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The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music
Abstract
The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music assembles a broad spectrum of contemporary perspectives on how "sound" functions in an equally wide array of popular music. Ranging from the twang of country banjoes and the sheen of hip-hop strings to the crunch of amplified guitars and the thump of subwoofers on the dance floor, this volume bridges the gap between timbre, our name for the purely acoustic characteristics of sound waves, and tone, an emergent musical construct that straddles the borderline between the perceptual and the political. Essays engage with the entire history of popular music as recorded sound, from the 1930s to the present day, under four large categories. "Genre" asks how sonic signatures define musical identities and publics; "Voice" considers the most naturalized musical instrument, the human voice, as racial and gendered signifier, as property or likeness, and as raw material for algorithmic perfection through software; "Instrument" tells stories of the way some iconic pop music machines-guitars, strings, synthesizers-got (or lost) their distinctive sounds; "Production" then puts it all together, asking structural questions about what happens in a recording studio, what is produced (sonic cartoons? rockist authenticity? empty space?) and what it all might mean.
... The timbres produced by musical instruments, and the terms used to describe them, often vary with pitch: for example, the lowest notes of the piano can be described as rumbling, thick, and muddy, while its highest notes are tinkling, thin, and clear. Such descriptions are common in both orchestration treatises (e.g., Adler, 2002) and scholarly writings (e.g., Fink et al., 2018). ...
The main objective of this study is to understand how timbre semantic associations—for example, a sound’s timbre perceived as bright, rough, or hollow—vary with register and pitch height across instruments. In this experiment, 540 online participants rated single, sustained notes from eight Western orchestral instruments (flute, oboe, bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, violin, cello, and vibraphone) across three registers (low, medium, and high) on 20 semantic scales derived from Reymore and Huron (2020). The 24 two-second stimuli, equalized in loudness, were produced using the Vienna Symphonic Library.
Exploratory modeling examined relationships between mean ratings of each semantic dimension and instrument, register, and participant musician identity (“musician” vs. “nonmusician”). For most semantic descriptors, both register and instrument were significant predictors, though the amount of variance explained differed (marginal R2). Terms that had the strongest positive relationships with register include shrill/harsh/noisy, sparkling/brilliant/bright, ringing/long decay, and percussive. Terms with the strongest negative relationships with register include deep/thick/heavy, raspy/grainy/gravelly, hollow, and woody. Post hoc modeling using only pitch height and only register to predict mean semantic rating suggests that pitch height may explain more variance than does register. Results help clarify the influence of both instrument and relative register (and pitch height) on common timbre semantic associations.
... As an example, an educational approach could consist of the inclusion of DAWs in CSE classrooms as basic tools for musical appreciation and creation (Green, 2002). Such software forms an integral part of the musical styles favored by adolescents and is used to adapt songs to the latest music trends through the use of sound manipulation techniques, which make them more attractive (Fink et al., 2018). In addition, DAWs allow students without extensive musical knowledge or outstanding performance skills to create music with impressive results, not a million miles away from professionally produced music (Rudolph, 2004). ...
Adolescent music preferences revolve around so-called popular music, specifically that which is highly manipulated by audio and music production technologies and aimed at the mass market. These processes can result in music genres that lean toward sound homogenization, a phenomenon that could gradually restrict adolescents’ access to the acoustic richness of other music styles that have emerged throughout history. The objective of this work was to analyze the music genres favored by a sample of Spanish adolescents ( n = 464), based on their acoustic qualities (timbre, rhythm, and dynamics). The results of the automatic analysis indicated a great deal of overlap in terms of sound, which corroborated the homogeneous character of the genres. This calls for an approach to secondary music education that helps preserve musical richness and stylistic variety in the classroom.
... These reflected waves (and the more direct waves straight from the speaker) are then picked up by a microphone to be mixed with the original dry audio to create a sound with a longer decay, more harmonics, and a sense of space. Although initially created to emulate the reverberations in a room, the bright and charismatic sound is now desirable in its own right [2]. ...
Plates reverbs have historically been used to add characterful reverberation to
musical samples, but their large size and high price has led to their decline in favour of
digital emulations. In this project, scale modelling techniques, as used in architectural
acoustics, are applied to plate reverbs with the aim to reduce the size of the plate while
maintaining the output sound. Theoretical analysis of small plates concludes that
modal and dispersive properties can be maintained through scale modelling methods,
but increased thermoelastic damping causes a reduction in high frequency T60 times.
