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

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Thursday, Apr 22, 2004, at 11:47 America/New_York, Thomas Grill 
wrote:

>> 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).
>
> Hi,
> to my experience this very much depends on the genre where electronic 
> music
> is used.
> In fields of dance or club music the latter notions might well be 
> used, but
> i never heard this in contemporary "serious" or improvised music.

I am interested in composers who discuss timbre, whether they are 
"serious" or not.  I am especially interested in the words used by 
composers who are as distant from a Western Classical musical education 
as possible. Most composers of "serious" music probably come out of the 
Western Classical tradition, being trained listening to the 
instrumentation of that tradition, so such composers would be educated  
in that timbre space, and to use and be familiar with those words in 
relation to that timbre space.

Club/Dance music composers are very likely to be quite removed from the 
Western Classical education, therefore would be a good contrast.  So 
far "crunchy", "grainy", and "phat" are the most common, and the only 
word in common with Western Classical words I have gotten has been 
"bright" from one person.  But again, this is very informal, just to 
get an idea of what's out there.

.hc

                                     http://at.or.at/hans/


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