The perception of musical timbre
Stephen E. McAdams, Bruno L. Giordano · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2012
This article discusses musical-timbre perception. Musical timbre is a combination of continuous perceptual dimensions and discrete features to which listeners are differentially sensitive. The continuous dimensions often have quantifiable acoustic correlates. The timbre-space representation is a powerful psychological model that allows predictions to be made about timbre perception in situations beyond those used to derive the model in the first place. Timbre can play a role in larger-scale movements of tension and relaxation and thus contribute to the expression inherent in musical form. Under conditions of high blend among instruments composing a vertical sonority, timbral roughness is a major component of musical tension. However, it strongly depends on the way auditory grouping processes have parsed the incoming acoustic information into events and streams.