Author: John Peacock
Date: 2014-10-20 23:55
ErezK:
> its all about me
I'm happy to agree with this. We all know that tiny differences that would be inaudible to even a highly expert audience can be things that obsess players: when you know that last 0.001% improvement is possible, it's annoying not to have it.
And I suppose it doesn't matter whether the difference is objective or not. I like instruments with high-quality silver plate, because somehow silver seems to represent what I think of as a good sound more than the superficial brilliance of nickel. Playing such an instrument possibly helps me make the right mental picture and perhaps does change the sound. Who cares: if it feels like it's working, it is working.
But I confess to being a scientist (if not a Prof of statistics), and I would have to say that BobD seems to have it 100% backwards when he says "Quantification seems to be necessary for many people to believe anything". The reason the scientific outlook is skeptical is because it's all too easy for people to believe in things that aren't true, and only quantification can sort out self-deception from real effects. And despite my "who cares" comment, the difference does matter in the end - largely because manufacturers want you to spend sometimes large sums of money on a piece of kit.
Finally, from Tony Pay and BflatNH's comments, I wonder if any real ligature effect is down in part to the mouthpiece. If your table isn't flat then different ligatures will curve the reed to different extents - with a positive or negative effect depending on the reed. That might leave people with flat tables experiencing less or no dependence of sound on ligature. I stress this is complete conjecture - but it does suggest a question to those who find a big sound change with a given ligature: does this happen particularly on one mouthpiece, or do you find it to be universal?
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