Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2007-04-19 02:59
Well, you can move your head, or you can move the instrument. Or both. Whichever way, you might get 1) a different tone color from the instrument or 2) a different listening perspective for your ears.
Teacher has instructed me that playing the instrument lowered (down, like a classical clarinetist) creates a more damped, "darker" tone, while raising the instrument (more like a trumpeter) creates a brighter, edgier tone.
Of course, if you move your head down at the same time you move your instrument down, you'd end up with pretty much the same orientation as if you had your head up and the instrument out, except that the sound would be directed at the floor rather than the wall or out into midair --
the point being that whenever you move your head, or the instrument, you are hearing the sound you are producing from a different angle. If you normally play while seated, and then play while standing, it sounds a little different. If you play into your music stand, or into a pillow, it will sound different than if you play into a hard wall.
I've heard it recommended that to hear yourself well, you should play towards a corner with bare walls. That would certainly give you a lively sound. Then again, I've also recently read a piece about Liang Wang, in which he describes shutting himself into a clothes closet and practicing there, because it gave him a "dead" acoustic environment and allowed him to focus very exactly on his own intonation and tone quality.
I'm only just getting to the point of experimenting with tone color on purpose. ![[wink]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie3.gif)
Susan
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