Everything we can't describe in music
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Everything we can't describe in music
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Re: Everything we can't describe in music
#2"Terroir" is a terrible way to metaphorize timbre. The only similarity is that they're both hard to describe. Terroir is there before the wine is made and can't really be controlled by the winemaker (except insofar as they choose where to plant or what grapes to blend). Timbre is absolutely under the control of the musician.
Re: Everything we can't describe in music
#3As a synth enthusiast I generally think of timbre in relation to "real" instruments, brass, strings, piano, etc. In the article they mention there are as many as 10 dimensions but don't actually define what those are. Timbre is something I've thought about a lot but nailing down a more general classification seems pretty challenging.
Re: Everything we can't describe in music
#4Arnold Schoenberg observed the deep connection between music, perception, and cognition; anticipated composers applying timbral control as is now commonly done with synthesizers; and apparently did not anticipate non-subtlety of the effect in EDM:
"I think the tone becomes perceptible by virtue of tone color [timbre], of which one dimension is pitch. ... Pitch is nothing else but tone color measured in one direction. Now, if it is possible to create patterns out of tone colors that are differentiated according to pitch, patterns we call 'melodies', progressions, whose coherence evokes an effect analogous to thought processes, then it must also be possible to make such progressions out of the tone colors of the other dimension, out of that which we call simply 'tone color', progressions whose relations with one another work with a kind of logic entirely equivalent to that logic which satisfies us in the melody of pitches. That has the appearance of a futuristic fantasy and is probably just that. But it is one which, I firmly believe, will be realized.
...
Tone-color melodies! How acute the senses that would be able to perceive them! How high the development of spirit that could find pleasure in such subtle things!"
-- Arnold Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, 1911, toward the end of chapter 22.
Personally, I anticipate that if humanlike AGI is achieved, then it will understand the illusion of music. Not merely because music understanding is an attribute of humanlike, but because there must be something intrinsic in the process of human cognition that causes the illusion of music occur. Music understanding could be viewed as an essential waypoint on the path to AGI.
Re: Everything we can't describe in music
#5[deleted]
Re: Everything we can't describe in music
#6tldr: Timbre, the unique quality of a sound that distinguishes different voices or instruments from one another, is complex to define and measure and is often overlooked in music theory, which tends to focus more on pitch, rhythm, and harmony.
Re: Everything we can't describe in music
#7Timbre is what makes the violin sound different from the bassoon, what makes the strings in general gives them their sound, and brass theirs. Timbre is what makes a singers voice unique.
Classical composers had a set of fixed timbres to play with, each instrument having their own. With synthesizers everything is possible.
Re: Everything we can't describe in music
#8"Terroir" is a terrible way to metaphorize timbre. The only similarity is that they're both hard to describe. Terroir is there before the wine is made and can't really be controlled by the winemaker (except insofar as they choose where to plant or what grapes to blend). Timbre is absolutely under the control of the musician.
I think the sense is more they're both about hundreds of unique physical characteristics, some of which are perhaps unquantifiable.
The shape of an instrument, the material used, the type of strings, their tension, the temperature and humidity in the room. The way each player holds it, the size of their hands, the specific strength of their fingers. Some of these factors stay constant, others change from day to day or player to player. The sum of all of these together creates a specific timbre.
Re: Everything we can't describe in music
#9Pitch is the frequency of the oscillation, timbre is the internal structure of what's oscillating. Is that right at all?
Re: Everything we can't describe in music
#10"Terroir" is a terrible way to metaphorize timbre. The only similarity is that they're both hard to describe. Terroir is there before the wine is made and can't really be controlled by the winemaker (except insofar as they choose where to plant or what grapes to blend). Timbre is absolutely under the control of the musician.
> Terroir is there before the wine is made and can't really be controlled by the winemaker (except insofar as they choose where to plant or what grapes to blend).
I've met winemakers who think of planting in terms of multigenerational experiments with highly intentional controls for different aspects of soil and micro-climate that may vary on a scale of a single meter, who work to find and train their successors because they will not see the results of some of these experiments in their lifetimes; winemakers who absolutely understand that blending is not just a linear combination of the characteristics of blended wines, but a truly complicated system where certain flavors may heighten others; winemakers who rely on centuries of experience in how funguses and other microorganisms can be used in safe and flavor-enhancing ways.
Winemaking is engineering, just as musical instrument design is (both physical and digital), and just as building a startup is. The presence of human subjectivity as an evaluating oracle in a complex system does not imply that its creators work without intention or without rigorous systems-level thinking.