A plate system capable of up to 8 times scale reduction, compared with an EMT 140,
is constructed. This is used to show that speed shifting techniques can extend the
reverberation times to a level comparable to the full sized plate, although this cannot
be run in real time. The theoretical predictions on modal and dispersive effects are
corroborated by the output of the constructed system, which is then optimised to
produce a useful small plate reverb. While the optimised system produces musical
results, due to the higher treble damping and an imperfect input frequency response,
there is a noticeable low pass effect on the output samples.
... He notes that human beings are hearing impaired below 100 Hz but are capable of feeling the movement of waves at high levels of loudness without damaging their hearing. This fact was used by the sound system operators in the 90s who would mix the sound to have high levels of bass but controlled mids and highs in order to "envelope dancers in a shared physical experience of sound without punishing their ears"17 and it was not long before Drum & Bass producers took advantage of this situation. ...
A relatively unexplored but musically rich musical tradition from the Indian subcontinent is Carnatic classical music, a rhythmically complex style which lends itself beautifully to the Drum & Bass template. This dissertation is aimed at understanding the origins, evolution and fundamental building blocks of both styles, and the possibilities of incorporating one into the other to create an exciting new style of Asian Underground Music.
... 18. On The Relentless Pursuit of Tone in popular music, seeFink, Latour & Wallmark (2018). On the history of orchestration and the invention of timbre in the eighteenth century, seeDolan (2013). ...
... This finding adds to the contemporary discourse of timbre semantics by demonstrating that affective verbal prompts can systematically influence sound production, just as listening to timbre has been shown to elicit systematic verbal judgments (for reviews, see Saitis & Weinzierl, 2019;Wallmark & Kendall, in press). Beyond semantics, moreover, this study is in line with other recent research in demonstrating the affective significance of timbre in the generation of musical meaning (Fink, Latour, & Wallmark, 2018;Noble & McAdams, 2018). ...
Many people listen to music that conveys challenging emotions such as sadness and anger, despite the commonly assumed purpose of media being to elicit pleasure. We propose that eudaimonic motivation, the desire to engage with aesthetic experiences to be challenged and facilitate meaningful experiences, can explain why people listen to music containing such emotions. However, it is unknown whether music containing violent themes can facilitate such meaningful experiences. In this investigation, three studies were conducted to determine the implications of eudaimonic and hedonic (pleasure-seeking) motivations for fans of music with violent themes. In Study 1, we developed and tested a new scale and showed that fans exhibit high levels of both types of motivation. Study 2 further validated the new scale and provided evidence that the two types of motivations are associated with different affective outcomes. Study 3 revealed that fans of violently themed music exhibited higher levels of eudaimonic motivation and lower levels of hedonic motivation than fans of non-violently themed music. Taken together, the findings support the notion that fans of music with violent themes are driven to engage with this music to be challenged and to pursue meaning, as well as to experience pleasure. Implications for fans’ well-being and future applications of the new measure are discussed.
The Gibson Les Paul is one of the most iconic electric guitars ever made. Although there is a vibrant scholarly literature surrounding the Les Paul’s symbolic entanglements with issues of race, gender, and class, few have considered the ecopolitical entanglements involved in producing a key material dimension of that guitar’s signature sound: Honduran mahogany ( Swietenia macrophylla ). Fiji is one of the main harvesting sites of Honduran mahogany, and this chapter charts the social and environmental transformations that occurred following this wood’s introduction to Fiji in the 1880s, considering especially the increasing demand for mahogany as it has been driven by the popularization of the Les Paul since the mid-twentieth century—an issue that, to this day, continues to define forestry in the region. By examining the global commodity chains and infrastructures underlying Les Paul production, this chapter focuses on the role that Honduran mahogany, or the “White Man’s timber,” as it is called by some locals, has played in reconfiguring Fijian landowners’ definitions of what constitutes a forest, sustainability, and justice. In doing so, the chapter interrogates the power relations and ontological politics in which different actors, species, and things are enmeshed. Ultimately, the chapter shows that the aesthetic investments of musicians in particular timbres are rooted in broader legacies of timber-driven colonialism and plantation capitalism.
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