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38-425: A hum has a particular timbre (or sound quality), usually a monotone or with slightly varying tones . There are other similar sounds not produced by human singing that are also called hums, as the sound produced by machinery in operation, such as a microwave , or by an insect in flight. The hummingbird was named for the sound that bird makes in flight which sounds like a hum. A 'hum' or 'humming' by humans

76-448: A capacitor to store and slowly release voltage produced from hitting a key. He refined the design to remove the need to push a separate button with every keypress, with two switches on every key: one to produce the control voltage determining pitch and the other to trigger the envelope generator. The envelope generator became a standard feature of synthesizers. Following discussions with the engineer and composer Vladimir Ussachevsky ,

114-505: A delay parameter before the attack . Modern synthesizers, such as the Prophet '08 , have DADSR (delay, attack, decay, sustain, release) envelopes. The delay setting determines the length of silence between hitting a note and the attack. Some software synthesizers , such as Image-Line's 3xOSC (included with their DAW FL Studio ) have DAHDSR (delay, attack, hold, decay, sustain, release) envelopes. A common feature on many synthesizers

152-439: A different combination of these frequencies, as well as harmonics and overtones. The sound waves of the different frequencies overlap and combine, and the balance of these amplitudes is a major factor in the characteristic sound of each instrument. William Sethares wrote that just intonation and the western equal tempered scale are related to the harmonic spectra /timbre of many western instruments in an analogous way that

190-480: A harsh, even and aggressive tone). On electric guitar and electric piano, performers can change the timbre using effects units and graphic equalizers . Tone quality and tone color are synonyms for timbre , as well as the " texture attributed to a single instrument". However, the word texture can also refer to the type of music, such as multiple, interweaving melody lines versus a singable melody accompanied by subordinate chords . Hermann von Helmholtz used

228-451: A piano key, when struck and held, creates a near-immediate initial sound which gradually decreases in volume to zero. An envelope may relate to elements such as amplitude (volume), frequency (with the use of filters ) or pitch . Envelope generators , which allow users to control the different stages of a sound, are common features of synthesizers , samplers , and other electronic musical instruments . The most common envelope generator

266-420: A rough analogy with visual brightness . Timbre researchers consider brightness to be one of the perceptually strongest distinctions between sounds and formalize it acoustically as an indication of the amount of high-frequency content in a sound, using a measure such as the spectral centroid . Envelope (music) In sound and music , an envelope describes how a sound changes over time. For example,

304-414: A sound is also greatly affected by the following aspects of its envelope : attack time and characteristics, decay, sustain, release ( ADSR envelope ) and transients . Thus these are all common controls on professional synthesizers . For instance, if one takes away the attack from the sound of a piano or trumpet, it becomes more difficult to identify the sound correctly, since the sound of the hammer hitting

342-438: A sound or note a musical instrument produces is sometimes described in terms of a sum of a number of distinct frequencies . The lowest frequency is called the fundamental frequency , and the pitch it produces is used to name the note, but the fundamental frequency is not always the dominant frequency. The dominant frequency is the frequency that is most heard, and it is always a multiple of the fundamental frequency. For example,

380-410: A tonal sound is a musical sound that has a definite pitch, such as pressing a key on a piano; a sound with a noiselike character would be white noise , the sound similar to that produced when a radio is not tuned to a station. Erickson gives a table of subjective experiences and related physical phenomena based on Schouten's five attributes: See also Psychoacoustic evidence below. The richness of

418-514: Is controlled with four parameters: attack , decay , sustain and release ( ADSR ). The envelope generator was created by the American engineer Robert Moog , the creator of the Moog synthesizer , in the 1960s. The composer Herbert Deutsch suggested Moog find a way to articulate his synthesizer so notes did not simply trigger on and off. Moog wired a doorbell button to the synthesizer and used

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456-644: Is created by the resonance of air in various parts of passages in the head and throat, in the act of breathing. The 'hum' that a hummingbird creates is also created by resonance: in this case by air resistance against wings in the actions of flying, especially of hovering. Joseph Jordania suggested that humming could have played an important role in the early human (hominid) evolution as contact calls . Many social animals produce seemingly haphazard and indistinct sounds (like chicken cluck) when they are going about their everyday business (foraging, feeding). These sounds let group members know that they are among kin and there

494-401: Is no danger. In the case of the appearance of any signs of danger (such as suspicious sounds or movements in a forest), the animal that notices danger first, stops moving, stops producing sounds, remains silent and looks in the direction of the danger sign. Other animals quickly follow suit and very soon all the group is silent and is scanning the environment for possible danger. Charles Darwin

