There is a fine line here between timbre and dynamics. These entries in particular are touching, and indicate the importance of unique timbres and how they signify critical relationships in our lives. Stationary instrumental groups are placed around the audience and successively play sounds of the same pitch and timbre with similar dynamic envelopes crescendo-decrescendo. The perceptual dimensions underlying similarity judgments between pairs of timbres are based on the amplitude pattern of the spectra.
Can this unification include timbre so that the inner characteristics of its sounds affect the structure of a piece? These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors. What is the pronunciation of timbre? Browse tilting. Test your vocabulary with our fun image quizzes. Image credits. Word of the Day have a heart of gold.
Blog Outsets and onsets! Read More. November 08, To top. English American Examples. Sign up for free and get access to exclusive content:. It has to do with the frequency spectrum and envelope of each instrument. The frequency spectrum is what makes each wave different, due to the harmonics that accompany each wave. To learn more about Hertz and pitch in music, check out our article here. However, there are other frequencies that can be heard very faintly besides the fundamental, and these are called harmonics.
The frequency spectrum of a note played by a specific instrument shows how loud or soft the harmonics are. This video plays a low A note from different instruments, and notice how on the right side of the graph different lines show up at different times. These are the harmonics, and try to listen to what a note sounds like with more harmonics or fewer. The envelope of a note details the loudness or amplitude of the note over time.
The attack of a note is how quickly the note gets to peak loudness, starting from when the instrument first plays it. The decay time is fast, and the sustain level remains constant until the note is released—a recognisable piano envelope.
Playing the piano recording backwards reverses the envelope structure. Each note has a gradual increase towards its maximum amplitude, then an abrupt drop to silence.
The frequency distribution and intensity of each note is the same in both directions, but the backward timbre is completely different. The resonant frequencies in the recording are emphasized and the reversed piano hammer introduces a strange, flickering texture. The human voice is one of the most recognizable sounds around us.
We rely on the timbral characteristics of a voice to determine gender and age and to pick out the familiar voices of friends and family in crowded spaces. Connecting timbral characteristics of the voice with frequencies is an essential skill for for recording, producing and mixing. The emotional transformation of a song is reliant on changes in vocal timbre. To make a chorus sound more energetic, a vocalist will sing softly and in a lower register during a verse for contrast.
This style of singing in the verse produces a dark or mellow timbre. In the spectrogram of the chorus vocal below, harmonic intensity remains high until 5 kHz, whereas verse harmonics begin to taper off around 2 kHz. There is more high frequency information in the 7—12 kHz range here too. No voice can properly sit in a mix without a bit of enhancement.
With a careful selection of effects we can improve the timbre of the voice without changing its natural character too much. I applied a few EQ cuts where the vocal was too sharp, and added in light compression and pitch correction. The vocal sounds livier while staying true to the original performance. A familiarity with timbre in music gives us a deeper understanding of common studio effects like distortion, filtering and EQ, as well as how to synthesize new sounds.
Use the spectrogram in Insight 2 to analyze the timbre of interesting sounds and instruments and learn what makes them sound unique. This will greatly improve your critical listening skills and improve the songs you work on. Learn what headroom is, why it's important in both mixing and mastering, and how it ties in to the related concept of crest factor. What is metering in the mixing and mastering process?
We examine metering tools as they relate to levels, frequency content, stereo spread, and dynamic range. Browse the best gifts for musicians in to find the perfect gift for the musician in your life including home recording equipment, music production software, and more.
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