Activities per year
Abstract
What are the timbral characteristics of musical sounds? From the second half of the 19th Century the ideas about musical timbre had been affected by contradictory and platitude statements that have lead the researchers and musicians throughout history to various models and perspectives. However, by definition the influence of pitch and dynamics has largely been ignored within these models. Another fact had further effects on our audio research history: While Helmholtz' »Lehre von den Tonempfindungen« had been translated into English by Alexander J. Ellis, a translation of Stumpf’s standard works »Tonpsychologie« (1883 and 1890) and »Die Sprachlaute« (1826) is still missing, as well as the translation of the publications of other German-speaking successors of Helmholtz and Stumpf (like Köhler, Schumann, Albersheim, Reinecke, Fricke etc.). Consequently, the English research literature, which has been most influential in this field since World War II, is lacking this particular aspect of knowledge of musical timbre. Its salience can be immediately observed by examining an instrument in all its pitch and dynamic levels (instead of only one or a few pitches like in most timbre studies): timbre perception of musical instruments is determined to a certain extent by steady pitch-independent formant areas, whose origin and characteristics at pitch and dynamic changes has generally been resolved today. These timbral effects appear to be in accordance with the principles of the Auditory Scene Analysis as well as with recommendations in the orchestration treatises of the last centuries. Both the English and the German timbre perception paradigms have their own advantages. With the help of the actual sound analysis and re-synthesis software and in combination with the concept of mel-frequency cepstral coefficients methods it should be possible to merge these paradigms into a common timbre perception model.
Original language | German |
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Title of host publication | Organized Sound. Klang und Wahrnehmung in der Musik des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts |
Editors | Christian Utz |
Place of Publication | Saarbrücken |
Publisher | Pfau |
Pages | 97 |
Number of pages | 112 |
Volume | 6 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-3-89727-504-1 |
Publication status | Published - 2013 |
Publication series
Series | Musiktheorien der Gegenwart |
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Volume | Band 6 |
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103002 Acoustics
- 604024 Musicology
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Vergleichende Untersuchungen zu Timbre Space Studien
Saleh Siddiq (Speaker), Christoph Reuter (Speaker), Isabella Czedik-Eysenberg (Speaker) & Denis Knauf (Speaker)
7 Mar 2017Activity: Talks and presentations › Talk or oral contribution › Science to Science
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Formanten als hilfreiche Timbre-Deskriptoren für die Darstellung von Blasinstrumentenklängen
Christoph Reuter (Speaker), Saleh Siddiq (Speaker), Isabella Czedik-Eysenberg (Speaker) & Michael Oehler (Speaker)
7 Mar 2017Activity: Talks and presentations › Talk or oral contribution › Science to Science
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Timbre Spaces and Formant field - Representation of Single Sounds and Whole Instruments
Christoph Reuter (Speaker)
12 Jan 2017Activity: Talks and presentations › Talk or oral contribution › Science to Science
Research output
- 1 Contribution to proceedings
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Timbre Space reloaded: Tonhöhe und Dynamik als Teil der Klangfarbenempfindung
Siddiq, S., Reuter, C., Czedik-Eysenberg, I. & Knauf, D., 2017, Fortschritte der Akustik – DAGA 2017: 43. Jahrestagung für Akustik (DAGA). p. 194-197 4 p.Publications: Contribution to book › Contribution to proceedings › Peer Reviewed