July, 2001

Volume and Tone

As is true for many instruments, there are many ways to talk about tone color. People often speak in terms of “hard” or “soft”, for instance. These descriptions are vague and abstract, but they are close enough to convey our meaning.

Tone color is something that is unique to each player. It is also very difficult to control. It is easy to define, though, when it is good and when it is bad.

In most cases, when your volume is high (when you are blowing efficiently), your tone will be good. (Except when playing techniques like murai-iki, but that is a different issue.) If you follow my advice of playing long Otsu-no-Ro tones for ten minutes each day, your volume will gradually increase, and with it your tone will gradually improve. My point this time, however, is about what happens to your tone color when your volume is low.

Most people know that they need to keep the pitch constant throughout the end of their notes. It will do you no good to practice ending your notes so subtly it’s impossible to tell when the sound vanishes if your pitch drops at the end. What is less obvious, though, is that you also need to avoid changing your tone color at the very end of your breath. Often it will change suddenly as your breath starts to weaken. If you start out blowing energetically with good tone, but near the end of your breath your tone changes suddenly for the worse because your breath is no longer being utilized effectively, then your playing will overall sound weak and lifeless.

Next time when you play, try keeping in mind the notion of “maintaining tone color” until the very end of each breath.