Timbre

In music, timbre (French, IPA /'tæmb?r/ as in the first two syllables of tambourine) is the quality of a musical note or sound which distinguishes different types of sound production or musical instruments. The physical characteristics of sound which are used in the determination of timbre are spectrum and envelope with psychoacoustics or human perception also determining the perceived quality of a sound. Timbre is what, with a little practice, people use to pick out the saxophone from the trumpet in a jazz group or the flute from the violin in an orchestra, even if they are playing notes at the same pitch and amplitude (or notes which are otherwise equal). Timbre has been called the psychoacoustician's waste-basket as it can include so many factors.

Sources

• Erickson, Robert (1975). Sound Structure in Music. University of California Press. ISBN 0520023765.
• American Standards Association (1960). American Standard Acoustical Terminology. New York. Definition 12.9, Timbre, p.45.
• Luce, David A. (1963). "Physical Correlates of Nonpercussive Musical Instrument Tones", Ph.D. dissertation. MIT.
• Schouten, J. F. (1968). "The Perception of Timbre". Reports of the 6th International Congress on Acoustics, Tokyo, GP-6-2. Pp. 35-44, 90.
• Samson, Jim (1977). Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900-1920. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393021939.
• Sethares, William (2004). Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale. ISBN 354076173X.