Timbre Research Articles

Understanding timbral effects of multi-resonator/generator systems of wind instruments in the context of western and non-western music

Wind instruments are often modeled as a coupled generator-resonator system, which in case of the clarinet consists of a reed and a cylindrical pipe. However, the fact that the throat and oral cavities behind the tone generator also play a critical role is often neglected. While the resonance pipe of a wind instrument can be adjusted in length through keyholes or valves, its width is fixed. The opposite can be observed for the human resonance system where the length is fixed but the dimensions of the cross-section are variable. This is important fact is routinely used to shape the timbral qualities of tones and to determine the tones’ fundamental frequencies—for example, to generate high notes above the normal range on a saxophone. In many music cultures, time-varying timbral modifications are more important than melodic aspects, for example, in traditional digeridoo practice. A third resonator system is the room the musical instrument is performed in. This can also have important timbre shaping aspects, e...

Conch-shells, bells, and gongs in Hindu temples

Acoustics plays an important role in Hinduism and Hindu temples and worship practices. Several instruments such as conch-shells, bells, and gongs due to their musical qualities are used to enhance the spiritual experience of devotees in Hindu temples. These instruments are used to augment the acoustically rich Vedic chanting and singing. These instruments are generally used in a room called Ardha Mantapa (in Sanskrit), which is coupled to the Sanctum Sanctorum (called as Garbha Griha in Sanskrit) in a Hindu temple. The Garbha Griha and the Ardha Mantapa play an important role in the acoustical environment in the temples. These instruments are used both individually as well as collectively during the worship. These instruments through their tonal quality complement the soundscape of the environment. This presentation deals with spectral measurements of these instruments and also the acoustical aspects of the temple space. Measurements taken in two Hindu temples will be presented.

Becoming Bach, Blaspheming Bach: Kinesthetic Knowledge and Embodied Music Theory in Ysaye's "Obsession" for Solo Violin

This essay explores kinesthetic musical knowledge: what can it tell us about the music, the performer, or the composer? In discussing my own experience of performing "Obsession," the first movement of violinist-composer Eugene Ysaye's Sonata No. 2 for Solo Violin, op. 27 (1923), I'll articulate some of the observations I made while learning to play it. These insights in turn inflect and clarify my relationship with Bach, whose violin music is the object of Ysaye's obsession. In the course of practicing and performing "Obsession," I have developed a reading of this piece as depicting not only Ysaye's purported obsession with Bach, but also his possession by (a demonic) Bach. Some aspects of my interpretation are readily audible, while others stem from my physical knowledge of the music. An embodied analysis such as I undertake here may uncover musical meanings apparent only to the performer, demonstrating that "the score is not the work to a performer; nor is the score-made-sound the work: the work includes the performer's mobilizing of previously studied skills so as to embody, to make real, to make sounding, a set of relationships that are only partly relationships among sounds" (Cusick 1994:18). Many feminist scholars have observed that the body is too often written out of the academic study of music. For instance, Philip Bohlman sees this erasure writ large in musicology's disinclination to study dance (1993:431). Suzanne Cusick's critique of mainstream musicological practice aims to rehabilitate "the inextricable presence of the body in music--a presence both musicology's and music theory's focus on the intentions and the texts of the composers scrupulously denies" (1994:15). Feeling that she is not meant to speak as a performer when teaching musicology, she has written of her efforts to resolve this apparent disjunction: "as a performer, I act on and with what we ordinarily call music with my body; as a musicologist I have been formed to act on (and with?) what we ordinarily call music with my mind, and only with my mind" (9). Recognizing in the act of music-making a resolution of this apparent mind/body split, Cusick argues for a more embodied analytical practice, calling for a "theory of musical bodies" (18). Elisabeth Le Guin has demonstrated the historical and interpretive insights that can be gained from such an embodied analytical practice, using her own performing body to explore the music and life of Boccherini (2002; 2006). Her methodology, which she calls "carnal musicology," links her experience as a performer to the eighteenth-century notion of sensibilite and shows how knowledge originating in her sensate body can motivate an interpretation of a piece. In the past two decades music scholars using feminist and queer theories have focused attention on musical bodies in their analysis and criticism. Relating performative knowledge of a piece to aspects of the music's structure is one such approach. A more common feminist methodology seeks connections between personal identity (the composer's or the performer's), and musical structures and/or performance. We can fuse these approaches by thinking about how subjectivity might be inscribed upon a music-making body. For instance, in studying vocal performativity, Cusick (1999) considers how our voices embody (perform) our gender, sex, ethnicity, etc. She hears in the timbre of Eddie Vedder's singing an assertion of his heterosexual male American subjectivity. His characteristic snarl, suggesting tightly constricted throat muscles, demonstrates his resistance to the discipline of song by physically limiting culture's penetration into the innermost spaces of his body; context for this analysis includes her observation that singing is a normative behavior in our culture for women but not for men. In another example of work that connects music and identity through the music-making body, Philip Brett relates Schubert's presumed homosexuality to the composer's four-hand piano music. …

