Murat Güneş

Timbre is ill-defined

Roads [^1] argues that timbre is ill-defined. This figures into my earlier thinking of how a spectogram is a stopgap measure, how it is not a 1:1 definitive representation of sound that it is de facto claimed to be. (There is also mention of this in the preface.) Looking at a spectogram provides some idea of frequency distribution at best; it does not define, nor provide a satisfactory insight for what the timbre of a musical object is.

“Timbre” returns as a subheading of c. 3 at p. 57, where various “heroic attempts” at rigorously defining the timbre of sounds are documented. No mention of the sonorgram here, though.

References:

[^1]: Roads, Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic (2015) somewhere in preface, p. 6, 57