Sunday, September 19, 2004

Sound

It's Sunday, a typical rest day for me.

Rather, I'm bored.

I'm surprisingly calm right now, considering that my exam is tomorrow. I hope I'm ready!

The forecast for the day: Nothing.

All right, I have to go through my pieces and scales at least once today so that will probably take up an hour or so.

Hmmm... I was so bored that I added some new links to my blog. If you notice, there are now 2 new links to oboists and one more to an instrument.

I like Mayer for his cantabile style. His phrasings are just so nice and musical. I don.t know how else to describe it.

Hunt is a XL user like me, or rather; I.m a XL user like him. The only difference is that Howarth pays him to play their XL and I have to pay Howarth to play their XL. Heehee. Ok, I know his playing and mine are quite un-comparable at the moment but that.s not the point! Hunt has a big broad sound, very typical of the Howarth large bore oboes.

Their sounds are somewhat very different. Mayer has a sweet sound which is just right whereas Hunt has a bigger thicker sound. Had I ever mention that I don't like the oboe sound most people here in Singapore like?

I think most people have this impression that an oboe sound should be thick, dark, mellow and sweet sound. I.m sorry but you will never find that kind of sound emitting from my oboe!

Must a good sound be dark? I don't agree and think so. Then again, what exactly is a dark sound? I have had many people asking me what it is. There are so many opinions that I dare not say which the correct school of thoughts is. Still, I think there should be a form of standardization throughout the boards of the different schools of thoughts.

So what is a dark sound? I'm still not really sure of the correct definition but I will define it as a sound which is not bright. Oops. Did you just fall off your chair? Heehee. Someone once asked me how to get a dark sound and I asked her back: "And what exactly is a dark sound?" She couldn?t answer me.

A dark sound to me is some a timbre that doesn't rings a lot. It tends to be a bit less projective and the centre of the sound is much more focused as compared to a "bright" sound. I hope this is correct, someone please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't really like dark sounds anyway so I don't do much research on it. Heehee.

Why dark when you can get bright? I just like the sparkle in the brighter sound. It?s more like an oboe sound in my opinion. There was this comparison on the "bright" French oboe sound and the "dark" German sound. The writer describes it as French croissant which is very light in taste and German chocolate cake. I thought that this was a very good and accurate description!

An oboist friend of him simply adores this oboist called Martin Larsson (I hope I got the name correct!). It's exactly the dark and sweet sound which I'm talking about here. I didn't listen beyond 4 bars of his playing. For a closer example in Singapore, listen to this girl called Zhong Xuan (again, I hope the spelling is right!), she plays a bit in Philharmonic Winds and Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra. Hers is too those off the sweet and dark.

While I have nothing against these players, I must state once again that I don't like that type of sound only. It's just not me. =)

I think I'm really going way off point. Why am I talking about sound? Boredom.

Somebody entertain me!
fjozn at 10:45 AM