"The Sound and me" #07 with Vincent David
A personal sound
For me, the relationship to sound is something very intimate. The beginning of all music was a personal sound. I remember the first time I blew into the instrument; this wonder, this sensation, because a sound is not only related to the ear, it's not only auditory, it's also inner sensations. It fascinated me from the outset to be able to create a sound with the breath, with the wind, with the mouthpiece, with this way of projecting sound... It's above all a feeling of well-being.
Something that connects us
Producing a sound, launching a sound into space, is something that connects us. It is something that can connect the one who makes the sound with the one who will hear it. And it's something extremely strong to not always go through understanding, intellect.
It's an immense pleasure to touch people through this soundline, this line of sound that you create with an instrument. This remains for me one of the fundamental principles of music.
Telling a story
I immediately asked myself this question, in relation to the sound, of what I wanted to do with it. Having a nice sound is all very well, but I think it's not an end in itself. In the end, a beautiful sound is a sound that touches me and speaks to me because it's vocal. So I've always been very attached, in my teaching, in my concerts and in my relationship to the music I play, to vocality.
What is vocality ? It's expressing sentences, telling a story, feelings, well-being, or also sometimes something perhaps a little more "dense", but in any case, it's a relationship to tension and easing. Vocality remains one of the main foundations of sound. Besides, in wind instruments, the first resonance is really "our" resonance, which is then transformed in the instrument. The relationship with the voice, through this projection, is something that touches me and that I think will remain the most important.
Rising spiritually
In the end, it's something very personal to me, but I think I've always made music and I still get a lot of emotion listening to music because it's something that can really lift us up from our own material and physical condition. There's something much more spiritual. The sound, when it passes through my ear, when it reaches me, despite all the culture and the knowledge that one can have of music, it's like the first time, it's like the first cry of a newborn baby, it's a very immediate, very direct relationship to life.
The sound for me represents that connection to life, and music allows you to understand that, to feel it without having to put words to it.
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