Timbre

In music, timbre (/ˈtæmbər/ TAM-bər, 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, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. It also enables listeners to distinguish different instruments in the same category (e.g., an oboe and a clarinet, both woodwind instruments). The physical characteristics of sound that determine the perception of timbre include 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. In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical sound have a different sound from another. 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 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. 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 (Erickson 1975, 7). The sound of a musical instrument may be described with words such as 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 (Abbado 1988, 3), while loudness corresponds to brightness; pitch corresponds to the y-shift of the spectrogram. 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' (Acoustical Society of America Standards Secretariat 1994). Timbre has been called '...the psychoacoustician's multidimensional waste-basket category for everything that cannot be labeled pitch or loudness.' (McAdams and Bregman 1979, 34; cf. Dixon Ward 1965, 55 and Tobias 1970, 409). 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 (1975, 5) finds, 'scaled to the concerns of much contemporary music': 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.