532-413: Is often used in music of genres, from classical (for example, the famous chorus at the end of Act 2 of Giacomo Puccini 's Madama Butterfly ) to jazz to R&B. Another form of music derived from basic humming is the humwhistle . Folk art, also known as "whistle-hum," produces a high pitch and low pitch simultaneously. The two-tone sound is related to field holler , overtone singing , and yodeling

570-575: The ADSR envelope, reversing the behavior of the normal ADSR envelope. During the attack phase, the modulated sound parameter fades from the maximum amplitude to zero then, during the decay phase, rises to the value specified by the sustain parameter. After the key has been released the sound parameter rises from sustain amplitude back to maximum amplitude. Some envelopes, such as that of the Korg MS-20 , have an extra parameter, hold. This holds notes at

608-597: The German Klangfarbe ( tone color ), and John Tyndall proposed an English translation, clangtint , but both terms were disapproved of by Alexander Ellis , who also discredits register and color for their pre-existing English meanings. Determined by its frequency composition, the sound of a musical instrument may be described with words such as bright , dark , warm , harsh , and other terms. There are also colors of noise , such as pink and white . In visual representations of sound, timbre corresponds to

646-435: The acoustic waveform of the above instruments must exist which are invariant with respect to the above variables". However, Robert Erickson argues that there are few regularities and they do not explain our "...powers of recognition and identification." He suggests borrowing the concept of subjective constancy from studies of vision and visual perception . Psychoacoustic experiments from the 1960s onwards tried to elucidate

684-410: The dominant frequency for the transverse flute is double the fundamental frequency. Other significant frequencies are called overtones of the fundamental frequency, which may include harmonics and partials . Harmonics are whole number multiples of the fundamental frequency, such as ×2, ×3, ×4, etc. Partials are other overtones. There are also sometimes subharmonics at whole number divisions of

722-556: The early twentieth century. Norman Del Mar describes the following passage from the Scherzo movement of his Sixth Symphony , as "a seven-bar link to the trio consisting of an extension in diminuendo of the repeated As… though now rising in a succession of piled octaves which moreover leap-frog with Cs added to the As. The lower octaves then drop away and only the Cs remain so as to dovetail with

760-443: The first oboe phrase of the trio." During these bars, Mahler passes the repeated notes through a gamut of instrumental colors, mixed and single: starting with horns and pizzicato strings, progressing through trumpet, clarinet, flute, piccolo and finally, oboe: (See also Klangfarbenmelodie .) In rock music from the late 1960s to the 2000s, the timbre of specific sounds is important to a song. For example, in heavy metal music ,

798-448: The frequency spectrum, although it also depends upon the sound pressure and the temporal characteristics of the sound". Many commentators have attempted to decompose timbre into component attributes. For example, J. F. Schouten (1968, 42) describes the "elusive attributes of timbre" as "determined by at least five major acoustic parameters", which Robert Erickson finds, "scaled to the concerns of much contemporary music": An example of

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836-414: The fundamental frequency. Most instruments produce harmonic sounds, but many instruments produce partials and inharmonic tones, such as cymbals and other indefinite-pitched instruments. When the tuning note in an orchestra or concert band is played, the sound is a combination of 440 Hz, 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, 1760 Hz and so on. Each instrument in the orchestra or concert band produces

874-685: The head of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center , in 1965, Moog developed a new envelope module whose functions were described in f T1 (attack time), T2 (initial decay time), ESUS (sustain level), and T3 (final decay time). These were later simplified to the modern ADSR form (attack time, decay time, sustain level, release time) by ARP . The most common kind of envelope generator has four stages: attack, decay, sustain, and release (ADSR). While attack, decay, and release refer to time, sustain refers to level. Some electronic musical instruments can invert

912-536: The inharmonic timbre of the Thai renat (a xylophone-like instrument) is related to the seven-tone near-equal tempered pelog scale in which they are tuned. Similarly, the inharmonic spectra of Balinese metallophones combined with harmonic instruments such as the stringed rebab or the voice, are related to the five-note near-equal tempered slendro scale commonly found in Indonesian gamelan music. The timbre of

950-420: The music. Timbre In music, timbre ( / ˈ t æ m b ər , ˈ t ɪ m -, ˈ t æ̃ -/ ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics ), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note , sound or tone . Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voices and musical instruments. It also enables listeners to distinguish different instruments in

