I took David's comment to be less about the actual earbuds than about the effect of cutting all that extraneous lushness and beauty out of the horn sound with the side effect of hearing some unexpected things. I noticed something like that a few years ago playing with earplugs. I couldn't hear my tone very well, but I started noticing I could really hear the quality of the attacks. I started noticing that they were not exactly what I might have hoped for. Anyway, it made for kind of a nice cheap self diagnostic tool for working on attacks, although my tomatoes are still killer.
- Steve Mumford David G wrote: I used to write here about the joys of playing along with song collection books that have piano or orchestra accompaniment on CD. I mp3'd some of these accompaniments for portability. Lately, I began to use them with noise-isolating earbuds, so as to not fill up my house with loud piano playing, only loud horn playing. These earbuds (Scosche, pretty good quality) eliminate most of the horn sound, so the volume setting for the accompaniment doesn't have to be so high. But the timbre of the horn seems very much stripped down - I might as well be playing a tin can. This simplified sound though makes it easier to hear certain qualities other than stunning lush tone <humor>, like intonation and quality of entrances. The experience is a little like wearing earplugs when you have to play in a dangerously loud environment, except for the accompaniment sound that you want to come through. Has anyone here experimented with this kind of isolation, find it useful, unuseful? David G. _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
