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!