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Thread: an opinion on tone

  1. #21
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Location
    Farmington Hills, MI
    Posts
    472
    The dialect theory is very interesting but I'm skeptical. I see it as less related to the tonguing than to how you think you should sound which may be affected by where you were raised. Maybe they are related.

  2. Another story from my 'book' :-)

    It is my contention with regard to euphonium timbre (or for that matter any brass instrument that we play) in relation to our voice that it is more of how the vocal folds, oral cavity, sinus cavity, chest resonance etc all come into play in your natural speaking/singing voice ... that which is the physiology of the vocal apparatus. There is some credibility to the theory of dialect and vowel concepts in how we shape the sound. Those are learned or cultivated attributes compared to the physical or natural attributes to which we were born.

    I first started thinking in those terms when I worked with Euphonium soloist Karl Humble back in the early 1980s. Karl had a very beautiful and 'distinctively modulated' sound and when he spoke there was a similar quality in his voice. I remember similar comparisons with Arthur Lehman as well. Though his timbral recipe was different from Karl's.

    Some of the 'nature' of one's sound, like a singer, is from where you imagine the sound coming from in your body. Chest, throat, or head (not nasal but up higher). Much like a trained singer. Or a combination depending on range or the color you are working for.

    I have listened to recordings of my own speaking and singing voice and recognize it immediately and hear those same similarities in my solo euphonium and tuba playing. Some of those characteristics I can modify - others are more fixed.

    Of course equipment and cultivating one's sound concept will work toward achieving that end. A bad horn is about the same as trying to play with a cold or swollen sinuses... and thus limits what you can do.

    Just some observations.
    BMB F tuba 445s
    BMB CC (BAT) 865s
    Mack Euphonium 1150s
    Wessex F Cimbasso

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