 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: drc
Date: 2002-07-17 19:08
I played clarinet through high school and college, and I am now coming back to it after I won't say how many years. Reading publicity on instruments, and such things as this forum, I have come across two terms I don't completely understand, terms I don't think I heard when I was a more active clarinetist. They both refer to the sound or tone of the instrument. They are "centered" and "dark." I understand what a full sound is, an open sound, even a "fat" sound. But I don't understand what is meant by a "centered" sound or a "dark" sound. I'm sure these metaphors will be hard to explain in words. It might be possible to point toward some recordings to clarify them.
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Author: GBK
Date: 2002-07-17 19:35
drc... Verbal descriptions of clarinet sound always amuse me.
Is it dark? Is it bright? Is it focused? Is it centered? Is it full of life? Or lifeless?
Or, is it robust? Is it full-throated? Is it fat? Is it full-bodied?
Is it responsive? Is it round?
Oh, and let's not forget deep, solid, youthful, and clear.
You get the idea? An exercise in futility.
Time (and patience)only limits me from continuing.
Read Dan Leeson's insightful take on "terminology"
http://www.ocr.woodwind.org/articles/Leeson/leeson3.html
Take careful notes - There will be a quiz on Monday...GBK
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Author: drc
Date: 2002-07-17 23:01
GBK--The article is very informative. Remember, I wrote not because I hoped to acquire a "centered" sound or a "dark" sound; I wrote because I didn't have the foggiest notion of what these terms might mean. I picked them up on this forum. I don't know what this might say about many of these postings.
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Author: Sarah
Date: 2002-07-17 23:19
"'Virtually all terminology that I have ever heard musicians use when discussing sound is subjective...'"
If you read the list of how people describe sound in that article they contradict themselves left and right.
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Author: Jerry McD
Date: 2002-07-18 01:15
The truth of the matter is that words fail music. It really is almost impossible to describe sound in words amongst many different people who will interpret it many different ways. It is difficult enough to try and get student and teacher understanding each other. Unfortunately there is no set vocabulary to describe sound in words. We narrow it down to a few well worn euphamisms (sp?) that are spelled out here, but I don't think there is a definitive definition anywhere. I know this didn't help, but it is a subject I think about a lot, especially when trying to relate tonal concepts to students. Hopefully someone else will be more helpful.
Jerry McD.
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Author: bob gardner
Date: 2002-07-18 03:36
the only thing that I can tell the differance of is good sound to bad sound. Sometimes i play both.
peace
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Author: Bob Arney
Date: 2002-07-18 03:44
Me too Bob, and unfortunately I have trouble telling the difference.
Bob A
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Author: Gnomon (Eoin McAuley)
Date: 2002-07-18 08:45
I have absolutely no idea what 'centred' is intended to convey.
The term 'dark' is a fairly standard musical term; it means the mournful sound of the clarinets at the start of Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony. If you sing, you can get a dark sound by dropping your jaw, opening your throat and singing "taw taw taw". A bright sound is got by closing your throat, constricting your mouth and singing "tee tee tee".
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Author: Don Poulsen
Date: 2002-07-18 13:47
Come to think of it, descriptions of clarinet sounds are much like the descriptions of wines. I can just imagine a newspaper review of a concert --
"During his third-movement solo in the orchestra's performance of Brigenfreund's Eighteenth Symphony, clarinetist Isaac Smigglewentz demonstrated a robust and full-bodied woody tonality with hints of citrus and musk. The sustained passage took on a darker and more centered flavor, climaxing in a bright, fruity cadenza with pleasingly earthy afternotes."
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Author: Bob
Date: 2002-07-18 14:12
Cheers,Don. I have occasionally spat out a sour note...and corked my register key
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Author: RGA
Date: 2002-07-18 17:19
We use words like "dark" or "bright" as a means to categorize some particular quality of the sound - they really hold no "absolute" meaning, they are used only as a reference. You can't give a rigorous definition of these terms, you have to hear a "dark" sound and a "bright" sound then use them as references to characterize other sounds.