A Voice Conversion Method Combining Segmental GMM Mapping with Target Frame Selection

In this paper, a voice conversion approach that combines two distinct ideas is proposed to improve the converted-voice quality. The first idea is to map spectral features, e.g. discrete cepstrum coefficients (DCC), with segmental Gaussian mixture models (GMMs). That is, a single GMM of a large number of mixture components is replaced here with several voice-content specific GMMs each consisting of much fewer mixture components. In addition, the second idea is to find a frame, of spectral features near to the mapped feature vector, from the target-speaker frame pool corresponding to the segment class as the input frame belongs to. Both ideas are intended to alleviate the problem encountered by a traditional GMM based conversion method, i.e. converted spectral envelopes are usually over smoothed. To apply the first idea to implement an on-line voice conversion system, we have proposed an automatic GMM selection algorithm based on dynamic programming (DP). Furthermore, as pointed out by previous researchers, mapping with a single selected Gaussian probability density function (PDF) instead of a combination of several Gaussian PDFs is helpful to obtain better converted-voice quality. Therefore, we have also proposed a Gaussian PDF selection algorithm and integrated it into our system. As to the implementation of the second idea, an algorithm based on DP is adopted which will consider both frame matching and connecting distances. For evaluating the performance of the two ideas studied here, three voice conversion systems are constructed, and used to conduct listening tests. The results of the tests show that the system with the two ideas combined can indeed obtain much improved voice quality besides improvement in timbre similarity.

Igor Stravinsky and Academic Guitar Music

Presents the results of the study in classical guitar music by Stravinsky. The author considers three pieces by Stravinsky where he used guitar and his transcription of the “Four Russian songs” suite (version of 1953-1954) that included a guitar part. The specificity of interpretation of the tone quality, the instrument capabilities in Stravinsky’s understanding and the features of composer’s style apparent in this music cycle are revealed. The author also focuses on the bell ringing effects that are particular of the piece.

Variations of laryngeal features in Jianchuan Bai

The tonal system in Jianchuan Bai has attracted much attention for its complex combinations of pitch and phonation type. In this paper, based on EGG signals, three parameters, namely F0, Open Quotient (OQ) and Speed Quotient (SQ), are extracted to examine the tonal quality. It is found that there are two non-modal phonation types, Harsh and Pressed, and roughly four groups of pitch pattern (31/31/41; 33/433; 55/54; 35) in the eight tonal categories. One pair of tones can only be distinguished from each other by phonation type since their pitches are the same. As for other pairs, both pitch and phonation type may contribute to the distinction between them. Notably, non-modal phonation types vary across different Bai speakers. For a particular non-modal tone, one speaker may employ harsh voice, while another may use pressed voice. Sometimes, the non-modal phonation type even changed within a syllable. It is then suggested that different strategies may be used to produce non-modal tones in contrast with their modal counterpart. Moreover, based on the Bai data, how to define different phonation types based on the three basic parameters, F0, OQ and SQ, is discussed. Harsh voice is a better term for the type with the laryngeal features [Middle falling F0, -OQ, -SQ] rather than high-pitched voice.

