An investigation of musical timbre (original) (raw)
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The perception of musical timbre1 CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 7 T IMBRE is a misleadingly simple and vague word encompassing a very complex set of auditory attributes, as well as a plethora of psychological and musical issues. It covers many parameters of perception that are not accounted for by pitch, loudness, spatial position, duration, and various environmental characteristics such as room reverberation. This leaves a wealth of possibilities that have been explored over the last 40 years or so. We now understand timbre to have two broad characteristics that contribute to the perception of music: (1) it is a multifarious set of abstract sensory attributes, some of which are continuously varying (e.g. attack sharpness, brightness, nasality, richness), others of which are discrete or categorical (e.g., the 'blatt' at the beginning of a sforzando trombone sound or the pinched offset of a harpsichord sound), and (2) it is one of the primary perceptual vehicles for the recognition, identifi cation, and tracking over time of a sound source (singer's voice, clarinet, set of carillon bells), and thus involves the absolute categorization of a sound . The psychological approach to timbre has also included work on the musical implications of timbre as a set of formbearing dimensions in music ).
The Perception of Musical Timbre
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2015
CHAPTER 7 T IMBRE is a misleadingly simple and vague word encompassing a very complex set of auditory attributes, as well as a plethora of psychological and musical issues. It covers many parameters of perception that are not accounted for by pitch, loudness, spatial position, duration, and various environmental characteristics such as room reverberation. This leaves a wealth of possibilities that have been explored over the last 40 years or so. We now understand timbre to have two broad characteristics that contribute to the perception of music: (1) it is a multifarious set of abstract sensory attributes, some of which are continuously varying (e.g. attack sharpness, brightness, nasality, richness), others of which are discrete or categorical (e.g., the 'blatt' at the beginning of a sforzando trombone sound or the pinched offset of a harpsichord sound), and (2) it is one of the primary perceptual vehicles for the recognition, identifi cation, and tracking over time of a sound source (singer's voice, clarinet, set of carillon bells), and thus involves the absolute categorization of a sound . The psychological approach to timbre has also included work on the musical implications of timbre as a set of formbearing dimensions in music ).
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2002
This paper presents the timbre model, a signal model which has been built to better understand the relationship between the perception of timbre and the musical sounds most commonly associated with timbre. In addition, an extension to the timbre model incorporating expressions is introduced. The presented work therefore has relation to a large field of science, including auditory perception, signal processing, physical models and the acoustics of musical instruments, music expression, and other computer music research. The timbre model is based on a sinusoidal model, and it consists of a spectral envelope, frequencies, a temporal envelope and different irregularity parameters. The paper is divided into four parts: an overview of the research done on the perception of timbre, an overview of the signal processing aspects dealing with sinusoidal modeling, the timbre model, and an introduction of some expressive extensions to the timbre model.
Timbre models of musical sounds
1999
This work involves the analysis of musical instrument sounds, the creation of timbre models, the estimation of the parameters of the timbre models and the analysis of the timbre model parameters.
Timbre models of musical sounds: from the model of one sound to the model of one instrument
1999
This work involves the analysis of musical instrument sounds, the creation of timbre models, the estimation of the parameters of the timbre models and the analysis of the timbre model parameters. The timbre models are found by studying the literature of auditory perception, and by studying the gestures of music performance. Some of the important results from this work are an improved fundamental frequency estimator, a new envelope analysis method, and simple intuitive models for the sound of musical instruments. Furthermore a model for the spectral envelope is introduced in this work. A new function, the brightness creation function, is introduced in the spectral envelope model. The timbre model is used to analyze the evolution of the different timbre parameters when the fundamental frequency is changed, but also for different intensity, tempo, or style. The main results from this analysis are that brightness rises with frequency, but nevertheless the fundamental has almost all amplitude for the high notes. The attack and release times generally fall with frequency. It was found that only brightness and amplitude are affected by a change in intensity, and only the sustain and release times are affected when the tempo is changed. The different timbre models are also used for the classification of the sounds in musical instrument classes with very good results. Finally, listening tests have been performed, which assessed that the best timbre model has an acceptable sound quality.
To appear in Ergo, 2023
Along with pitch and loudness, timbre is commonly described as an audible property of sounds. This paper puts forward an alternative view - that timbres are properties of auditory media. This approach has many advantages. First, it accounts for the frequent attribution of timbres to objects that do not have characteristic sounds. Second, it explains why timbres are attributed not only to ordinary objects, like musical instruments, but also to surrounding spaces and architectural structures. And finally, it provides an original solution to the timbre-constancy problem.