 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: kiseoglee
Date: 2009-11-23 03:30
There is a great difference of acceptance for tone colors, I think, between American and European, as well as Asian clarinet players. Even in European clarinetist, there is a different concept for tone color between French and German Clarinetists.
How about yours? We can make it standard by many clarinet artists into several groups according to their tone colors, such as dark, colorful, and diffuse.
For example,
Dark :
R. Morales
Colorful:
Leister
Diffuse:
E. Johnson...
Post Edited (2009-11-23 03:34)
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2009-11-23 04:58
Best of luck! No chance in the world of your getting agreement even on the meaning of the descriptors.
Karl
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Author: Gregory Smith ★2017
Date: 2009-11-23 07:32
<<according to their tone colors, such as dark, colorful, and diffuse.
---------------
Please - I beg you all - not this again...
Oh, the humanity!
GS
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2009-11-23 10:30
"Dark :
R. Morales
Colorful:
Leister
Diffuse:
E. Johnson..."
---------
Using words to describe tone is really hard.
I even the list you have is debatable. I disagree with them. I would use different words, but sometimes I would use more than one word for even one person. Any good musician should have a range of sounds anyway, not just one.
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2009-11-23 10:39
I agree with Gregory Smith. Instead of posting things like these that inevitably get out of hand you should spend that energy doing something more productive like analysing your own sound through your own practice.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2009-11-23 12:24
Also, while practising, see how you can change your sound to make it more dark, or bright, or anything else. See what sort of range of sounds you can make. Certainly fun.
Alexi
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-11-23 16:27
Yea, let's have disagreements over what's dark, bright or whatever, that's a great idea. I don't think so, I agree with Greg. I will say though that my sound is exactly what I want to sound like. I'll let it go at that. ESP http://eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2009-11-23 19:35
Interesting correlation between this sort of aesthetic judgment and and the "thin slicing" (mind-reading) discussed in Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Blink."
He points out that, while anyone may know "what she likes," it takes a whole lot of training to be able to make the sort of discerning classifications required to accomplish the task suggested in this thread. And, only a few folks spend the time and effort to become accomplished judges --those people could reach a consensus on tone quality.
Bob Phillips
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Author: salzo
Date: 2009-11-23 20:25
For example,
Dark :
R. Morales
Colorful:
Leister
Diffuse:
E. Johnson...
With the exception of Emma Johnsons tone characterization, I would not use the adjectives used to describe those players listed.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-11-23 21:00
I think it's wrong to discriminate on the basis of color.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-11-23 21:02
Salzo said "With the exception of Emma Johnsons tone characterization, I would not use the adjectives used to describe those players listed."
How about Good, Bad, Pretty Good, Not Too Bad, Pretty Bad, OK, Fair, Fantastic, Can't Stand, Horrible, Terrific. Did I leave any "Tone color" out. ESP
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Author: Hank Lehrer
Date: 2009-11-23 21:10
Ed,
Yes, you left out Really Gross (RG) which another might think is instead Robustly Grand (RGa).
HRL
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Author: GBK
Date: 2009-11-23 21:13
kiseoglee wrote:
> There is a great difference of acceptance for tone colors, I think,
> between American and European, as well as Asian clarinet players.
> Even in European clarinetist, there is a different concept for
> tone color between French and German Clarinetists
Not so fast...
It's time to once again resurrect Dan Lesson's wonderful article and blind listening test of different clarinetists and their "characteristic" tone.
A must read:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050220184752/clarinetdepot.com/articles/leeson4.htm
...GBK
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2009-11-23 21:15
Amazing...when you're uncertain whether or not someone will "bite" to a new thread, just toss in Emma's name, and within minutes you got the best pub brawl ever.
<Spock>
Fascinating.
</Spock>
--
Ben
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-11-23 21:26
Oops, I left out Mediocre in my offering above, sorry about that. ESP
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
Post Edited (2009-11-24 01:57)
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2009-11-23 21:32
Folks, I have warned you previously that this type of intellectual masturbation will cause hair to grow on your reeds. Just like your Mother used to tell you.
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2009-11-23 22:45
Possibly 30 plus years ago it was easy to tell the origin of a player by their sound, but that's long passed.
The styles have melded too much.
Even what's "bright" sounding could be different for an older player compared to a younger player based on upper frequency hearing loss.
It happens.
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2009-11-23 23:53
This is an interesting discussion in the abstract despite my previous comment (which actually implies the subjectivity of assessing tone).
However, for those that say that tone/sound has morphed into something that is somewhat a hodge-podge of nothing, I do agree.
I lament the time when there were individual nationalistic styles of playing.