Music as Silence, Cinema as Dream: Toru Takemitsu's View of Film Music

Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996) is one of the most famous Japanese composers from the era after World War II. He wrote a large amount of music for films and TV dramas, as well as concert pieces, so we can say that music accompanying a visual image is one of the kernels of his musical activity. In this paper, we attempt to examine his view of film music. It is true that silence is interpreted as the absence of sound, but for Takemitsu it was the matrix of sound. Silence is filled with innumerable sounds, and the flux of those silent sounds is what he calls the ＂stream of sound.＂ Therefore, his music composition was based on the act of listening for the instant when the sound comes into existence from the silence, and to the way that the sound sinks into the silence. Both silence and sound endure, so it may be said that he regarded as timbre the temporal transition of the sound; the timbre is the audible quality of sound which the silence has penetrated. Takemitsu considered cinema in relation to this silence. The visual image secretes silence and the silence connects the music with the visual image. Moreover, he said that cinema is a dream, so the dream plays an important role in his compositions for films. Indeed, in a dream, we can relate things which have no connection with each other in the real world. Therefore, the music creates an original approach to the visual image. For Takemitsu, silence linked the audible to the visible and surrounded the audio-visual world. It is not too much to say that his film music immerses the visible in silence.

Music and hearing aids.

The signal processing and fitting methods used for hearing aids have mainly been designed to optimize the intelligibility of speech. Little attention has been paid to the effectiveness of hearing aids for listening to music. Perhaps as a consequence, many hearing-aid users complain that they are not satisfied with their hearing aids when listening to music. This issue inspired the Internet-based survey presented here. The survey was designed to identify the nature and prevalence of problems associated with listening to live and reproduced music with hearing aids. Responses from 523 hearing-aid users to 21 multiple-choice questions are presented and analyzed, and the relationships between responses to questions regarding music and questions concerned with information about the respondents, their hearing aids, and their hearing loss are described. Large proportions of the respondents reported that they found their hearing aids to be helpful for listening to both live and reproduced music, although less so for the former. The survey also identified problems such as distortion, acoustic feedback, insufficient or excessive gain, unbalanced frequency response, and reduced tone quality. The results indicate that the enjoyment of listening to music with hearing aids could be improved by an increase of the input and output dynamic range, extension of the low-frequency response, and improvement of feedback cancellation and automatic gain control systems.

English

2 ABSTRACT: This paper deals with the assessment of measuring the quality of tone mapped images by considering the Tone Mapping Operators (TMOs) that convert high dynamic range (HDR) to low dynamic range (LDR) images provide practically useful tools for the visualization of HDR images on standard LDR displays. Different TMOs create different tone mapped images, and a natural question is which one has the best quality. Without an appropriate quality measure, different TMOs cannot be compared, and further improvement is directionless. Subjective rating may be a reliable evaluation method, but it is expensive and time consuming, and more importantly, is difficult to be embedded into optimization frameworks. Here we propose an objective quality assessment algorithm for tone mapped images by combining two concepts one of them is a multi scale signal fidelity measure on the basis of a modified structural similarity index and the other followed by a naturalness measure on the basis of intensity statistics of natural images. Validations using independent subject-rated image databases show good correlations between subjective ranking score and the proposed tone-mapped image quality index (TMQI). The proposed measure not only provides an overall quality score of an image, but also creates multi-scale quality maps that reflect the structural fidelity variations across scale and space.

A harmonic analysis of oboe reeds

Because oboists make their own reeds to satisfy personal and physiological preferences, no two reed-makers construct their reeds in the same manner, just as no two oboe players have the same sound. The basic structure of an oboe reed consists of two curved blades of the grass Arundo donax bound to a conical metal tube (a staple) such that the edges of the blades meet and vibrate against one another when stimulated by a change in the surrounding pressure. While this basic structure is constant across reed-makers, the physical measurements of the various portions of the reed (tip, spine, and heart) resulting from the final stage of reed-making (scraping) can vary significantly between individual oboists. In this study, we investigated how the physical structure of individual reeds relates to the acoustic spectrum. We performed statistical analyses to discern which areas of the finished reed influence the harmonic series most strongly. This information is of great interest to oboists as it allows them quantitative insight into how their individual scrape affects their overall tone quality and timbre.

