Author: Dutchy
Date: 2007-12-03 13:58
And I would also like to point out that you can't really, completely, judge by what an artist sounds like on a recording, because generally recording equipment leaves out some of the harmonics that the human ear perceives, but that the equipment either doesn't pick up, or picks up inadequately.
I had a graphic illustration of this just a couple of weeks ago. My daughter plays clarinet with the local youth symphony orchestra this year, and I went to their concert. And one of their numbers was what I think of as a "party piece" for violin and orchestra, with a local, well-respected violin teacher as the soloist.
And the violin was just a COMPLETE revelation to me. All my life, I'd always disliked listening to string quartets and violin concertos and sonatas on, first, vinyl, and then tape, and finally CD, because it just sounds so squeaky, and metallic, and shrill. Even famous violinists like Isaac Stern just left me cold--too squeaky, too metallic. You can hear that the strings are made out of steel wire, and there's some guy scraping away on them with a bunch of horsehair, you know?
But I'd never heard a violin played in real life. Never.
So sitting there, 50 feet away from an actual violinist, I was AMAZED at how...warm...it sounded. And melodic, not metallic. Suddenly, in a flash, I totally comprehended why people rhapsodize about it.
But none of that comes through on a CD.
So, similarly, a lot of oboe probably doesn't come through on a CD, so I think it's a mistake to judge, say, Holliger only by his recordings.
And I would also like to say that my embouchure isn't at the point where I do much more with it besides "get the reed to play", and even I can tell that each reed is subtly different from the next one, and some of them sound shriller, and some of them sound breathier, and some of them sound uncannily like a clarinet or flute, especially on the upper Eb-F, and some of them don't.
But they all sound like an oboe.
And I'm beginning to think that the difference is mainly in what the reed feels like to play, not in any particular objective quality of sound that's produced. Each reed offers a different sensual experience to play--but they all still sound like an oboe.
So maybe we shouldn't be talking about a dark or bright "sound", but a dark or bright "feel".
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