Unit 5-1: Timbre & Sound Properties

Lesson Objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

Define the basic properties of a sound, including amplitude, frequency, sound envelope, and timbre, and describe how changing these properties affects what we hear and how we perceive music.
Explain the relationship between harmonics, overtones, and timbre, and why different instruments playing the same pitch sound different.
Analyze and compare musical excerpts and spectrograms using a sound visualization tool, such as Sonic Visualiser, to describe timbral differences in music.

Preparation for Class

Read:

Timbre (Robin Armstrong, GlobalMusix)
Timbre (Wikipedia)

Watch

Amplitude, Envelopes, Frequency, & Timbre
(Breklee Online, 7 mins) - Just watch from 0:05–6:54.

What makes instruments sound different?
(Drew Lytle, 3 mins) Just watch from 0:00–2:55.

Spectrograms: An Introduction
(National Music Centre, 3 mins)

Spectrograms: Instruments and Timbre
(National Music Centre, 3 mins)

Explore

Work with a Live Sound Wave: Try out this virtual oscilloscope. Sing tones and try manipulating your voice to see how changes affects the sound wave in real time.

This is a screenshot of the virtual oscilloscope tool.

Try out an Oscillator: Click the square, sawtooth, sine, or square wave figures and drag up and down to change the sounds.

This is a screenshot of the oscillator tool.

Explore Harmonics: Manipulate the harmonics of different pitches to hear how each change affects what you hear.

This is a screenshot of the harmonics tool.

Build a Sound: Manipulate sound properties with this tone generator to see how different changes affect what you hear.

This is a screenshot of the Build a Sound tool.

Experiment with a Spectrogram. See what different instruments and everyday sounds look like in real time in a spectrogram. You can also upload audio or record your own voice. Alternatively, this tool includes killer whale songs and sirens.

This is a screenshot of the Spectrogram tool.

Download a Sound Analysis Tool (optional). A popular tool in music theory analysis is Sonic Visualiser. It's open-source, works on both Mac PC, and has multiple tools for visualizing and annotating sound waves and spectrograms. You can record directly or upload audio files. Free plugins are available for more powerful sound analysis.

This is a screenshot of the Sonic Visualizer tool.

Study Aids

(click for additional study materials)

Amplitude and Pitch
(Image Credit: Adobe Image Library)

This is a graphic illustrating the concepts of amplitude and pitch in sound waves, with visual comparisons of low and high amplitudes as well as low and high frequencies. * Amplitude Section (Left Half): Two waveforms show examples of sound waves with different amplitudes: The first waveform, on the far left, is blue with a small vertical distance between the peaks and troughs, labeled "Amplitude" with an arrow indicating the height of the wave. Below this waveform is the caption "Low Amplitude - Quiet Sound" in blue text, indicating that smaller amplitude waves produce quieter sounds. The second waveform, next to it, is red with taller peaks and deeper troughs, also labeled with an arrow indicating the "Amplitude." The caption below reads "High Amplitude - Loud Sound" in red text, showing that greater amplitude results in louder sounds. * Pitch Section (Right Half): Two waveforms illustrate differences in frequency: The first waveform is blue with wide, gently rolling waves. It is labeled with a horizontal arrow marked "1 second" to show the duration of one wave cycle. The caption underneath reads "Low Frequency - Low Pitch - Low Sound," indicating that lower frequency waves (fewer cycles per second) produce lower-pitched sounds. The second waveform is red with closely packed waves, showing a much higher frequency. This waveform is also labeled with a "1 second" horizontal arrow to represent the time for multiple cycles. The caption below states "High Frequency - High Pitch - High Sound," explaining that higher frequencies result in higher-pitched sounds.

Oscilloscope Traces for Various Instruments
(Image Credit: Kaitlin Bove.com)

This is a diagram showing oscilloscope traces for various instruments and vocal ranges, visualizing the sound waveforms produced by different sound sources. The traces are displayed as black waveforms on a background that transitions from green (bottom half) to gray (top half), indicating amplitude over time. The image is divided into three rows, with three instruments or voice types in each row. The title at the top reads "Oscilloscope traces for various instruments." * Top row: Vocal traces for different singing voice ranges. Bass voice singing (left): The waveform shows smooth, large oscillations, with clearly defined peaks and troughs, indicating a low-pitched, steady sound with relatively low frequency and consistent amplitude. Tenor voice singing (center): The waveform is more complex, with tighter and more frequent oscillations, showing a higher pitch and higher frequency compared to the bass voice. The waveform appears denser, reflecting a richer harmonic content. Soprano voice singing (right): The waveform for the soprano voice shows tightly packed, irregular oscillations. The peaks and troughs are more varied in size, representing a higher pitch and complex tonal quality with fluctuating amplitude. * Middle row: Instrument traces for wind and string instruments. Pipe organ (left): The waveform has highly irregular, jagged oscillations with significant variation in amplitude, representing a full, resonant sound with a wide range of frequencies and dynamics typical of an organ. Trumpet (center): The waveform is dense with tight, repeated oscillations, reflecting the bright, sharp sound of a trumpet. The trace shows consistent frequency but with some variations in amplitude. Violin (right): The violin trace displays more regular, smooth oscillations with moderate amplitude variation, showing a harmonic-rich sound typical of string instruments. The waveform suggests a continuous tone with slight fluctuations in pitch and loudness. * Bottom row: Percussion instrument traces. Conga drum (left): The waveform starts with large, sharp oscillations that quickly taper off, showing an initial loud, resonant attack followed by a rapid decay in amplitude, characteristic of a struck drum. High hat cymbal (center): The waveform features a sharp burst of tightly packed oscillations that quickly dissipate, representing a quick, bright, and high-pitched sound with rapid decay, typical of a high hat cymbal hit. Woodblock (right): The waveform consists of irregular, spaced-out peaks with a sharp attack and rapid decay, indicating a quick, percussive strike with little resonance, typical of a woodblock.