Vibration study of Indian folk instrument sambal

The percussion instruments family, in its folk category has many instruments like Dholki, Dimdi, Duff, Halagi, and Sambal. The Sambal is a folk membranophone made up of wood, played mainly in western India. Sambal a traditional drum, which is used in some religious functions. It is played by the people who are believed to be servants of goddess Mahalaxmi Devi. This instrument is made up of two approximately cylindrical wooden drums united along a common edge, having skin membranes stretched over their mouths. This instrument is played using two wooden sticks, of which one has a curved end. The right hand side drum’s pitch is higher than the left. Its membrane is excited by striking repeatedly to generate sound of a constant pitch. This paper relates to vibrational analysis of the Sambal. A study has been carried out to check it’s vibrational properties like modes of the vibration. The study is done by spectrum analysis (Fast Fourier Transform) using a simple Digital Storage Oscilloscope. The tonal quality of wood used for the cylinders and membrane is compared.

Against Nature? or, Confessions of a Darwinian Modernist

A few years ago I gave a paper on the aesthetics of ‘noise,’ that is, on the ways in which non-musical sounds can be given aesthetic shape and structure, and thereby form the basis of significant aesthetic experience. Along the way I made reference to Arnold Schoenberg's musical theory, in particular his notion ofKlangfarbenmelodie, literally ‘sound colour melody,’ or musical form based on timbre or tonal colour rather than on melody, harmony or rhythm. Schoenberg articulated his ideas aboutKlangfarbenmelodiein the final section of hisHarmonielehre(1911). ‘Pitch is nothing else but tone colour measured in one direction,’ wrote Schoenberg. ‘Now, if it is possible to create patterns out of tone colours that are differentiated according to pitch, patterns we call ‘melodies’…then it must also be possible to make such progressions out of the tone colours of the other dimension, out of that which we simply call “tone colour.”’ In other words, traditional melodies work by abstracting and structuring the dominant pitch characterizing a musical sound, while ‘sound colour melodies’ work, Schoenberg argues, by structuring the combined set of pitches contained in a given musical sound (the overtones as well as the dominant pitch). Schoenberg is emphatic that, although a neglected and underdeveloped possibility within Western classical music, ‘sound colour melody’ is a perfectly legitimate and viable form of musical expression; indeed for Schoenberg it is a musical form with enormous potential.

Musical nuance task shows reliable differences between musicians and nonmusicians.

