‘bright’ tone color

[jessica-wolff]

Penny, the only thing wrong with that is that Tripletts, at least the ones I’ve tried, do not sound bright at all next to (e.g.) a Dusty Strings. I would put Tripletts in the mellow category.

[penny-amundsen]

Hi Jessica:

Exactly.

[Maria Myers]

What does “attack” mean?

[penny-amundsen]

The attack is the first sound you hear when you pluck the string.

Wikipedia defines “attack time”

[deb-l]

Is ‘warm’ the opposite of ‘bright?

[jessica-wolff]

“Warm” is generally regarded as the opposite of “bright,” yes. Say Triplett as opposed to Dusty Strings. Can’t speak to the other matter, having no experience with Salvis.

[A. Riley]

I know this topic has been quiet for a while, but I thought I’d pipe up. We talked about this concept a lot in my choir, and the director even arranged us in our sections from bright to warm.

The instruments of the orchestra can all play the same note but they all sound different in relation to each other — a French horn is warmer than a trumpet. A cello is warmer than a violin. It doesn’t have anything to do with pitch, volume, or resonance.

I think of Renee Fleming as the epitome of vocal soprano warmth, if you want to look up some sound clips from her.

[deb-l]

it may not have anything to do with resonance but resonance has everything to do with it.

[A. Riley]

Thanks for the clarification — resonance probably isn’t the word I was reaching for. I was thinking of the length of time the note rings in the air after being struck. In the very live domed room I sing in, *everything* rings on and on (so we really want that final chord to be just right!), whether bright, warm, or in between.

[deb-l]

I was just trying to spark the conversation, I am no expert!

[jessica-wolff]

Sustain.

[carl-swanson]

This may be slightly off subject here, but as a harp maker and restorer who also sells used instruments, I will tell you that there is absolutely no agreement on what constitutes a beautiful sound. I’ve regulated thousands of harps over the years, and an instrument that I thought sounded like a banjo the owner thought was wonderful. And who am I to contradict that. When I have a used instrument to sell I often get calls from people asking me to describe the sound, or asking if it has a _________(beautiful, big, dark, etc. fill in the blank)sound. I always tell them that if they are seriously interested in this instrument, they need to come to Boston and play it. I can vouch for the structural integrity of an instrument, but I never get involved in the sound aspect.

At the 1994 Boston Harp Conference I presented a program on the sound of the harp. I had 4 harps behind a screen so the people in the audience couldn’t see them, and I had two harpists playing short excerpts on each of the instruments. The people listening heard two harpists play the same excerpt on each harp. I was the MC for the program, explaining for each excerpt what the listeners should be looking for in each harp. Everyone had a score sheet where they could write down comments and ‘score’ the sound of each instrument. No one had any idea what kind of instruments they were listening to. For obvious reasons, I had decided NOT to compare makes of instruments, but rather to compare different size older harps. There was a L & H 23 completely strung in nylon, an extended board semi-grand strung in gut, a straight soundboard semi-grand also strung in gut, and a small style 14, also strung in gut.

Before telling them at the end of the program what they had been listening to I gave them a little quiz. No one, NO ONE, was able to pick out the harp strung completely in nylon. No one was able to pick correctly the concert grand(i.e., the biggest instrument). No one, NO ONE, was able to pick out the straight board instruments. I know this because in the days following this workshop an endless number of people came up to me and told me this.

I guess the reason I’m posting this is that 1) Just because you describe a harp sound in a certain way doesn’t mean that anyone else will describe it the same way. 2) Just because you think a particular harp sounds fantastic does not in any way mean that anyone else will think the same thing. And 3)Everyone has gross misconceptions about how a harp sounds, how much volume it can produce, etc. and these misconceptions are based on biases about the make, model, and size of the instrument that people unconsciously carry with them.

[carl-swanson]

I should add one more comment to this. I purposely picked two harpists, both good friends, whose sounds were likely to be very different from each other. When we practiced the show in my living room, I really couldn’t hear any difference between them. But when we did the program in the auditorium and I was standing about 15 feet in front of them, the difference in their sounds was incredible. The single biggest factor in the sound of each instrument was who was playing it. One harpist consistently had a dark, mellow, resonant sound regardless of which instrument she was playing, and the other always had a bright sound. From where I was standing, there was no difference in how each player projected.

[unknown-user]

I tried posting this earlier today (before Carl), but it didn’t work. I was going to bring up the same point about the player. Here’s my original post:

As far as I’m concerned, the jargon here falls into two spectra:

Bright Mellow
Warm Dry

Bright/Mellow is a function of an instrument’s resonance. The soundbox’s particular structure will determine how it alters and amplifies the sound. In the end, you can describe that sound as bright or mellow.

Warm/Dry is a function of the attack on the string. That is, it describes the player’s tone, not the harp’s resonance.

In this way it would be able to qualify any harp’s resonance in a relative manner. For instance, have one harpist play on three harps. If the sound coming from harp A is more mellow than from harp B, then you can attribute the difference to the harp and not the player.

Conversely, one can do the same with players by having several players play on the same harp. The differences in sound there can be attributed to the player.

I think part of the confusion comes from the fact that it it’s very difficult to get a warm sound on a bright harp and that a warm sound on a mellow harp is so much warmer than on a bright harp!

Of course, this is always, as Carl said, subjective to an extreme degree. Really any of the adjectives can be applied to either the player or the instrument. HOWEVER, I find it helpful to try to stick to the spectra I outlined first in order to simplify. That being said, sometimes you just have to refer to a harpist’s sound as mellow (as Carl did) or bright and a harp as warm or dry. And don’t forget the zillions of other words you could possibly use to describe sound!

It would be interesting if there were some sort of study done to see what property of the sound waves is most often association with dryness, brightness, mellowness, etc.

~Sam

[carl-swanson]

In the end there are so many things that influence the sound, the soundboard being only one of them. The overall weight of the harp, the size and shape of the pedestal, The thickness of the body(to which the soundboard is glued), whether or not the soundboard is veneered, the harpist playing the instrument, and the room in which the harp is heard, all contribute to the sound that is heard.

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