988-441: The nature of timbre. One method involves playing pairs of sounds to listeners, then using a multidimensional scaling algorithm to aggregate their dissimilarity judgments into a timbre space. The most consistent outcomes from such experiments are that brightness or spectral energy distribution, and the bite , or rate and synchronicity and rise time, of the attack are important factors. The concept of tristimulus originates in

1026-493: The nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries, has been credited with elevating further the role of timbre: "To a marked degree the music of Debussy elevates timbre to an unprecedented structural status; already in Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune the color of flute and harp functions referentially". Mahler 's approach to orchestration illustrates the increasing role of differentiated timbres in music of

1064-399: The nineteenth century. For example, Wagner's "Sleep motif" from Act 3 of his opera Die Walküre , features a descending chromatic scale that passes through a gamut of orchestral timbres. First the woodwind (flute, followed by oboe), then the massed sound of strings with the violins carrying the melody, and finally the brass (French horns). Debussy , who composed during the last decades of

1102-440: The perception of timbre include frequency spectrum and envelope . Singers and instrumental musicians can change the timbre of the music they are singing/playing by using different singing or playing techniques. For example, a violinist can use different bowing styles or play on different parts of the string to obtain different timbres (e.g., playing sul tasto produces a light, airy timbre, whereas playing sul ponticello produces

1140-447: The relative weight of the first harmonic; the second tristimulus measures the relative weight of the second, third, and fourth harmonics taken together; and the third tristimulus measures the relative weight of all the remaining harmonics: However, more evidence, studies and applications would be needed regarding this type of representation, in order to validate it. The term "brightness" is also used in discussions of sound timbres, in

1178-444: The same category (e.g., an oboe and a clarinet , both woodwind instruments ). In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical instrument or human voice have a different sound from another, even when they play or sing the same note. For instance, it is the difference in sound between a guitar and a piano playing the same note at the same volume. Both instruments can sound equally tuned in relation to each other as they play

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1216-409: The same note, and while playing at the same amplitude level each instrument will still sound distinctively with its own unique tone color. Experienced musicians are able to distinguish between different instruments of the same type based on their varied timbres, even if those instruments are playing notes at the same fundamental pitch and loudness. The physical characteristics of sound that determine

1254-449: The shape of the image, while loudness corresponds to brightness; pitch corresponds to the y-shift of the spectrogram. The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) Acoustical Terminology definition 12.09 of timbre describes it as "that attribute of auditory sensation which enables a listener to judge that two nonidentical sounds, similarly presented and having the same loudness and pitch , are dissimilar", adding, "Timbre depends primarily upon

1292-568: The sonic impact of the heavily amplified, heavily distorted power chord played on electric guitar through very loud guitar amplifiers and rows of speaker cabinets is an essential part of the style's musical identity. Often, listeners can identify an instrument, even at different pitches and loudness, in different environments, and with different players. In the case of the clarinet , acoustic analysis shows waveforms irregular enough to suggest three instruments rather than one. David Luce suggests that this implies that "[C]ertain strong regularities in

1330-399: The strings or the first blast of the player's lips on the trumpet mouthpiece are highly characteristic of those instruments. The envelope is the overall amplitude structure of a sound. Instrumental timbre played an increasing role in the practice of orchestration during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Berlioz and Wagner made significant contributions to its development during

1368-587: The sustain level for a fixed length of time before decaying. The General Instrument AY-3-8910 sound chip includes only a hold time parameter; the sustain level is not programmable. Another common variation in the same vein is the AHDSR (attack, hold, decay, sustain, release) envelope, in which the hold parameter controls how long the envelope stays at full volume before entering the decay phase. Multiple attack, decay and release settings may be found on more sophisticated models. Certain synthesizers also allow for

1406-409: The world of color, describing the way three primary colors can be mixed together to create a given color. By analogy, the musical tristimulus measures the mixture of harmonics in a given sound, grouped into three sections. It is basically a proposal of reducing a huge number of sound partials, which can amount to dozens or hundreds in some cases, down to only three values. The first tristimulus measures

1444-538: Was the first to notice this phenomenon on the example of the wild horses and the cattle. Joseph Jordania suggested that for humans, as for many social animals, silence can be a sign of danger, and that's why gentle humming and musical sounds relax humans (see the use of gentle music in music therapy , lullabies ). In Pirahã , the only surviving dialect of the Mura language , there is a special register of speech which uses solely humming, with no audible release . Humming

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