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In music,timbre (/ˈtæmbər,ˈtɪm-,ˈtæ̃-/), also known astone color ortone quality (frompsychoacoustics), is the perceived sound of amusical note, sound ortone. Timbre distinguishes sounds according to their source, such as choir voices and musical instruments. It also enables listeners to distinguish instruments in the same category (e.g., anoboe and aclarinet, bothwoodwinds).
In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical instrument or human voice have a different sound from another, even when they play or sing the same note. For instance, it is the difference in sound between a guitar and a piano playing the same note at the same volume. Both instruments can sound equally tuned in relation to each other as they play the same note, and while playing at the same amplitude level each instrument will still sound distinctive with its own unique tone color. Musicians distinguish instruments based on their varied timbres, even instruments playing notes at the samepitch and volume.[citation needed]
The physical characteristics that govern timbre includefrequency spectrum andenvelope.
Musicians can change timbre by modifying their singing/playing techniques. For example, a violinist can use different bowing styles or bow on different parts of the string. E.g., playingsul tasto produces a light, airy timbre, whereassul ponticello produces a harsh, even, and aggressive timbre. On electric guitar and electric piano, performers can change timbre usingeffects units andgraphic equalizers.
Tone quality andtone color are synonyms fortimbre, as well as the "texture attributed to a single instrument". However, the wordtexture can also refer to thearrangement/composition, such asmultiple, interweaving melody lines versusa singable melody accompanied by subordinate chords.Hermann von Helmholtz used the GermanKlangfarbe (tone color), andJohn Tyndall proposed an English translation,clangtint, but both terms were disapproved of byAlexander Ellis, who also discreditsregister andcolor for their pre-existing English meanings.[1] Determined by its frequency composition, the sound of a musical instrument may be described with words such asbright,dark,warm,harsh, and other terms. There are alsocolors of noise, such aspink andwhite. In visual representations of sound, timbre corresponds to the shape of the image,[2] while loudness corresponds to brightness; pitch corresponds to the y-shift of the spectrogram.
TheAcoustical Society of America (ASA) Acoustical Terminology definition 12.09 of timbre describes it as "that attribute of auditory sensation which enables a listener to judge that two nonidentical sounds, similarly presented and having the same loudness andpitch, are dissimilar", adding, "Timbre depends primarily upon thefrequency spectrum, although it also depends upon the sound pressure and the temporal characteristics of the sound".[3]
Many commentators have decomposed timbre into component attributes. For example, Schouten described the "elusive attributes of timbre" as "determined by at least five major acoustic parameters", whichRobert Erickson found encompassed much contemporary music:[4]
An example of a tonal sound is a musical sound that has a definite pitch, such as pressing a key on a piano; one sound with a noiselike character iswhite noise.
Erickson offered a table of subjective experiences and related physical phenomena based on the attributes:[5]
| Subjective | Objective |
|---|---|
| Tonal character, usually pitched | Periodic sound |
| Noisy, with or without some tonal character, includingrustle noise | Noise, including random pulses characterized by the rustle time (the mean interval between pulses) |
| Coloration | Spectral envelope |
| Beginning/ending | Physical rise and decay time |
| Coloration glide or formant glide | Change of spectral envelope |
| Microintonation | Small change (one up and down) in frequency |
| Vibrato | Frequency modulation |
| Tremolo | Amplitude modulation |
| Attack | Prefix |
| Final sound | Suffix |
See alsoPsychoacoustic evidence below.
The richness of a sound or note a musical instrument produces is sometimes described in terms of a sum of a number of distinctfrequencies. The lowest frequency is called thefundamental frequency, and the pitch it produces is used to name the note, but the fundamental frequency is not always the dominant frequency. The dominant frequency is the frequency that is most heard, and it is always a multiple of the fundamental frequency. For example, the dominant frequency for thetransverse flute is double the fundamental frequency. Other significant frequencies are calledovertones of the fundamental frequency, which may includeharmonics andpartials. Harmonics arewhole number multiples of the fundamental frequency, such as ×2, ×3, ×4, etc. Partials are other overtones. There are also sometimessubharmonics at whole numberdivisions of the fundamental frequency. Most instruments produce harmonic sounds, but many instruments produce partials andinharmonic tones, such as cymbals and otherindefinite-pitched instruments.
