Nonuniformity in timbre of string instruments
Asbjørn Krokstad · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1987
Mechanical musical instruments, may show great variation of all physical properties that correlate to timbre, even over intervals of a semitone. To examine preferences and limits of acceptability, timbre variations have been studied in a melodic context. A short melody of 13 tones covering a decime Was played by two professional musicians on three violins and a viola, and recorded at two microphone positions in an anechoic room. Each tone was processed digitally to reduce differences in loudness and in transients. In the first of two listening tests, dissimilarities in timbre between pairs of successive tones were evaluated. From these differences, integrated differences for different versions of the whole melody are calculated, and differences between versions. The possibility of identifying a certain player, a certain instrument or a certain microphone position may be given as relative numbers. The dissimilarity data are used for the synthesis of new versions of the melody with a range of nonuniformity in timbre. In the second listening test, acceptability of nonuniformity were evaluated. To study the dimensions and physical variabilities of timbre by sustained tones, multidimensional analysis of the subjective differences are performed and several spectral variables for describing the differences are tested.