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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: because it is a PLUCKED instrument the note begins differently! posted by Timbo in Oz on April 16, 2007 at 14:49:15:
"So, what is called 'the characteristic timbre' of an instrument is identified using the attack and decay."Well if attack and decay include everything including the kitchen sink, then it's pretty hard to parse out any meaningful subset from there. I mean, if that's the way it's defined, then just say "timbre" as a catch-all term and say that's the way it sounds, just because it does. There's only a couple of meaningful parts to timbre, attack and decay, and it includes all? Interesting definition, and not a real good one for engineers.
Engineers like to separate these things into more components to analyze. An attack and decay ENVELOPE is something different, and only talks about the amplitude modulation change with time. There's frequency spectrum in there as well, but that is a subcomponent.
But hey, if you just want to call the attack and decay an all inclusive time domain representation of the rise and fall in amplitude of the note, then of course you can recognize an instrument in this interval. It, after all, includes all the information you say it does. To me it's a rather weak term, to lump sum everything in that interval. It has no interesting features to talk about, it is too inclusive to talk about the various component features. But okay, if that's the true musical terminology, then I learned something.
Then let's just say a guitar and violin sound different based on their timbre, which is to say the total sum of everything that makes up their sound. Wow, what a concept! Obviously, this is true, it is the definition of the differences in the way they sound!
The only point you have elsewhere is that the timbre of the instrument is most recognizable by the attack and decay portion of the timbre of the instrument. That too is obvious, and not all that interesting, to be honest.
I may have been wrong to assume attack and decay as the amplitude modulation envelope of the instrument's sound, but if it does include the harmonic spectrum and all else, then there's really not much to discuss at all.
If the sound is most important in just the attack portion, again, it too is so inclusive as to be not significant an analysis of what is really important. It just says it's all important, at the beginning, and that's enough. Well, duh! We could all could have figured that out.
So I guess I don't really see the point of the argument with these definitions.
Kurt
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Follow Ups
- Musicians must have a different way of looking at things - kurt s 22:08:34 04/16/07 (1)
- No, Kurt, it's the audiophiles that do! ;-) nt - markrohr 06:07:09 04/17/07 (0)
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