Well, I might as well step into the flames by saying that it is possible to produce a very nice sounding and very short note by stopping the note with the glottis or whatever the heck it is down there that does it. I don't really need to know what it is, but it's whatever stops the air when you say uh-oh, or ruh-roh as the case may be. That can be done without tightening any of the other muscles in the throat or neck so it doesn't really involve a lot of "throat stuff'. It's another sound in the palette. There are a lot of ways to stop the note and each way produces a different quality of sound. Louis Stout always said that staccato was a lot more about the beginning of the note than the end of the note. I remember doing a new piece for horn, percussion and dancers one time and the composer had written a bunch of notes as 32nds with a million little tiny rests after each one that made it really hard to read. I asked him why he didn't just write quarter notes with dots on them and he said "I just wanted to make sure they would sound really short". Sigh.
- Steve Mumford _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