Musical nuance can be defined as the fine-grained deviations in pitch, loudness, time, and tone quality in a musical pirrase that a performer manipulates to enhance a performance. Nuance is commonly viewed as subtle qualities that add expressivity to a musical utterance. Although some researchers suggest musical nuance consists of expressive elements that include dynamics, articulations, and other stylistic qualities (Madsen, 1999), many studies in music psychology have predominantly focused on musical nuance as characterized by expressive qualities intended to produce emotion (Laukka, 2004; Lindstrom, Juslin, Bresin, & Williamon, 2003). For the purpose of this research, we will be discussing musical nuance as part of musical expressiveness revealed in subtle stylistic differences based on cultural conventions.Musical nuance is critical to listener perception and musical performance. For instance, musical nuance may be the reason that listeners would rather hear a human performance rallier than a computerized rendition (Juslin, 2003). As a result, listeners develop preferences for specific performers based on characteristics of musical nuance (Geringer & Sasanfar, 2013). On the other hand, fluid manipulation of musical nuance is one of the tools which expert performers use to demonstrate musical expression, distin- guish personal performances, and impart novelty of high value beyond that notated in the score. Differences in musical nuance allow for new and varied interpretations of familiar music.Research indicates that musicians and educators perceive expressive characteristics such as nuance as the most important element of a musical performance (Lindstrom et al., 2003). Musical training can develop aural skills and performance skills that can help the student musician perform more expressively, and many pedagogical approaches can assist with the development of expressivity such as aural modeling, verbal modeling, and mental imagery (Woody, 2006). In addition, traditional music education approaches include internalization of performance styles, performance models, and music listening via concert attendance and recordings (Timmers & Sadakata, 2014). Despite the focus on the development of aural skills and pedagogical approaches to teach for expressiveness, there seems to be no reliable and valid measures available to examine musical nuance listening ability. The purpose of this research is to examine the psychometric properties of a Musical Nuance Task (MNT) and to evaluate the role of experience in musicians and nonmusicians on musical nuance perception. We evaluated the hypothesis that musical training and previous music listening experiences can modulate the perception of subtle stylistic differences.Musical nuance is similar to expression in speech where the speaker adds subtle changes for stylistic purposes (Brandt, Gebrian, & Slevc, 2012). Fundamentally, speech perception is dependent on melody (intonation) and rhythm (stress and timing) elements. Rhythmic stress and intonation in speech is referred to as prosody. Spoken words and musical tones can be stressed on the basis of the fundamental frequency. Similarly, melodies can be segmented due to the pauses. The performer (speaker) uses an implicit understanding of the language (music or speech) to communicate with prosodic cues to the listener. Recent research in Finnish adults supports the relationship between music and speech prosody in rhythmic perception even after controlling for many other variables such as music education and working memory performance (Hausen, Torppa, Salmela, Vainio, & Sarkamo, 2013). The perception of musical prosodic cues such as those referenced by the term musical nuance occurs in a global fashion.Global ProcessingMusic consists of a combination of local and global elements, grouped by articulatory gestures performed on a variety of instruments or on the same instrument with application of various sound techniques that create subtle stylistic differences (Mottron, Peretz, & Menard, 2000). …

Influence of moisture on the vibro-mechanical properties of bio-engineered wood

In this study, changes in the vibro-mechanical properties of fungi-treated wood, during sorption and desorption at different humidity levels, were investigated. Norway spruce resonance wood (with uniform narrow annual rings and high tonal quality for musical instrument craftsmanship) was incubated with Physisporinus vitreus for 36 weeks. Stiffness, internal friction, and tonal performance indices of control (untreated) and fungi-treated wood were compared after exposure to a stepwise variation of relative humidity. It was demonstrated that fungal treatment increased the internal friction and decreased the specific modulus of elasticity, during reduction of wood density. Internal friction of both control and fungi-treated wood significantly increased during dynamic sorption, especially during early stages (hours) of each humidity change step. Both specific modulus of elasticity and internal friction showed a hysteretic behavior during humidity variation cycles. Hysteresis was smaller in fungi-treated wood. Also, tonal performance indices were improved after fungal treatment and showed a reduced variation at different relative humidity conditions. Dynamic vapor sorption tests and FT-IR microscopy studies revealed changes in hygroscopicity and the supramolecular structure of wood, which may explain the observed vibrational behavior. Less dependency of wood vibrational properties to the variation of the ambient humidity is important for the acoustic performance of string instruments.

Can young adolescents with cochlear implants perceive different timbral cues?

ObjectiveThis study aimed to compare the timbre recognition and preferences of young adolescents with cochlear implants (CIs) to that of adolescents with normal hearing (NH).MethodsNine Korean adolescents with CIs and 25 adolescents with NH participated in this study. After listening to each of four Western instruments and five traditional Korean instruments, participants were asked to identify presented instruments and rate how much they liked the timbres.ResultsThe results showed that the CI group recognized instruments significantly less often than the NH group. They also tended to show a relatively higher recognition of the instruments bearing a rapid and strong attack time. With regard to timbre preferences, no significant differences were found between the groups.DiscussionYoung adolescents with CIs show potential for detecting salient features in sound information, especially instrumental timbre. This study indicates what can be considered to incorporate more sounds with varying origins and tone qualities into music perception and education for this population.