When thetuning note in anorchestra orconcert band is played, the sound is a combination of 440 Hz, 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, 1760 Hz and so on. Each instrument in the orchestra or concert band produces a different combination of these frequencies, as well as harmonics and overtones. The sound waves of the different frequencies overlap and combine, and the balance of these amplitudes is a major factor in the characteristic sound of each instrument.
William Sethares wrote thatjust intonation and the westernequal temperedscale are related to the harmonicspectra/timbre of many western instruments in an analogous way that the inharmonic timbre of theThai renat (a xylophone-like instrument) is related to the seven-tone near-equal temperedpelog scale in which they are tuned. Similarly, the inharmonic spectra ofBalinese metallophones combined with harmonic instruments such as the stringedrebab or the voice, are related to the five-note near-equal temperedslendro scale commonly found in Indonesiangamelan music.[6]
The timbre of a sound is also greatly affected by the following aspects of itsenvelope: attack time and characteristics, decay, sustain, release (ADSR envelope) andtransients. Thus these are all common controls on professionalsynthesizers. For instance, if one takes away the attack from the sound of a piano or trumpet, it becomes more difficult to identify the sound correctly, since the sound of the hammer hitting the strings or the first blast of the player's lips on the trumpet mouthpiece are highly characteristic of those instruments. The envelope is the overall amplitude structure of a sound.
Instrumental timbre played an increasing role in the practice oforchestration during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Berlioz[7] andWagner[8] made significant contributions to its development during the nineteenth century. For example, Wagner's "Sleep motif" from Act 3 of his operaDie Walküre, features a descendingchromatic scale that passes through a gamut of orchestral timbres. First the woodwind (flute, followed by oboe), then the massed sound of strings with the violins carrying the melody, and finally the brass (French horns).
Debussy, who composed during the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries, has been credited with elevating further the role of timbre: "To a marked degree the music of Debussy elevates timbre to an unprecedented structural status; already inPrélude à l'après-midi d'un faune thecolor offlute andharp functions referentially".[9]Mahler's approach toorchestration illustrates the increasing role of differentiated timbres in music of the early twentieth century.Norman Del Mar describes the following passage from theScherzo movement of hisSixth Symphony, as
During these bars, Mahler passes the repeated notes through a gamut of instrumental colors, mixed and single: starting with horns and pizzicato strings, progressing through trumpet, clarinet, flute, piccolo and finally, oboe:
(See alsoKlangfarbenmelodie.)
Inrock music from the late 1960s to the 2000s, the timbre of specific sounds is important to a song. For example, inheavy metal music, the sonic impact of the heavily amplified, heavily distortedpower chord played on electric guitar through very loud guitar amplifiers and rows ofspeaker cabinets is an essential part of the style's musical identity.
Often, listeners can identify an instrument, even at different pitches and loudness, in different environments, and with different players. In the case of theclarinet, acoustic analysis shows waveforms irregular enough to suggest three instruments rather than one. David Luce suggests that this implies that
However, Robert Erickson argues that there are few regularities and they do not explain our "...powers of recognition and identification." He suggests borrowing the concept ofsubjective constancy from studies of vision andvisual perception.[12]
Psychoacoustic experiments from the 1960s onwards tried to elucidate the nature of timbre. One method involves playing pairs of sounds to listeners, then using amultidimensional scaling algorithm to aggregate their dissimilarity judgments into a timbre space. The most consistent outcomes from such experiments are thatbrightness or spectral energy distribution,[13] and thebite, or rate and synchronicity[14] and rise time,[15] of the attack are important factors.
The concept oftristimulus originates in the world of color, describing the way three primary colors can be mixed together to create a given color. By analogy, the musical tristimulus measures the mixture ofharmonics in a given sound, grouped into three sections. It is basically a proposal of reducing a huge number of sound partials, which can amount to dozens or hundreds in some cases, down to only three values. The first tristimulus measures the relative weight of the first harmonic; the second tristimulus measures the relative weight of the second, third, and fourth harmonics taken together; and the third tristimulus measures the relative weight of all the remaining harmonics:[16][17][page needed]
However, more evidence, studies and applications would be needed regarding this type of representation, in order to validate it.
The term "brightness" is also used in discussions of sound timbres, in a rough analogy withvisual brightness. Timbre researchers consider brightness to be one of the perceptually strongest distinctions between sounds[14] and formalize it acoustically as an indication of the amount of high-frequency content in a sound, using a measure such as thespectral centroid.
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