At 6:57 PM 02/20/03, Michael Cook wrote: >Which of the two words do you consider to be connected with amplitude >modulation? I'm used to both terms being connected with frequency, >"vibrato" being a small regular fluctuation in pitch (= frequency), >and "wobble" being an excessive or uncontrolled vibrato.
In my experience, "vibrato" always refers to fluctuation in pitch. "Wobble" is used with less precision. Often it is used to describe an excessive vibrato, exactly as you describe. But because "wobble" has a negative connotation, it is applied carelessly to any sort of fluctuating sound that the listener dislikes, and as often as not that is a fluctuation in amplitude. In my experience, casual listeners don't always hear the difference. That is, what they perceive to be a widening of the vibrato is in fact an widening in the amplitude modulation. Because this corresponds with the actual vibrato, the listener thinks that the vibrato has widened. In fact the vibrato itself has remained unchanged, but it has become more noticeable in that it is being reinforced by a greater volume on one side of the cycle and lesser volume on the other. A similar misconception accompanies the sort of bleating sound that some singers make due to excessive tension in the vocal musculature. This is a fast amplitude modulation, but it is often characterized by listeners as a "tight vibrato". In a discussion of aesthetics, all of this is fine. A listener can so, "Yuck, that singer has a wobble and I don't like it," and there's no problem if he doesn't know exactly what that wobble is. If another person follows along with the assumption that wobble is synonymous with widened vibrato, he might draw erroneous conclusions about vocal technique and/or physics. I've seen conversations follow this path numerous times. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