We do the same thing with all of the senses. We are all taught what is meant by "red color"; when light impacts the back of our eyes, we don't think of it in terms of radiation at some wavelength, we simply reference it to our previous experience with red color and say "that's red." Of course, the differences in the qualities of sound are much more subtle and are harder to define than the obvious differences between colors, but the principle is the same: the terms are used as a reference to a standard.
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Author: beejay
Date: 2002-07-18 17:32
A wine-dark sea? Homer: Odyssey.
Seriously, there used to be quite distinctive national traditions of clarinet playing, so that you could talk of a "dark" German sound (think Bruckner) a "bright" French sound (think Ravel) and a quite distinctive British sound (think Walton), and people would know what you meant, even if the terms were somewhat subject, as is all aesthetic criticism. These distinctions became somewhat blurred in the United States, I believe, since many of the great clarinet teachers were from the French school and many of the great orchestra conductors were influenced by the German school. The national differences have disappeared with the spread of recorded music, and I can think today of many French clarinets who play "dark" and Germans who play bright. Even so, my (French) teacher's eyebrows shot up when I played a recording by a well-known British clarinetist and asked him what he thought? "Quel horreur!" was his only comment.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2002-07-18 20:49
I've found it most helpful for people to give me concrete examples of what they're talking about rather than some set of adjectives - we don't have a common language when it comes to using the descriptions of sounds.
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Author: beejay
Date: 2002-07-19 14:52
Mark,
I agree with the need for precision, but that does not get us out of the subjectivity trap. I adore the sound of Sabine Meyer, for example, but I couldn't find an exact word to describe it. Neither dark nor bright seems to convey a precise meaning in this case.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2002-07-19 16:41
I was unclear. I meant concrete examples of playing. Sabine Meyer is a concrete example.
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Author: ChattyClar
Date: 2002-07-19 17:08
I suggest everyone who hasn't read Keith Stine's section on tone in the Art of Clarinet do so immediately. He does a great job of defining the vocabulary. Tone is not as subjective as you all make it out to be. I agree that different people have different ideas about what is a good tone, but there should be no confusion about bright and dark. That's like trying to say that red and blue are the same depending on how you look at it! Another good thing about Stine's book is that he breaks tone down into different categories. Tone can be dark and warm and centered and deep all at the same time. That is not subjectivity, it is just recognizing the fact that tone has different aspects.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2002-07-19 17:49
ChattyClar wrote:
>
> I agree that
> different people have different ideas about what is a good
> tone, but there should be no confusion about bright and dark.
> That's like trying to say that red and blue are the same
> depending on how you look at it!
There is and always will be! Tone qualities <b>are</b> subjective - we prove it daily right here. How do you know what Stein was trying to communicate?
If you tell me "Sabine Meyer playing <name the piece & recording> is the sound color/tone I'm aiming for, I can play it (she sounds very different on Blues for Sabine than on her recording of K. 422).
Warm, chocolately, deep, bright, French German, Italian, American, centered, focussed, ringing, pinging, etc. are out of context - give me a concrete example of what you're trying to describe any day and I'll take it. Other than that we are prone to mis-communication.
It's not limited to amateaurs, either. I have more than once heard 2 prominent clarinetists in master classes use words that are almost opposites to try & describe characteristics of sounds they were trying to get the students to create.
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Author: mark landry
Date: 2002-07-19 18:52
Dark and centered are ususaully terms that I assign to wine and certain nice vintages from the Claret line...however, in spite of the fact that I attempt to play the clarinet, the concept of dark and centered may also mean different things to different people in a sematical sort of fashion. The danger is to quatify a qualititative aspect of a human sense in terms that may not represent the complete aspect of the meaning intented, thereby the listener may actually be utilizing adjectives, that, in a sense, have no meaning whatsoever except the fact the auditor seems to idealize the concept of the heard tone as dark. Without intellectualizing the above statement, in the pure theorectical discussions, one does not wish to typify the given disclosure of the meaning" dark or centered", without realizing that everything i just said has no meaning whatsoever,( except) that the auricular canals seems to be pleased when at times we remark centered or dark.
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