The conductor at my youth orchestra recently told me to play out more, because the bassoon is more powerful than the bass clarinet, and so i would need to play "harder" in order to equal his volume. Though usually I find that I'm louder in forte/fortissimo passages, and i thought the bass clarinet was more powerful, particularly in the Chalumeau register. Which instrument is more powerful? And if it's the bassoon, then surely it stands to reason that the oboe would be more powerful than the clarinet, which it surely isn't?

Anyway, I just wondered, and would be interested to hear what people think,

Thankyou

I'm no expert, but my guess is that lower pitched things stand out more. Like when you're downstairs when someone's listening to music upstairs, its only the bass you can really hear.

Oh okay, so that would be the bassoon, unles it was a low C bass clarinet, in which case whichever instrument was playing lower at the time would stand out.

No, that's because high frequencies are more readily absorbed (by the fabric of the house). It actually requires more power to produce a low frequency sound of the same loudness as a high frequency sound (i.e. HF is MORE audible).

yeah, if you think about it, you only need one really high-pitched piccolo to cut through the sound of an entire band

Surely theres nothing more powerful than an organ with all the stops out !

and you can hear the tinkle of a triangle over the whole orchestra

Does the mechanism by which the sound is produced have an effect on the power of the instrument... e.g double reed, single reed, flute-ish blown across a hole, brass mouthpiece ?

It takes a lot of mathematics to explain the acoustic theory, but in general yes brass instruments are louder because of their way the sound is expelled, so to speak (the sound is more concentrated because almost all the sound comes out of the bell).

High instruments are more audible because the human ear is most sensitive (possibly to do with the structure of a cochlea and the three little bones in the ear) at listening to pitches around 1kHz to 5kHz, which is the treble 3rd space C onwards, so even though in terms of Watt-age they are weaker, they are still more audible. (for the interested, trombone is apparently the most powerful ORCHESTRAL instrument, capable of producing around 5 Watts of power, the the sensitivity of the ear decreases exponentially as the frequency decreases, so most of the time you hear a rumble at the very very low notes as oppose to a distinct pitch...look up acoustics in wikipedia for more info)

From a conducting point of view the intensity of the sound should be relative and like a pyramid, that is when forte is written the soprano instruments should probably play it slightly less of a forte whilst the bass instruments should bring it out a bit more, for the reasons given above.

EDIT: and yes, the organ is probably the most powerful common instrument...

I went to a prom once, with a piece by Varese for a smallish group of players, including a trombone. It's the loudest (unamplified) thing I can remember hearing - it was painful.

Chris

lol depends how hard u blow