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Timbre
In music, timbre (/ˈtæmbər, ˈtɪm-, ˈtæ̃ -/), also known as tone
color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the
perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or tone.
Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such
as choir voices and musical instruments. It also enables
listeners to distinguish different instruments in the same
category (e.g., an oboe and a clarinet, both woodwind
instruments).
Spectrogram of the first second of an
E9 suspended chord played on a
In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical
Fender Stratocaster guitar. Below is
instrument or human voice have a different sound from the E9 suspended chord audio:
another, even when they play or sing the same note. For
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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 distinctively with its own unique tone color. Experienced musicians are able to distinguish
between different instruments of the same type based on their varied timbres, even if those
instruments are playing notes at the same fundamental pitch and loudness.
The physical characteristics of sound that determine the perception of timbre include frequency
spectrum and envelope. Singers and instrumental musicians can change the timbre of the music
they are singing/playing by using different singing or playing techniques. For example, a violinist
can use different bowing styles or play on different parts of the string to obtain different timbres
(e.g., playing sul tasto produces a light, airy timbre, whereas playing sul ponticello produces a
harsh, even and aggressive tone). On electric guitar and electric piano, performers can change the
timbre using effects units and graphic equalizers.
Synonyms
Tone quality and tone color are synonyms for timbre, as well as the "texture attributed to a single
instrument". However, the word texture can also refer to the type of music, such as multiple,
interweaving melody lines versus a singable melody accompanied by subordinate chords.
Hermann von Helmholtz used the German Klangfarbe (tone color), and John Tyndall proposed an
English translation, clangtint, but both terms were disapproved of by Alexander Ellis, who also
discredits register and color for their pre-existing English meanings.[1] Determined by its
frequency composition, the sound of a musical instrument may be described with words such as
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bright, dark, warm, harsh, and other terms. There are also colors of noise, such as pink and white.
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.
ASA definition
The Acoustical 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 and pitch, are dissimilar",
adding, "Timbre depends primarily upon the frequency spectrum, although it also depends upon
the sound pressure and the temporal characteristics of the sound".[3]
Attributes
Many commentators have attempted to decompose timbre into component attributes. For
example, J. F. Schouten (1968, 42) describes the "elusive attributes of timbre" as "determined by at
least five major acoustic parameters", which Robert Erickson finds, "scaled to the concerns of
much contemporary music":[4]
1. Range between tonal and noiselike character
2. Spectral envelope
3. Time envelope in terms of rise, duration, and decay (ADSR, which stands for "attack, decay,
sustain, release")
4. Changes both of spectral envelope (formant-glide) and fundamental frequency (micro-
intonation)
5. Prefix, or onset of a sound, quite dissimilar to the ensuing lasting vibration
An example of a tonal sound is a musical sound that has a definite pitch, such as pressing a key on
a piano; a sound with a noiselike character would be white noise, the sound similar to that
produced when a radio is not tuned to a station.
Erickson gives a table of subjective experiences and related physical phenomena based on
Schouten's five attributes:[5]
Subjective Objective
Tonal character, usually pitched Periodic sound
Noisy, with or without some tonal Noise, including random pulses characterized by the
character, including rustle noise 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
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See also Psychoacoustic evidence below.
Harmonics
The richness of a sound or note a musical instrument produces
is sometimes described in terms of a sum of a number of
distinct frequencies. The lowest frequency is called the
fundamental 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 Harmonic spectrum
fundamental frequency. For example, the dominant frequency
for the transverse flute is double the fundamental frequency.
Other significant frequencies are called overtones of the fundamental frequency, which may
include harmonics and partials. Harmonics are whole number multiples of the fundamental
frequency, such as ×2, ×3, ×4, etc. Partials are other overtones. There are also sometimes
subharmonics at whole number divisions of the fundamental frequency. Most instruments produce
harmonic sounds, but many instruments produce partials and inharmonic tones, such as cymbals
and other indefinite-pitched instruments.
