Timbre - CSISWiki

5/13/16, 3:05 AM

Timbre
From CSISWiki

Contents
1 Timbre
2 Looking Ahead
3 Harmonics
4 Attack and Decay
5 Vibrato

Timbre
One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire One could probably hear it turning to marimba music
Elizabeth Bishop - The Bight
Charles Pierre Baudelaire April 9th, 1821 - August 31st 1867 believed that all colours have a sound. When he
looked at a colour he could hear music, essentially timbre.
Timbre: This is a subjective quality that enables listeners to tell the difference between two sounds of identical
pitch at the same volume. Fundamentally, it is the difference in frequency content of the sounds.
Man's fascination with the noise that comes from objects and the timbre of the first musical instruments is
conveyed by the myth of Orpheus. (Orpheus was the most famous poet and musician of the ancient world. He
played a lyre given to him by Apollo and the sound of his music had the power to enchant wild beasts and move
trees and rocks.) This can be seen in several aspects of musical history. Through time, the augmentation of
instruments has constantly changed the concept of acoustic physics.

Looking Ahead
The development of orchestration and research on the subject of timbre is moving a lot faster now. Advance in
computer technology have given us orchestral simulation, which is already being used by many students and
composers and some film music.
The primary contributors to the timbre of the sound of a musical instrument are harmonic content, attack and
decay, and vibrato. For sustained tones, the most important of these is the harmonic content, the number and
relative intensity of the upper harmonics present in the sound.

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Harmonics
In musical terms, harmonics are component pitches ("partials", "partial waves" or "constituent frequencies") of
a harmonic tone which sound at whole number multiples (x2, x3, x4,) above the named note being played on a
musical instrument. Non-integer multiples are called enharmonic overtones. It is the amplitude and placement
of harmonics (and partials in general) which give different instruments different timbre (despite not usually
being detected separately by the untrained human ear), and the separate trajectories of the overtones of two
instruments playing in unison is what allows one to perceive them as separate.

Attack and Decay

Attack (the way the sound begins) and Decay (the way the sound ends) are very important in timbre because our
auditory systems are highly sensitive to the attack and decay characteristics of a sound. For example the
important differences between speech sounds bill and will or cheat and sheet relate to differences in how
quickly sound energy increases at the onset.
Attack and decay are extremely important in timbre because if two sounds have the same pitch and volume but
start and end differently the ear will pick them up as different sounds.

Vibrato
Vibrato is a very common and well known musical effect where the pitch or frequency of a note or sound is
quickly and repeatedly raised and lowered over a small distance for the duration of that note or sound. Vibrato is
naturally present in the human voice, and is used to add expression and vocal-like qualities to instrumental
notes. It is used extensively in nearly all styles of music. In musical instruments these slight vibrations can
change the timbre of the instrument itself as different instruments vibrate differently. The primary contributors
to the timbre of the sound of a musical instrument are harmonic content, attack and decay, and vibrato. For
sustained tones, the most important of these is harmonic content, the number and relative intensity of the upper
harmonics present in the sound. In conclusion, it could be said that timbre is an important, and in our opinions, a
very interesting aspect of music. It allows us to look at music with a different view. We discovered that over all,
timbre is a combination of attack and decay, vibrato and harmonics. Sources etc.. www.google.com
www.wikipedia.com www.britannia.com www.sinauer.com/wolfe We decided on timbre to be our topic as we
had briefly studied it in our Perceptual Systems module and thought that it was one of the more unusual of the
topics that had been suggested. Firstly we gathered various pieces of information on timbre from the Internet.
When we came together to begin the project we produced the information that we had found and began drafting
ideas of the layout if the essay. We decided that we would focus the essay on three separate topics (attack and
decay, vibrato and harmonics.) After that we divided ourselves up into topics, the introduction and conclusion.

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We gathered our information from obvious sources e.g. wiki and Google. We also found some info on timbre
from www.sinauer.com/wolfe. We were already aware of this site as it is the online version of our Perceptual
Systems book Sensation and Perception which is written by Sinauer and Wolfe.
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This page was last modified on 14 June 2012, at 11:58.

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