Due to communications, transportation, the Internet, MP3 players, (etc)., we now find that nationalistic styles are starting to blend.
Hence an American now sounds "somewhat" German rather than the traditional French (Morales).
American brass players put their piston horns down for rotary valves in order to chase a sound that betrays what American orchestras "should" sound like. What happened to the aggressive bite that marked the American style?
An Italian sounds more French than Italian (Carbonare).
An Englishman goes to Germany to learn (Marriner, Bliss) as part of their training process. Ignoring the tradition of Thurston, Brymer, et al.
The Japanese go to America, Germany, and France to train. As do the Chinese. So what will their "nationalistic" sound be?
In the end, we will all sound the same.
The Global Economy and it's Invisible Hand will have spanked the orchestral world as well as our brilliant financiers.
The orchestral species will evolve to a bog of everything/everyone sounding the same.
But that will be our children's problem not ours.
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Author: kiseoglee
Date: 2009-11-24 01:02
I don't know why you all so upset. It's very lucky I'm not a native English speaker, so I can not understand exactly so hostile and impolite comments....
I never have any intend to make threads with so debatable issue. I really needed a help.
OK, I'm a casual clarinet player of only 3 year experience, but really serious one for beautiful clarinet sound. I'm sorry if I broke in the professional's forum.
Several days ago, I sent a mail for ordering new barrel to someone and commented 'I pursue a dark sound'. Also I informed him my setup. He said, 'your setup is not dark!' Then I was puzzled about dark sound.
For me, he briefly arranged such classification, however, I could not get many CD's as the CD's of artists listed were not available here.
So, I needed help from you.
Of course, it can be an unreasonable tiral to claasify artists into several groups by debatable standards. And it can be severe rudness, I realized later. However, sometimes, beginners need simple guide!
Let's be more generous, everybody!
Post Edited (2009-11-24 01:11)
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-11-24 02:10
Kiseoglee, it's just that when this board get's into naming players buy their sounds it gets a bit crazy. It's going to insult some people and make others angry. Look what happened when someone called Stanley Drucker a great player, it got a bit crazy. And besides, as Greg Smith implied, we've been through this before. No harm intended. ESP
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-11-24 04:02
I think it's better to think of tone quality in a more abstract sense, rather than by characterizing certain players as having bright or dark sounds, because there's really a whole spectrum of different tone colors and where a particular player is on that spectrum can vary from moment to moment. (Not to mention that you step on fewer toes this way.)
Different people probably have different conceptions of what bright and dark mean, too, but here's my attempt to describe what they mean to me:
A bright tone is one that has a clear, brilliant, penetrating, or metallic quality due to an abundance of higher-pitched overtones in the sound. An extremely bright sound would be called shrill.
A dark tone is one that has a warm, smooth, thick, or mellow quality due to having more lower-pitched overtones in the sound. An extremely dark sound would be called dull or muffled.
So on the extremely bright end of the spectrum you have shrill, piercing sounds and on the opposite, extremely dark end you have dull, muffled sounds. Of course, clarinetists play with all kinds of tone qualities in-between, including dark, rich, and creamy sounds, bright, shiny, and clear sounds, and sounds that combine equal parts of both, and any particular player has a range of different possible tone qualities on this spectrum that they can produce.
You shouldn't let yourself get lured into the notion that dark is good and bright is bad or vice versa. They're just tone colors. Painters don't talk about green being good and orange being bad. Clarinetists shouldn't do that sort of thing either.
Of course, there are other aspects to tone quality, too. Bright vs. dark is just one aspect to tone. As you've already indicated, there's a focused vs. diffuse quality, as well as a host of other ways of describing tone. Hopefully this should give you a little inkling of what people generally mean when they use terms like "dark" and "bright," though.
Post Edited (2009-11-24 04:11)
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Author: Old Geezer
Date: 2009-11-24 15:56
I think Emma Johnson's tone colour is best characterized as "beautifully realized."
Why don't you guys check out her web site, it has lots of sound samples and several photos of comely Emma!
Clarinet Redux
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-11-24 16:43
Beautifully realized, OK, that's an interesting term. I'll have to remember that one, I like it. Take care, ESP
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Author: justme
Date: 2009-11-25 03:55
Old Geezer said: " Why don't you guys check out her web site, it has lots of sound samples and several photos of comely Emma!"
Yes, she is kinda cute, but then so is Sharon Kam as well as some others.
But then again I can imagine Laurie Dhue playing alto sax... ![[grin]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie5.gif)
Just Me
http://woodwindforum.ning.com/
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Author: kathryn777
Date: 2009-11-25 20:39
I dont think of light and dark colors, but more of warm/cool or heavy/light.
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