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Re: Color vs Quality, Timbre and Texture

Author: kdk ★2017
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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