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Changing the colour of your tone.

Author: Phurster
Date: 2018-07-11 06:36

An interesting thing happen to me today;
My son showed me an app on his I pad. It's called N-track tuner.
It has a number of functions but the important aspect, at least for me, was the use of the spectrometer.
You can play a tone and it shows you the strength of each harmonic. So it's possible to compare the relative 'darkness/brightness' of two players by having them play the same tone one after the other. It's still a bit of a complex issue (saying player 'A' has a bright sound and player 'B' a dark one) as each tone can have a slightly different balance of harmonics.
None of this is new information, but here is the interesting thing; As you play a diminuendo the strength of each harmonic changes. The first to go are the higher harmonics thereby giving you a 'darker' tone.
It is possible to keep the relative strength of the harmonics by manipulating the shape of the oral cavity. Interestingly this was easier with the throat tones and harder with the upper register.
I had previously suspected that changing the colour was more in the imagination of the player and just the changing of dynamics.
It seems it's a complex bit of many factors.

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