Author: vboboe
Date: 2006-01-07 05:15
... HEY, very interesting question! some brief googling research (including other idrs articles) indicates this is a complex subject and subjectively controversial with lots of prejudicial preferences involved
... there are many kinds of vibrato used by wind players, including:
- finger vibrato (flattement) used on baroque oboes and modern day recorders (plateaux instruments can't do it effectively)
- air-flow compression by squeezing chest muscles
- diaphragm vibrato by pulsing pit of lungs (langphasig)
- throat (chevrotement, kurzphasig)
- jaw vibration
- tongue (back)
- lip wobble or quiver
... one source distinguished tremolo from vibrato, indicating that tremolo is a fluctuation in intensity, faster and slower, deeper or shallower; whereas vibrato is fluctuation in pitch which phases back and forth between sharp & flat, tones & semitones
... studies have been done which show that throat vibrato is very common, produces fastest vibrato (tremolo?) from 7-12 Hz, while diaphragm vibrato (tremolo?), less common, produces vibrato slower than 6 Hz
... the idea behind vibrato is that we humans apparently hear a pure sound as 'dead' after 18th to 20th second unless it quivers, so vibrato/tremolo is more natural than artificial, even though we have to consciously learn techniques to do it, which seems artificial until we 'feel' it naturally
Some appropriate moments to apply vibrato seem to be:
- long tone practice, shape and colour those otherwise boring notes!
- any "white" note, especially held over a bar or more, solo or tutti
- any important note in any phrase which needs extra colour
- any solo passage anywhere, anytime, unless pure note is the desired sound
... after this brief study, i think i favour using any or all forms of vibrato, appropriately. Long tone practice, hu-hu!
Well ... great topic, that's what i've learned new about vibrato, just from looking into your question, THANKS :-)
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