 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Windy Dreamer
Date: 2018-11-20 19:17
Yesterday when I came across the word timbre in a post I ran to the dictionary for clarification of the authors intent. After an hour of comparing dictionaries I found no distinction between color and timbre. They also said color, quality, timbe and texture were synonymous in music. That makes no sense to me.I perceive color as broadness and depth of tone with brightness, timbre as broadness and depth of tone to the dark side and quality of tone would be a measure of excellence of either timbre or color.Texture would mean that the color or timbre had clearly discernable features like waves on a lake.I could use all four terms to describe a tone that was either pleasing or offensive. My understanding of the words is based on reading in context not dictionaries . Am I correct or are they simply synonymous ?
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2018-11-20 19:29
I believe you are more correct in the subtler uses of those words. However, once you step off the curb into subjectivity there are no hard definitions. I recall some heated debate years ago (and maybe even more recently) on this Board over what was a "dark tone" vs. "bright tone" complete with examples over which folks took completely opposing sides.
Funny story:
I once cobbled together a piano player and cellist to do a movement of the Brahms Trio for an Army recital. During rehearsal the cellist asked regarding a specific section, "What color do you want?" I wanted to say "orange" but thought better of it and just said that what he just did was fine.
..............Paul Aviles
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Author: kdk
Date: 2018-11-20 20:04
The trouble is that most verbal descriptors people use in music are brought over from visual areas and aren't completely applicable. Hence the debate over "dark" and "bright." Color is obviously not an acoustic term although it's used all the time in talking about the qualities of a sound. Quality is a general term that includes properties of all kinds of things and concepts or, alternatively, people use it to describe goodness or badness. Texture is a visceral term, although it's often used to describe what some thing *looks like* it will feel (rough, smooth, integratal, fragmented, etc.). When used in music it usually, in my experience, refers to the over all sound of a composition's structure - its roughness, smoothness, structural complexity or simplicity - and not so much the properties of an individual tone, but people may use it in other ways.
The only term in your short list that, as far as I know, is a specifically acoustic term is timbre. But as soon as you attach a modifier (descriptor) to it, it will almost certainly become a visual reference and, even if you can avoid that trap, it will be a subjective reaction that may not be universally shared by everyone else who hears the same sound.
The bottom line is that no matter how you use or modify any of those words, their precise meaning will not be clear to anyone but you. Your context is yours, not necessarily any one else's. So, use the words as you like because there aren't any better ones and there are no clear, universally accepted meanings for any of them. But expect that, when you attach adjectives (dark, bright, edgy, smooth, brash, orange, singing, etc...) of any kind to any of those words, others will disagree with your choices. Even when you're all hearing the same sound.
Karl
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Author: richard smith
Date: 2018-11-20 20:29
read articles written by Portnoy
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Author: Windy Dreamer
Date: 2018-11-20 20:47
In discussions of music I often hear people say something without saying anything. When I run to the dictionary they also often say something without saying anything. It often seems that music discussions are more like secret Masonic winks or handshakes than attempts to actually convey perceptions or understanding.When using those four words I will have to make an effort to include descriptors to avoid saying something without saying anything comprehendible.
This reminds of a world class theologian that lectured at a seminary I attended in California in 1978. In week one of two he spent over 50 hours defining 40 common words that were the foundation of his theological world. He began by asserting that vocabulary is in a constant evolutionary state.Words do not have the same meaning as they did 100 or even 10 years before.When a large portion of the class broke out in laughter he angrily countered " mouse and bug ".
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Author: Ken Lagace
Date: 2018-11-20 21:17
Every discipline has their own terms and meanings. They aren't secret meanings, just shortcuts. I am also a pilot, photographer, computer programmer, builder, mechanic, arranger, engineer, and a few other things. They all have their own terms and meanings, many of which overlap but don't mean the same.
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2018-11-20 21:34
Speaking of audio engineering, I asked my lab instructor about a specific miking technique and whether it made things sound more like "this,".....or ..."that," and he said, "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."
..............Paul Aviles
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Author: kdk
Date: 2018-11-20 22:09
Windy Dreamer wrote:
> This reminds of a world class theologian that lectured at a
> seminary I attended in California in 1978. In week one of two
> he spent over 50 hours defining 40 common words that were the
> foundation of his theological world. He began by asserting that
> vocabulary is in a constant evolutionary state.
Words, when they're used in very disciplined settings, need to be defined for use in the specific setting to avoid this kind of problem. My experience in the experimental side of my education background was that each author took pains before presenting his hypotheses, research results and conclusions to define the terms he would be using. The definitions were generally narrow and made what he or she meant by using them very clear.
For example, one obvious set of examples from Skinner's approach to behavioral psychology are the terms positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment. Skinner's (and others') use of those terms were not what many people outside the science of psychology mean by their use. You so often see "punishment" and "negative reinforcement" used interchangeably as though they were synonymous. But in classic behaviorist terminology they are very different. Even experienced educators sometimes try to make their approach to dealing with discipline sound more science-based by calling things "negative reinforcement" that are clearly punishments. The two classically tend to have different results.
Another pair of specifically musical terms I have found from day-to-day experience seem not to have universal meaning, so that a theory writer really needs to define them when he writes about meter, are "duple" or "triple" meter. Is 6/8 a duple or triple meter? What about 3/4?
Karl
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2018-11-20 22:55
Interesting
When there was a US Army Element School of Music, they defined 6/8 within a category of called "simple compound meter." At the time we were told these ideas came from the Berklee School of Music.
I tell my students there are only two prevalent rhythms in Western music; the duple (a single pulse divided into two equal parts), and the triple (a single pulse divided into three equal parts). Everything else is just a derivation of that.
But I see what you mean
................Paul Aviles
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2018-11-20 23:32
I found all of the above responses to be very educational, informative and quite thought provoking. I enjoyed reading them all.
However, I sensed that something was missing. And, that "something" (to me) was the why.
First, IMO, it's because all of our hearing sensitivity "curves" are different. Second, all of our brains, IMO, interpret what we hear differently. Third, our educational backgrounds, IQ's, etc., are not exactly the same, therefore, our abilities and/or talents at oral and written expression as well as oral and written interpretations can never be identical.
Yet, words are all we have and we need them in order to try and convey how we interpret what we hear, feel, and see.
Even though I agree with Paul's lab instructor who stated: "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."...I hope it never stops.
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Author: Windy Dreamer
Date: 2018-11-21 00:45
In the political realm I have drafted resolutions and preambles that have passed in National contexts. Can you imagine 3 months of sleepness nights followed by 50 or more editorial debates over a simple statement comprsised of 20 to 30 common words ? I have a lot of respect for waitresses as listeners and communicators. Eventually I decided to take my pending resolutions to them for comment and editing. If three agreed a statement was clear and effective I would take it to the floor as is and skip all the stressful editorial debates. By turning to waitresses for help I also reduced three months of sleeplessness to less than two weeks.
If you ever have stress or anxiety over the crafting of writing and the implications of vocabulary take it to waitresses.
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The Clarinet Pages
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