption that "brightness" or "thinness" comes from too much high harmonic content compared to the fundamental and "darkness" or "warmth" represents a better balance is made by most participants in almost any discussion of this with no physical data in hand to substantiate it.
It goes without saying, I think, that you can't in any case gather such data reliably from recordings, where not only hall acoustics but the characteristics of a lot of electronic equipment can drastically influence the result.
> I would describe Frost as "warm" and Bliss as "thin". I think this isn't such > a hard distinction to make consistently: Brymer is warm, Stolzmann is thin, > for example. Sabine Meyer is warmer than most German players. etc.
So, if you found that after actually measuring sound spectra of players who fit your definitions that the "warm" sound simply lacked upper partials in any strength and the "thin" one had as much fundamental but simply more strength in the harmonics, would you stay with the descriptors?
Please don't take this as a personal attack on your input. It represents one of the fundamental (pun intended) threads that goes continuously through every discussion of these general sound descriptors that I've ever read.
For what it's worth, I don't hear Bliss's sound *in this excerpt* as "thin." I hear it as clearer than Frost's sound *in this recording.* And I suspect, with no way to prove it, that if I were to hear the two sounds in a live hall from my usual distance from the stage, I would find Bliss easier to hear (more projective). But that isn't a question of good, bad, warm, thin, bright or dark. It's a matter of taste and preference and perhaps performing context, which can greatly influence what a player is actually trying to produce in a given situation.
Which brings the whole thing around full circle to clarchick's problem: what's involved isn't finally bright or dark, it's what sound does the director want to hear. It would give everyone a better shot at finding a way to produce it if he/she would find come clearer way to describe that preference.
Karl
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Author: Koo Young Chung
Date: 2011-09-20 00:02
From the fishambles examples,I hear differences in playing styles,but not necessarily darkness or brightness.
I always find these youtube videos sound too bright anyway on my laptop.
Compared to listening to the same music on my much better audio sysytem,it is
almost impossible to say who's dark and who's bright.
(They all sound bright to me)
It's like looking thumbnail photos of a person,they don't give you much.
It tells you how you're supposed to look but not much else.
You cannot really tell how each sounds,that is who's bright who's dark.
I'm a violin maker(professional) and I'm dealng with same kind of situations
all the time.
When someone's playing in front of you,most of time we all agree what's bright and what's dark.
With youtube sound quality,it's difficult to tell from a Stravari sound from a $1,000 factory violin sound.
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Author: Clarimeister
Date: 2011-09-20 06:25
I like to think of what Mark Nuccio says in his reed selection video from Rico. Think of the clarinet's tone as a good stereo system. You want to have very good treble, but you want a good mix of mid-range and bass as well. Too much bass, it sounds boomy (dull), too much treble (bright or edgy). Everyone's opinions differ, but I love this analogy of it.
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Author: Iceland clarinet
Date: 2011-09-20 07:20
Ed Palanker if you don't like bright then I think you wouldn't like early records from those world class clarinetists Michael Collins and Kari Kriikku or old record of Reginald Kell.
To me a beautiful clarinet tone is a beautiful clarinet tone no matter if it's dark or bright.
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2011-09-20 09:50
I'm gonna give my opinion which, due to it being MY opinion, I consider to be fact:
- A 'bright' tone has a high presence of overtones and but lacks plenty of other, perhaps mid-range, overtones as well.
- A dark tone lacks overtones but is still full sounding due to a good balance of the overtones that ARE present.
To me, neither is a good sound on it's own. A good sound is capable of producing both (tonal flexibility). I feel that as a rule, as you crescendo, the overtones should increase. To be even more general, a good player can produce both types and everything in between and use them to maximum effect.
In conclusion, you can't just put clarinet sounds into two categories. There's smooth, there's light, there's oily, there's prickly, there's pretty much a sound for every descriptive word!
We're limiting ourselves by using only two words to describe sound.
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Author: John Peacock
Date: 2011-09-20 09:58
Karl (kdk):
Your criticism is entirely correct: I am making a common supposition about harmonic balance influencing sound, which needs to be tested. I'm pretty sure from personal experience that it is a relevant factor: I have often heard what sounded like a beautiful clarinet tone on my alarm-clock radio, only to track down a CD and find things were much less nice sounding in reality. I think it's clear that the limited treble on such a radio does have the effect of making tone warmer.
But that's not all there is to it. I've played around with digital editing of recordings of my own playing, and whatever I do to alter the amplitude of different harmonics, it still sounds like me (alas). My conjecture, and it is only that, is that amplitude of the various harmonics matters - but so does phase. If you inspect the waveform corresponding to sin[t]+sin[2t], it's very different to sin[t]+cos[2t]. I've never done any tests to see if the ear can tell the difference between these two cases (in which the harmonic balance is identical), but it shouldn't be hard to do. I think this thread is going to provoke some experiments of this sort. Equally, it shouldn't be hard to extract a bit of Frost and Bliss from the examples above and do some more detailed analysis. Watch this space.
