Sound synthesis based on a new micro timbre notation
Naotoshi Osaka, Takayuki Baba, Nobuhiko Kitawaki, Takeshi Yamada · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2006
Timbre has become a major musical factor in contemporary and computer music. However, sufficient timbre theory has not yet been established. The author is challenging to create new timbre theory for music composition. The first step of its construction is to make the timbre descriptive. A micro timbre is defined, which is a perceptual impression of a sound with approximately 50 to 100-ms duration, and describe sound as a micro timbre sequence. This can be used as a new notation system in place of common music notation. In dictation, micro timbre sequence and correspondent duration sequence are perceptually recorded. When synthesizing from this notation, sounds corresponding to the notation systems are either physically synthesized or searched for in a large sound database to generate sound data for a given duration. Two sequential sound data instances are first represented in sinusoidal representations and then are concatenated using a morphing technique. Sounds generated by a stream of water and similar sounds are described using the method as examples. Then scripts describing electronic sounds are introduced and explained. The ability to record, transmit to others, and resynthesize timbre is one of the useful functions of the theory.