The sound quality of a voice or musical instrument, which depends on the prominence or otherwise of upper harmonics (partials) in the notes produced. The timbre of a flute or recorder, for example, is weak in upper harmonics compared with that of the much brighter violin or trumpet. The clanging sound of a bell results from the number and strength of upper partials which are not concordant with the fundamental.
timbre), (IPA /'tæmbəɹ/ as in the first two syllables of tambourine, or /'tɪmbəɹ/, like timber), is the quality of a musical note or sound that distinguishes different types of sound production or musical instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that mediate the perception of timbre include spectrum and envelope.For example, timbre is what, with a little practice, people use to distinguish the saxophone from the trumpet in a jazz group, even if both instruments are playing notes at the same pitch and amplitude. Timbre has been called the psychoacoustician's multidimensional wastebasket category as it can denote many apparently unrelated aspects of a sound.
Colors of the optical spectrum are not generally explicitly associated with particular sounds. Rather, the sound of an instrument may be described with words like "warm" or "harsh" or other terms, perhaps suggesting that tone color has more in common with the sense of touch than of sight.
American Standards Association definition
The American Standards Association defines timbre as "[...] that attribute of sensation in terms of which a listener can judge that two sounds having the same loudness and pitch are dissimilar". A note to the 1960 definition (p.45) adds that "timbre depends primarily upon the spectrum of the stimulus, but it also depends upon the waveform, the sound pressure, the frequency location of the spectrum, and the temporal characteristics of the stimulus."
Spectra
The richness of a sound or note produced by a musical instrument is due to the combination of a number of distinct frequencies. Most western instruments produce harmonic sounds, but many instruments produce partials and inharmonic tones.
When the orchestral tuning note is played, the sound is a combination of 440 Hz, 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, 1760 Hz and so on.
The fundamental is not necessarily the strongest component of the overall sound.
It is possible to add artificial 'subharmonics' to the sound using electronic effects but, again, this does not affect the naming of the note.
William Sethares (2004) wrote that just intonation and the western equal tempered scale derive from the harmonic spectra/timbre of most western instruments.
Envelope
The timbre of a sound is also greatly affected by the following factors: attack or interonset interval, decay, sustain, release and transients. For instance, if one takes away the attack from the sound of a piano or trumpet, it becomes more difficult to identify the sound correctly, since the sound of the hammer hitting the strings or the first blat of the player's lips are highly characteristic of those instruments.
In music
Timbre is often cited as one of the fundamental aspects of music.
Erickson (ibid, p.6) gives a table of subjective experiences and related physical phenomena based on Schouten's five attributes:
| Subjective | Objective |
| Tonal character, usually pitched | Periodic sound |
| Noisy, with or without some tonal character, including rustle noise | Noise, including random pulses characterized by the rustle time (the mean interval between pulses) |
| Coloration | Spectral envelope |
| Beginning/ending | Physical rise and decay time |
| Coloration glide or formant glide | Change of spectral envelope |
| Microintonation | Small change (one up and down) in frequency |
| Vibrato | Frequency modulation |
| Tremolo | Amplitude modulation |
| Attack | Prefix |
| Final sound | Suffix |
Often listeners are able to identify the kind of instrument even across "conditions of changing pitch and loudness, in different environments and with different players." (Erickson 1975, p.11)
Spelling
Though "timber" is accepted, the correct term and most often used spelling is "timbre" to distinguish the word from timber (meaning "wood").
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