week 1 assignment - timbre
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Introduction to Music Production week 1 assignment - timbre.TRANSCRIPT
Timbre
Introduction to Music ProductionWeek 1 Assignment
Lindsey Grenet
Introduction
Hi, my name is Lindsey. I’m from Sydney, Australia.
For our first assignment, I have chosen to examine the concept of timbre in
more detail.
What is timbre?
In music, timbre (pronounced TAM-ber) describes the quality or character of a sound
or voice.
Timbre helps your ears distinguish one type of sound production from another. For example,
the sound of your cat from your dog.
It is also referred to as tone colour or tone quality.
What is timbre?
Timbre also helps us to differentiate instruments, even when they are
playing the same pitch at the same volume.
The flute, violin and glockenspiel can all play the same note at the same
volume but sound very different due to their timbre.
How does this work?
To understand timbre, we need to have a look at the property of sound it is
related to:
Frequency: the amount of repeated sound waves produced in
one second
FrequencyEach repetition of a waveform is called a
cycle
Frequency measures cycles per second or Hertz (Hz) per second
Frequency
Human hearing ranges roughly:
20 Hz – 20,000 Hz or 20Khz
FrequencyIn music, we hear changes in
frequency as changes in the pitch.
A high pitched note will have a greater number of sound wave repetitions per second than a lower pitched
note.
Frequency
More repetitions per second = higher frequency
How can we measure timbre?
First, the instrument or voice needs to produce a sound.
instruments or voices play or sing a note and create a vibration
this vibration is energy at multiple frequencies occurring simultaneously
The fundamental
The frequency with the slowest rate is called the fundamental. It is also
heard the loudest.
Harmonics
The other frequencies are either harmonics, overtones or
enharmonics.
Harmonics
The example from our lesson in ‘Visualising Sound’ helps us
understand the relationship between the fundamental and the harmonics
or, what we call notes in the harmonic series.
Harmonics
Using a saw tooth wave, we can see that timbre is shown as peaks at a number of
frequencies in the spectrum analyser
db
Hz
Harmonics
This peak is the fundamental
Harmonics
These peaks are called harmonics. Each harmonic is an integer multiple of the fundamental.
db
Hz
Harmonics
If the fundamental here was 25Hz, the frequencies of the harmonics would be 50Hz, 75Hz, 100Hz etc
(The harmonics become harder to hear the higher they go, which is why the peaks get shorter in this
graph)
Harmonics
Every sound we hear has a different combination of a fundamental
frequency and notes in the harmonic series, which gives each sound a
unique timbre.
How do we describe tone colour?
When listening to a voice or instrument, we can use words to describe how they sound.
For example, the voicesof the Simpsons characters:
Marge: raspy, scratchyBart: bright, clearHomer: warm, round
Listening examples
You can also use describing words for instruments of the orchestra.
For example:Piccolo: bright, shrillFlute: light, airyOboe: warm, nasal
Listen to these woodwind instrument excerpts and have
a go at describing the tone colour of each
Why is timbre important in music?
Composers have many instruments to choose from in their compositions.
Each instrument can be used to portray different emotions and moods.
A carefully chosen instrument can really enhance a piece of music.
Conclusion
Timbre in music is a broad concept that can be examined both scientifically, in analysis, and
subjectively, in the way we hear it.
We have only scratched the surface, so feel free to do your own research into this vast and
interesting component of sound.
Thank you for your time and efforts in marking this assignment!