When the tuning note in an orchestra or concert 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 that just intonation and the western equal tempered scale are related to the
harmonic spectra/timbre of many western instruments in an analogous way that the inharmonic
timbre of the Thai renat (a xylophone-like instrument) is related to the seven-tone near-equal
tempered pelog scale in which they are tuned. Similarly, the inharmonic spectra of Balinese
metallophones combined with harmonic instruments such as the stringed rebab or the voice, are
related to the five-note near-equal tempered slendro scale commonly found in Indonesian gamelan
music.[6]
Envelope
The timbre of a sound is also greatly affected by the following
aspects of its envelope: attack time and characteristics, decay,
sustain, release (ADSR envelope) and transients. Thus these
are all common controls on professional synthesizers. For
instance, if one takes away the attack from the sound of a piano
or trumpet, it becomes more difficult to identify the sound
A signal and its envelope marked
correctly, since the sound of the hammer hitting the strings or
with red
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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.
In music history
Instrumental timbre played an increasing role in the practice of orchestration during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Berlioz[7] and Wagner[8] made significant contributions to its
development during the nineteenth century. For example, Wagner's "Sleep motif" from Act 3 of his
opera Die Walküre, features a descending chromatic 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).
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Wagner Sleep music from Act 3 of
Die Walküre
Wagner Sleep music from Act 3 of Die Walküre
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 in
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune the color of flute and harp functions referentially".[9] Mahler's
approach to orchestration illustrates the increasing role of differentiated timbres in music of the
early twentieth century. Norman Del Mar describes the following passage from the Scherzo
movement of his Sixth Symphony, as
"a seven-bar link to the trio consisting of an extension in diminuendo of the repeated As ...
though now rising in a succession of piled octaves which moreover leap-frog with Cs added
to the As.[10] The lower octaves then drop away and only the Cs remain so as to dovetail with
the first oboe phrase of the trio."
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:
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Mahler, Symphony No. 6, Scherzo,
Figure 55, bars 5–12
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Mahler, Symphony No. 6, Scherzo, Figure 55, bars 5–12
(See also Klangfarbenmelodie.)
In rock music from the late 1960s to the 2000s, the timbre of specific sounds is important to a
song. For example, in heavy metal music, the sonic impact of the heavily amplified, heavily
distorted power chord played on electric guitar through very loud guitar amplifiers and rows of
speaker cabinets is an essential part of the style's musical identity.
Psychoacoustic evidence
Often, listeners can identify an instrument, even at different pitches and loudness, in different
environments, and with different players. In the case of the clarinet, acoustic analysis shows
waveforms irregular enough to suggest three instruments rather than one. David Luce suggests
that this implies that
"[C]ertain strong regularities in the acoustic waveform of the above instruments must exist
which are invariant with respect to the above variables".[11]
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 of subjective
constancy from studies of vision and visual 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 a multidimensional scaling
algorithm to aggregate their dissimilarity judgments into a timbre space. The most consistent
outcomes from such experiments are that brightness or spectral energy distribution,[13] and the
bite, or rate and synchronicity[14] and rise time,[15] of the attack are important factors.
Tristimulus timbre model
The concept of tristimulus 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 of harmonics 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,
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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]
However, more evidence, studies and applications would be needed regarding this type of
representation, in order to validate it.
Brightness
The term "brightness" is also used in discussions of sound timbres, in a rough analogy with visual
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 the spectral centroid.
See also
Formant
Footnotes
1. Erickson 1975, p. 7.
2. Abbado, Adriano (1988). "Perceptual Correspondences: Animation and Sound". MS Thesis.
Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. p. 3.
3. Acoustical Society of America Standards Secretariat (1994). "Acoustical Terminology ANSI
S1.1–1994 (ASA 111-1994)". American National Standard. ANSI / Acoustical Society of
America.
