Author: brycon
Date: 2015-07-29 05:16
Good advice, Paul.
Locke,
If you can't make it to live performances, you can listen to recordings (so long as it's active listening). When people talk about sounds, they're often talking about a confluence of things, which get lazily lumped together as someone's sound.
If you can try to disentangle these things as you listen, it may improve your ears. Try to focus your listening, for example, on a player's articulation, finger action, air stream, etc. Do they stop staccato notes with the tongue, air, or some combination? Is the air stream rather steady or flexible? And so forth. (I remember seeing/hearing a study where the attacks and tapers of pitches were lopped off; when you heard only the "middle" of notes, you couldn't tell what instrument was playing, which goes to show the importance of these types of things when we're talking about sound.)
If you're into jazz, listen especially for swing feel and articulation. An example I like to use to compare "sounds" is the album Sonny Side Up. Sonny Stitt plays on top of the beat throughout (Bird also played on top of the beat on most of his recordings), and Sonny Rollins plays all over the beat--sometimes ahead and sometimes way behind, really swinging. Sonny Rollins also articulates much more than Stitt or Bird would; one of the most characteristic features of Sonny's playing is the staccato upbeat eighth note at the beginning of lines.
At any rate, maybe that'll give you some ideas to work with.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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