[PD-ot] how would you describe how something sounds?

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

I am not so much interested in sound morphology or mapping words to  
certain timbres.  I am currently looking into how the perception how  
timbre has changed since the seminal papers on timbre perception were  
written in the 70's (Wessel 1978, Grey and Gordon 1978, etc.).  In  
particular, since those researcher used only timbres from the Western  
Classical tradition, I think its likely that their research represents  
a narrow segment of the population.

Just as the bulk of the evidence says that no tuning system is innate  
to humans, but instead a product of acculturation, I think that some  
aspects of timbre perception are also a product of acculturation.  When  
that research was done, basically no one grew up hearing synthesized  
tones from early childhood.  These days, that is not only entirely  
possible, but quite likely.  And there are probably even some who have  
been immersed in computer and electronic music since they were a child.

So as an indicator of this, I thought it would be interesting to see  
what kind of words people use a lot when they are talking about timbre.  
  The main words I hear from the Classical tradition are "brightness",  
"warmth", "breathiness", "bite".  I think that the only one of these  
words that I hear from electronic musicians is "warmth", but not that  
much.  Words like "crunchy", "fat" ("phat"), "thick" are more common  
there, in my experience.  To me this points to a different perception  
of timbre (but is not evidence enough to prove it).

.hc

On Thursday, Apr 22, 2004, at 04:27 America/New_York, Thomas Grill  
wrote:

> Hi Hans-Christoph,
> just two important researchers in the field of sound-morphology:
>
> Pierre Schaeffer - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Schaeffer
>     "Solfege de l'objet Sonore" (french) -  
> http://www.ubu.com/sound/sch.html
>     theories (french) -
> http://www.olats.org/pionniers/pp/schaeffer/theorieSchaeffer.shtml
>
> Denis Smalley - http://www.city.ac.uk/music/denis1.htm
>
> best greetings,
> Thomas
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Hans-Christoph Steiner" <hans at eds.org>
> To: <pd-ot at iem.at>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 9:43 PM
> Subject: [PD-ot] how would you describe how something sounds?
>
>
>>
>> This kind of an informal poll.  I want to find out what words
>> electronic musicians use to describe how a particular sample sounds.
>> In particular, I am interested in words used to describe the quality  
>> or
>> timbre of the sounds rather than the loudness, pitch, rhythm, harmony,
>> etc.  Words that describe how a certain mix sounds would also be
>> interesting.
>>
>> There are particular words that are used by classical musicians and I
>> want to compare these to words used by electronic musicians.
>>
>> .hc
>>
>> ______________________________________________________________________ 
>> __
>> ____
>>
>> "Information wants to be free."
>>                               -Stewart Brand
>>

________________________________________________________________________ 
____

Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to  
realize his wishes.
Now that he can realize them, he must either change them, or perish.
		                                     -William Carlos Williams

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