4. Erickson 1975, p. 5.
5. Erickson 1975, p. 6.
6. Sethares, William (1998). Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale]. Berlin, London, and New York:
Springer. pp. 6 (https://books.google.com/books?id=KChoKKhjOb0C&pg=PA6), 211 (https://bo
oks.google.com/books?id=KChoKKhjOb0C&pg=PA211), 318 (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=KChoKKhjOb0C&pg=PA318). ISBN 3-540-76173-X.
7. Macdonald, Hugh. (1969). Berlioz Orchestral Music. BBC Music Guides. London: British
Broadcasting Corporation. p. 51. ISBN 9780563084556.
8. Latham, Peter. (1926) "Wagner: Aesthetics and Orchestration". Gramophone (June): .
9. Samson, Jim (1977). Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900–
1920. New York City: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-02193-9.
10. Del Mar, Norman (1980). Mahler’s Sixth Symphony: A Study. London: Eulenburg.
11. Luce, David A. (1963). "Physical Correlates of Nonpercussive Musical Instrument Tones",
Ph.D. dissertation. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
12. Erickson 1975, p. 11.
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13. Grey, John M. (1977). "Multidimensional perceptual scaling of musical timbres". The Journal of
the Acoustical Society of America. 61 (5). Acoustical Society of America (ASA): 1270–1277.
Bibcode:1977ASAJ...61.1270G (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1977ASAJ...61.1270G).
doi:10.1121/1.381428 (https://doi.org/10.1121%2F1.381428). ISSN 0001-4966 (https://search.
worldcat.org/issn/0001-4966). PMID 560400 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/560400).
14. Wessel, David (1979). "Low Dimensional Control of Musical Timbre". Computer Music Journal
3:45–52. Rewritten version, 1999, as "Timbre Space as a Musical Control Structure (http://medi
atheque.ircam.fr/articles/textes/Wessel78a/)".
15. Lakatos, Stephen (2000). "A common perceptual space for harmonic and percussive timbres"
(https://doi.org/10.3758%2Fbf03212144). Perception & Psychophysics. 62 (7). Springer
Science and Business Media LLC: 1426–1439. doi:10.3758/bf03212144 (https://doi.org/10.375
8%2Fbf03212144). ISSN 0031-5117 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0031-5117).
PMID 11143454 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11143454). S2CID 44778763 (https://api.sem
anticscholar.org/CorpusID:44778763).
16. Peeters, G. (2003) “A Large Set of Audio Features or Sound Description (Similarity and
Classification) in the CUIDADO Project (http://recherche.ircam.fr/anasyn/peeters/ARTICLES/P
eeters_2003_cuidadoaudiofeatures.pdf)”.
17. Pollard, H. F., and E. V. Jansson (1982) A Tristimulus Method for the Specification of Musical
Timbre. Acustica 51:162–71.
References
American Standards Association (1960). American Standard Acoustical Terminology. New
York: American Standards Association.
Dixon Ward, W. (1965). "Psychoacoustics (https://books.google.com/books?id=XNVsAAAAMA
AJ&q=timbre+wastebasket)". In Audiometry: Principles and Practices, edited by Aram Glorig,
55. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Co. Reprinted, Huntington, N.Y.: R. E. Krieger Pub. Co.,
1977. ISBN 0-88275-604-4.
Dixon Ward, W. (1970) "Musical Perception". In Foundations of Modern Auditory Theory vol. 1,
edited by Jerry V. Tobias, . New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-691901-1.
Erickson, Robert (1975). Sound Structure in Music (https://books.google.com/books?id=t3j6_S
hXeWYC). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-02376-5.
McAdams, Stephen, and Albert Bregman (1979). "Hearing Musical Streams". Computer Music
Journal 3, no. 4 (December): 26–43, 60.
Schouten, J. F. (1968). "The Perception of Timbre". In Reports of the 6th International
Congress on Acoustics, Tokyo, GP-6-2, 6 vols., edited by Y. Kohasi, 35–44, 90. Tokyo:
Maruzen; Amsterdam: Elsevier.
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