But on Frost vs Bliss, do you really prefer the Bliss tone as you get it in this clip? Agreed, sometimes you might want to sound like that deliberately in order to get through a thick texture (e.g. Shostakovich). But in the Mozart adagio, there's no trouble being heard. So in that case, surely one would prefer to sound as Frost does?
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2011-09-20 15:29
Read Portnoy on tone colors. Also, Gibson's book on clarinet acoustics is a good introduction, as well as Jeans' book on musical acoustics. Then, to top it off, since no two ears have the same response and are nonlinear as well, no one else will know what your brain senses.
richard smith
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Author: kdk
Date: 2011-09-20 15:51
John Peacock wrote:
>
> But on Frost vs Bliss, do you really prefer the Bliss tone as
> you get it in this clip? Agreed, sometimes you might want to
> sound like that deliberately in order to get through a thick
> texture (e.g. Shostakovich). But in the Mozart adagio, there's
> no trouble being heard. So in that case, surely one would
> prefer to sound as Frost does?
It's interesting. It would probably depend on where I was hearing them from. In general I prefer the clarity I hear in Bliss's sound. Frost's sound on the clip is very nice and, I think, appropriate, but I really don't know what I'd hear if I were listening to him from my 2nd tier seat in Verizon Hall (Philadelphia).
The contextual dependence of all this is highlighted for me by two personal listening experiences.
(1) I heard Morales a season or two ago (actually for the second time since he's been in Philadelphia) play the Mozart Concerto with the orchestra. Beautiful as his sound was (and is), even in the adagio there were places where he just disappeared into the orchestra, places where his part should have been clearly heard. Moreover, my impression of his whole dynamic range *from where I was sitting* over the entire concerto was mezzo-forte to inaudible (sometimes even when there was no orchestra part at all). I'm certain I'd have heard him better had I been closer to the stage, but for that hall his dynamic range and lack of clear projection for me marred the performance.
(2) Several seasons ago I heard Shifrin play the Weber E-flat Major Concerto with the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra. They play in the Perelman Theater, which only seats a couple of hundred, and our seats were in the center of the front row - I was almost within range of catching water drips from his bell and closer to the clarinet than the orchestra members were who sat onstage behind him. I found myself actually irritated by what I heard as the harsh edginess of his sound through the entire concerto. Later I found that a good friend, also a clarinetist, had heard the same performance from a seat near the back of the balcony. His impression of the sound was completely different - smooth, well balanced, not from where he was listening harsh, edgy or "bright" in any way. Having known the other clarinet player for over 40 years, I'm pretty sure we weren't using different words to describe the same thing. He heard a different sound than I did, owing to his greater distance from the instrument on the stage.
So, in a totally abstract sense, I might agree with you that Frost's sound in this clip as I hear it on my speakers is more appropriate to this music. But as a matter of practical preference, I lean much more toward the kind of sound I hear in Bliss's clip. I can't really rid my mind of the feeling that the context is an unrealistic one and that I might be disappointed with Frost's style of sound in a real world acoustical setting.
If anyone actually makes any measurements, I for one would be very interested in seeing the result.
Karl
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Author: John Peacock
Date: 2011-09-20 16:40
Karl,
I agree with this. Another way of putting it is to ask if you play for yourself or for the audience. When I've expressed dissatisfaction with my sound, many teachers have assured me that it sounds better to the audience than it does to the player (as in your Shifrin anecdote). I've always struggled with this: it may be true, but how are you supposed to relax and make music if you're forever hating the way you sound? So it's a compromise. I used to play on a Vandoren crystal mouthpiece because I liked the lack of ugly edge, but eventually I heard enough recordings where I was just getting lost, so I switched back to rubber to get more projection. I think the CDs sound better as a result, but there are still times when I miss the way the crystal felt.
Anyway, glad we agree which sound we prefer to have coming out of our loudspeakers, even if it's less clear how to make sure that this is what arrives at a given seat in a hall.
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2011-09-21 14:20
One more note. In Jeans' book, Science and Music, Dover Publications, he explains, at length in chapter 7, much of what we have discussed here. For example, the fact that the ear does not distinguish phase differences( the law of Ohm); etc, etc.
richard smith
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2011-09-22 04:35
#1 and #6 darkest #5 brightest #1, #6 softest #5 loudest
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: Iceland clarinet
Date: 2011-09-23 23:53
I actually found #7 to be the brightest one. #1 was darkest but at the same time had the most ringing core and singing quality of them all. So #1 was my favorite although I've heard better versions of this piece than those 7.
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Author: salzo
Date: 2011-09-24 11:08
Clarnibass wrote:
"I prefer a bark sound."
Me too.
WOOF!
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