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Re: Dark reeds?

Author: Bobo
Date: 2007-11-30 16:32

"I think the important thing to state is that timbre of sound is extremely subjective. It follows, then, that we cannot attribute objective qualities to it.\

"Heinz Holliger has a bright sound" vs. "Heinz Holliger has a sound with more high partials than most American oboe players"

The second statement actually says something concrete and objective about what we are hearing."

I don't think it's as subjective as you make it out to be. If you asked ten trained oboists to listen to various players and plot them on a spectrum from bright to dark, my guess is you'd get an overwhelming statistical fit. I do agree, however, that at the end of the day, an explanation based on overtones that correlate to these players' sounds is probably available, just to put the whole thing on a more scientific footing. The descriptive words we use are indeed non-scientific, but so is saying the sky is blue compared to saying that it's refracting electro-magnetic radiation from the sun's fusion reaction in such a manner that our retinal sensors only process a certain range of the underlying wave frequencies (with apologies in advance to any physicists out there!).

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Dark reeds? new

d-oboe

2007-11-29 12:16