The Temporal Cascade of Neural Processes Underlying Target Detection and Attentional Processing During Auditory Search

The posterior visual event-related potential (ERP) component, the N2pc, has been widely used to study lateralized shifts of attention within visual arrays. Recently, Gamble and Luck (2011) reported an auditory analog of this activity (the fronto-central "N2ac"), reflecting the lateralized focusing of attention toward a Target sound among 2 simultaneous auditory stimuli. Here, we directed an electrophysiological approach toward understanding auditory Target search within a more complex auditory environment in which rapidly occurring sounds were distributed across both time and space. Trials consisted of ten 40-ms monaural sounds rapidly presented to the 2 ears: 8 medium-pitch tones and 2 deviant sounds (one high and one low). For each block, one deviant type was designated as the Target, which participants needed to identify within each trial to discriminate its tonal quality. The extracted electrophysiological results included a very early enhancement, starting at approximately 50 ms, of a bilateral negative-polarity auditory brain response to the designated Target Deviant (compared with the Nontarget Deviant), followed at approximately 130 ms by the N2ac activity reflecting the lateralized focusing of attention toward that Target. The results delineate the tightly orchestrated sequence of neural processes underlying the detection of, and focusing of attention toward, Target sounds in complex auditory scenes.

Investigation of subjective components of overall acoustic quality using binaural recordings made in Hartford's Belding Theater

Previous research in concert hall acoustics has established correlations between listener preference for overall acoustic quality (OAQ) and a number of other subjective factors. A subjective study was conducted to determine the relative importance of several characteristics to OAQ. Subjects evaluated 18 signals based on listener envelopment, reverberance, tonal quality, and overall preference using five-point rating scales. The signals were presented individually over headphones. A total of 32 subjects with formal musical training and normal hearing were included in the study. Following a brief tutorial and training session, the test was divided into four sets, one for each of the subjective factors. All of the signals and sets were presented to each subject in a random order. The binaural recordings were made in the Belding Theater in Hartford, Connecticut. A loudspeaker on the stage played three short classical motifs that were recorded in three seat locations with two distinct settings of the hall’s variable acoustics system. The sound pressure levels of all signals were normalized to isolate the characteristics of interest. The data analysis identified relationships between the three factors and OAQ, with the most significant relationship between OAQ and tonal quality. [Work was supported by NSF Grant 1302741.]

Sound production in the reed organ and harmonium

The free reed instruments of European origin, which originated around 1800 and were developed over the next 50–75 years, include the reed organ and the harmonium. These keyboard instruments enjoyed a period of great popularity beginning around 1840 and lasting until the early 20th century. They were widely used in homes and churches, and appeared in a variety of instrumental ensembles, including the salon orchestra. They are close relatives of the harmonica and the accordion-concertina family, but unlike these instruments they are not in wide use today. This paper discusses the fundamental mechanisms of sound production in the instruments as well as means used to alter the tone quality, which include the design of the wind system, effects of the chambers in which the reeds are mounted, and details of the reed tongue design. The presentation will include audio examples of the reed organ and the harmonium employed in various musical contexts.

Digital Phase Detector for Nyquist and Faster than Nyquist Systems

The quality of clock tone in many practical phase detectors depends on the width of the non-zero portion of the signal spectrum. In Nyquist systems that deploy the raised-cosine filter, most of the known timing extraction methods completely fail when the roll-off factor (ROF) approaches the zero value. In this letter, we present a novel digital phase detector that is based on two samples per symbol with a performance that is practically independent of the shape of the Nyquist filter and modulation formats. Excellent timing-error detector performance is demonstrated even in extremely band-limited systems - the so-called faster than Nyquist systems (FTN).

サウンドホールサイズの異なるギターの音色の周波数スペクトル分析に関する研究

The shapes of classic guitars are strongly governed by the sensibilities of the craftsmen who make them, and thus, shapes vary widely. Unlike violins and other instruments, no ideal shape has yet been established for guitars. In our research, we conducted a frequency spectral analysis of tone quality with the aim of manufacturing a guitar with enhanced tone quality. In this study, we examined the effects of varying sound hole diameter of guitar, and quantitatively identified the optimal diameter.