Pre-Class Assignment

Assignment 5-1

In-Class Activities

Discussion

Properties of Sound: Discuss some of the different properties of sound and sound waves discussed in the reading, including frequency, amplitude, and waveforms. How do these variables affect our perception of sound?
- - What are sound envelopes? Can you think of any instruments or instrumental techniques that tend to produce certain types of sound envelopes? How can manipulating the characteristics of a sound envelope in music production change the way that we hear the sound?
What is Timbre? What exactly is timbre? It's a hard word to pin down. Discuss some of the different ways that we use this word to describe music and sound.
- - Check out this lesson's Anthology page for a playlist of musical examples for discussion.
  - What are some of the words you'd use to describe the timbres you're hearing? How do those timbral characteristics relate to the objective attributes of a sound (e.g. the frequency, sound envelope, amplitude, etc.)
Instruments & Timbre: What is the overtone series and what does it have to do with our perception of instrumental timbre? If a flute and a trumpet both play C4, why do they sound different?
- - What are some of the different ways that musicians manipulate timbre on their instruments? How does timbre change across an instrument's register?
Timbre in Production and Mixing: What is the role of timbre in music production and mixing? What kinds of techniques or strategies do artists use to enhance or manipulate timbre through equalization, filtering, and effects processing? Can you think of any examples by artists that you're currently listening to?
Timbre & Metaphor: Musical timbre is often described using visual and tactile metaphors. Timbres or "sound colors" are often referred to as bright or dark, warm or cool, heavy or light. Musicians will often imagine playing a sound with a particular color in mind (e.g. a "thick violet" or "thin yellow" sound). Why do you think we rely on visual or tactile metaphors so often to describe timbre?

Activities

Spectrogram Analysis: Waveform and spectrogram analysis has become a common analytical tool for popular music, film music, electronic and contemporary music, and sonic analysis outside of music. It's also commonly used in the sciences for analyzing sound. It's an especially useful tool when working with music that doesn't have a written score or discrete pitch material. Work through a timbral analysis of a few songs together as a class to practice using the tool.
- - - Work in groups or have your instructor select two or three pieces that have very different timbral profiles or use different types of sound production techniques for comparison. Download an audio file for each piece and open it in Sonic Visualiser (or a comparable program). Alternatively, pick out spectrograms for a few different bird recordings on this site to compare and listen to.
      - The Apps: Sonic Visualiser will display both the waveform and spectrogram analysis for audio that you import or record. If you don't already have audio files on your device, Clip Grab is an application that allows you to quickly download audio files from YouTube videos. Both are free, open-source, and work on both Mac and PC.
    - What kind of information can you gather by looking at the just the waveform for a piece of music or sound?
    - Take a look at the spectrogram. Discuss how to read what you see based on the videos you watched before class. What information is displayed on the X and Y axes? What does color or brightness represent? How do the spectrograms for the different songs compare? When you listen to the music (or birdsong) along with the spectrogram, does it draw your ear to anything you didn't hear before?
    - What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of doing analysis without a notated score?
Listening for Sound Envelope: Work in groups. Find four single-syllable words that use a different combination of hard and soft attacks and releases. Practice performing these words in different ways to manipulate the sound envelope of the word. Perform your words for a partner and ask them to describe the performance decisions you made.
- - - Then, try listening to a few examples and analyzing the attack, sustain, decay of sounds in a poem or a solo piece. Pick a poet and Google a poem. Have a member of your group recite a few lines and listen carefully to each word. Or, pick a solo instrumental piece that uses interesting extended techniques or timbral changes. Some examples:
      - The poem, "Kubla Khan," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, read by Ian McKellan
        Solo flute piece "Itinerant" by Toru Takemitsu (Youtube performance here).
    - (This activity is taken from Timothy Chenette's Foundations of Aural Skills)

Sing and Dance the "Synthesizer" Song: Jam along with the Pop Ups to learn the dance moves for different sound waves, including the square, sine, and sawtooth waves in this NPR Tiny Desk Series concert.
- - Start the video at 1:48 for the "Synthesizer" song.

Repertoire for Practice

Timbral Analysis: This page of the anthology includes examples for discussion and analysis.
- - The YouTube playlist features works incorporating unique timbral changes scored by the composer or made by the performer.
The "Timbre" page on Expanding the Music Theory Canon includes additional scores and audio for analysis.

Go to Anthology

NEXT STEP

Next Lesson: Instrument Families

Want to learn more?

Cognition (video): Dig into the mental processes involved in our perception of timbre and pitch. Check out: Dr. Aniruddh D. Patel, "Musical Building Blocks: Pitch and Timbre" from the series Music and the Brain (also see pp. 45–54 in the Study Guide).
Music Analysis (reading): See how spectrogram analysis is used in popular music analysis. Read just Part 1 from of Megan Lavengood's article here: "The Cultural Significance of Timbre Analysis: A Case Study in 1980s Pop Music, Texture, and Narrative," Music Theory Online.
Global Music (video): Explore the creation and effects of timbre in jazz, Indian, Arabic, Irish, Bosnian, and Renaisssance music in the video: "Timbre: The Color of Music–Exploring the World of Music"
Birdsong Analysis: Check out spectrograms for bird songs around the world on this page.

Optional Additional Practice

Musition: Concepts: Lvl 1: Sound Properties

Page updated

Report abuse