Awhile back, I had the opportunity to play with my old stand partner from college. Both of our natural tone colors had changed, but our tones melded together so we sounded as one, within seconds.
There are several ways to meld your tone colors. Here are two.
The Natural Way
It takes a few months. As you play with a group, you will all eventually come to a consensus on tone color. It requires everyone to do a good job of listening to each other, so sometimes it can take longer than a few months.
On a side note, this is why it’s important for you to play duets with your teacher. Your tone color ends up automatically matching hers during the duets and you learn a lot about tone by matching her.
Matching Tone Color On Purpose
First chair has priority on dictating tone color. She shouldn’t have to say anything, everyone else should try to match her. She also has the right to change the tone color based on the song.
Let’s say the first chair’s natural tone color is sunshine yellow and yours is blue velvet. You can use this method to change yours to sunshine yellow. It might not be the same exact sunshine yellow, but it will be close enough.
Another Idea
One time I went to the Omaha Symphony and the flutes were doing a lovely soli. They had perfect intonation and matched each others’ tone color perfectly. They sounded like one person.
The next time through the melody, the clarinets joined in. The flutes changed their tone color to allow for the clarinets. Rather than flutes and clarinets playing together, they were “team woodwind.”
I knew exactly how they did it, it had just never occured to me to blend in that way. It was powerful.
This is a somewhat advanced skill, but it’s important to understand and be able to implement. I hope these ideas help.