Spectrogram of the first second of an E9 chord played on a Fender Stratocaster guitar with noiseless pickups. Below is the E9 chord audio:

In music, timbre, also known as tone color, ( /ˈtæmbər/ TAM-bər or /ˈtɪmbər/; French: [tɛ̃bʁ]) is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the perception of timbre include spectrum and envelope. In psychoacoustics, timbre is also called tone quality and tone color.

In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical sound different from another, even when they have the same pitch and loudness. For instance, it is the difference between a guitar and a piano playing the same note at the same loudness. Experienced musicians are able to distinguish between different instruments based on their varied timbres, even if those instruments are playing notes at the same pitch and loudness.

Synonyms[link]

Tone quality and color are synonyms for timbre, as well as the "texture attributed to a single instrument". Hermann von Helmholtz used the German Klangfarbe (tone color), and John Tyndall proposed an English translation, clangtint. But both terms were disapproved of by Alexander Ellis, who also discredits register and color for their pre-existing English meanings (Erickson 1975, 7).

The sound of a musical instrument may be described with such words as bright, dark, warm, harsh, and other terms. There are also colors of noise, such as pink and white.

In visual representations of sound, timbre corresponds to the shape of the image (Abbado 1988, 3).

American Standards Association definition[link]

The American Standards Association definition 12.9 of timbre describes it as "that attribute of sensation in terms of which a listener can judge that two sounds having the same loudness and pitch are dissimilar", and a note to this definition adds that "timbre depends primarily upon the spectrum of the stimulus, but it also depends upon the waveform, the sound pressure, the frequency location of the spectrum, and the temporal characteristics of the stimulus" (American Standards Association 1960, 45).

Attributes[link]

Timbre has been called a "wastebasket" attribute (Dixon Ward 1965, 55) or category (Tobias 1970, 409), or "the psychoacoustician's multidimensional waste-basket category for everything that cannot be labeled pitch or loudness" (McAdams and Bregman 1979, 34).

Many commentators have attempted to decompose timbre into component attributes. For example, J. F. Schouten (1968, 42) describes the "elusive attributes of timbre" as "determined by at least five major acoustic parameters", which Robert Erickson (1975) finds "scaled to the concerns of much contemporary music":

1. The range between tonal and noiselike character.
2. The spectral envelope.
3. The time envelope in terms of rise, duration, and decay (ADSR—attack, decay, sustain, release).
4. The changes both of spectral envelope (formant-glide) and fundamental frequency (micro-intonation).
5. The prefix, or onset of a sound, quite dissimilar to the ensuing lasting vibration.

(Erickson 1975, 6) gives a table of subjective experiences and related physical phenomena based on Schouten's five attributes:

See also "Psychoacoustic evidence" below.

Harmonics[link]

The richness of a sound or note produced by a musical instrument is sometimes described in terms of a sum of a number of distinct frequencies. The lowest frequency is called the fundamental frequency and the pitch it produces is used to name the note, but the fundamental frequency is not always the dominant frequency. The dominant frequency is the frequency that is most heard, and it is always a multiple of the fundamental frequency. For example, the dominant frequency for the transverse flute is double the fundamental frequency. Other significant frequencies are called overtones of the fundamental frequency, which may include harmonics and partials. Harmonics are whole number multiples of the fundamental frequency, such as ×2, ×3, ×4, etc. Partials are other overtones. Sometimes there are also subharmonics at whole number divisions of the fundamental frequency. Most western instruments produce harmonic sounds, but many instruments produce partials and inharmonic tones, such as cymbals and other indefinite-pitched instruments.

When the orchestral tuning note is played, the sound is a combination of 440 Hz, 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, 1760 Hz and so on. Each instrument in the orchestra will produce a different combination of these frequencies, as well as harmonics and overtones. The sound waves of the different frequencies will overlap and combine, and it is the balance of these amplitudes that is a major factor in the characteristic sound of each instrument.

William Sethares wrote that just intonation and the western equal tempered scale are related to the harmonic spectra/timbre of many western instruments in an analogous way that the inharmonic timbre of the Thai renat (a xylophone-like instrument) is related to the seven-tone near-equal tempered pelog scale in which they are tuned. Similarly, the inharmonic spectra of Balinese metallophones combined with harmonic instruments such as the stringed rebab or the voice, are related to the five-note near-equal tempered slendro scale commonly found in Indonesian gamelan music (Sethares 1998, 6, 211, 318).

