Re: Re: tenor tuba in The Planets recording


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Posted by K on March 05, 2004 at 19:59:02:

In Reply to: Re: tenor tuba in The Planets recording posted by David Carter on March 05, 2004 at 12:42:05:

Good brasses played by good players don't need vibrato unless some certain style calls for it.

Vibrato has been used as a disguise for bad intonation by many lesser brass players. In some cases even as a disguise for lack of sound.

When I read a lot of literature to make myself acquainted with all sorts of instruments, one certain statement about the necessity of vibrato on string instruments caught my attention (non-verbatim quote):

The resonance body of string instruments is very complicated, but it is not favouring interesting sounds at any given fixed frequency. The attractive string sound is achieved by the vibrato urging very varied resonances from the spectre of micro-tonalities represented within the vibrato around a note perceived as representing a certain pitch. Each of these micro-tonalities trigger different resonances from the string instrument bodies, any of which will be hard to bring on mathematic formulas. It is the scintillation between the various resonances which catch our attention.

Klaus

PS1: RD often cites the lack of symmetry being the reason for the exceptional sound of the Stradivari string instruments. Another common theory has been the exceptional lacquer.

More recent research has pointed to the fact, that Europe suffered from a small ice-age-era prior to the peak of Stradivarius. The meteorologics causing an unusual density in the grains of the woods used by Stradivarius.

PS2: Having been a bowing double bass player in Danish barn dance contexts I can assure you that refinements is not the factor making people "feel" the music. My left hand tended to die through dance parties, so I exploited the option of respelling any written note to an open string equivalent (not very hard in a world of C-G-D-A keys, especially with my double bass having a strong wolf note on C). These raw manifestations of rhythm/tonality certainly made the feet of the dancers move.

Which in a heretical way may resemble the non-verbatim quote of a Denis Wick statement: the sound of a euphonium played without vibrato has a strong hall-pervasive character.

Klaus


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