Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-12-07 21:03
I think Tony's dictum, "The word 'beautiful' in the phrase 'a beautiful sound' is context dependent" has further implications when applied to the context of electronic amplification and electronic recording. No matter what the surrounding physical acoustics might be, you change them when you put a microphone and loudspeaker system between the performer and the audience. In such situations, you have 1) how the performers sounds over the mike in a particular hall or recording studio, and 2) how the playback of the recorded performance sounds.
With so many different physical and electronic "contexts" mixing, it is no wonder that players often sound very different on recordings than they do in person. Drucker and Gigliotti, for example, sounded very different when I heard than live than they did on recordings.
Jazz clarinet pretty much grew up in the age of electronic recording. The first thing you see in photos of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw are those big geometric microphones they are playing into for radio shows. My memory of live performances by Goodman, Barney Bigard, Pete Fountain, is all in the context of hearing them perform over a microphone/loudspeaker system, so the equipment they selected and the way they learned to voice the instrument grew out of what matched and flattered the electronic amplification equipment. The electronics shaped their sound. When somebody asked Fountain how he sounded so good, he quipped that he had a good sound engineer. Actually, he meant that he had learned to make the most out of the electronic amplification context he lived and breathed in.
So, it seems to me that the classical traditions of clarinet playing grew out of the question "how do we sound good in this concert/opera hall or cathedral or whatever?" and the jazz/pop schools of clarinet playing grew out of the question of how to sound good on electronic amplification and recording equipment. In the current environment, of course, electronics is enveloping everything.
Post Edited (2016-12-08 01:09)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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