Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2007-12-02 23:17
Well, here I go away for the weekend, and you all get into the best discussion in years on this board!
Somebody about twenty posts back said something about the sound you hear in your head vs. the sound someone would hear from across the room. I agree that things do sound different to the player than to the listener (just as the phenomenon of hearing your own voice on a recording sounds different than you think it does in your own head). So, listening to yourself play on a good recording device can be enlightening.
A few weeks ago, before I was scheduled to do a cut on a friend's compilation CD, I did just that -- I systematically listened to myself playing excerpts of my piece on one reed, and then another, using my little Sony mp3 recorder (very high quality recording). I was actually very surprised to hear how much difference I could discern between the various reeds (these were all "good" reeds). What surprised me the most was that reeds which felt perhaps a little stuffy to me were the ones that sounded the very best on the recording.
Would these same reeds sound the best in live performance, or in every venue? I don't know the answer to that, and I do think that is a very important question. I do know, though, that for the recording, I chose a reed which minimized the upper partials (aka, a "dark" reed), and they tell me (I STILL haven't heard the CD!) that it came across very well.
I wonder if the tendency toward dark, darker, darkest in reed choice has to do with what we hear on recorded sound, rather than live sound?
Susan
|
|
The Oboe BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