Envelope[link]

A signal and its envelope marked with red

The timbre of a sound is also greatly affected by the following aspects of its envelope: attack time and characteristics, decay, sustain, release (ADSR envelope) and transients. Thus these are all common controls on synthesizers. For instance, if one takes away the attack from the sound of a piano or trumpet, it becomes more difficult to identify the sound correctly, since the sound of the hammer hitting the strings or the first blat of the player's lips are highly characteristic of those instruments. The envelope is the overall amplitude structure of a sound, so called because the sound just "fits" inside its envelope: what this means should be clear from a time-domain display of almost any interesting sound, zoomed out enough that the entire waveform is visible.

Timbre in music history[link]

The music of Debussy, composed during the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries, has been credited with elevating the role of timbre in music: "To a marked degree the music of Debussy elevates timbre to an unprecedented structural status; already in Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune the color of flute and harp functions referentially" (Samson 1977,^{[page needed]}).

Psychoacoustic evidence[link]

Often listeners are able to identify the kind of instrument even across "conditions of changing pitch and loudness, in different environments and with different players". In the case of the clarinet, an acoustic analysis of the waveforms shows they are irregular enough to suggest three instruments rather than one. David Luce (1963, 16) suggests that this implies "certain strong regularities in the acoustic waveform of the above instruments must exist which are invariant with respect to the above variables". However, Robert Erickson argues that there are few regularities and they do not explain our "powers of recognition and identification". He suggests the borrowing from studies of vision and visual perception the concept of subjective constancy (Erickson 1975, 11).

Psychoacoustic experiments from the 1960s onwards tried to elucidate the nature of timbre. One method involves playing pairs of sounds to listeners and then using a multidimensional scaling algorithm to aggregate their dissimilarity judgements into a timbre space; the most consistent outcomes from such experiments are that brightness or spectral energy distribution (Grey 1977,^{[page needed]}), and the "bite", or rate and synchronicity (Wessel 1979,^{[page needed]}) and rise time (Lakatos 2000,^{[page needed]}), of the attack are important factors.

See also[link]

• Formant

References[link]

• Abbado, Adriano (1988). "Perceptual Correspondences: Animation and Sound". MS Thesis. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• American Standards Association (1960). American Standard Acoustical Terminology. New York: American Standards Association.
• Dixon Ward, W. (1965). "Psychoacoustics". In Audiometry: Principles and Practices, edited by Aram Glorig, 55. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Co. Reprinted, Huntington, N.Y.: R. E. Krieger Pub. Co., 1977. ISBN 0-88275-604-4
• Dixon Ward, W. (1970) "Musical Perception". In Foundations of Modern Auditory Theory vol. 1, edited by Jerry V. Tobias,^{[page needed]}. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-691901-1.
• Erickson, Robert (1975). Sound Structure in Music. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-02376-5.
• Grey, John M. (1977). "Multidimensional Perceptual Scaling of Musical Timbres". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 61(5):1270–77. doi:10.1121/1.381428
• Lakatos, S. (2000). "A Common Perceptual Space for Harmonic and Percussive Timbres". Perception & Psychophysics 62(7):1426–39. PMID 11143454.
• Luce, David A. (1963). "Physical Correlates of Nonpercussive Musical Instrument Tones", Ph.D. dissertation. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• McAdams, Stephen, and Albert Bregman (1979). "Hearing Musical Streams". Computer Music Journal 3, no. 4 (December): 26–43, 60.
• Samson, Jim (1977). Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900-1920. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-02193-9.
• Schouten, J. F. (1968). "The Perception of Timbre". In Reports of the 6th International Congress on Acoustics, Tokyo, GP-6-2, 6 vols., edited by Y. Kohasi, ^{[Full citation needed]}35–44, 90. Tokyo: Maruzen; Amsterdam: Elsevier.
• Sethares, William (1998). Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale. Berlin, London, and New York: Springer. ISBN 3-540-76173-X.
• Wessel, David (1979). "Low Dimensional Control of Musical Timbre". Computer Music Journal 3:45–52. Rewritten version, 1999, as "Timbre Space as a Musical Control Structure".

Timber Timbre
Timber Timbre performing in Montréal in April 2010
Background information
Origin	Brooklin, Ontario, Canada
Genres	Folk, blues
Years active	2005 (2005)–present
Labels	Arts & Crafts, Out of This Spark, Full Time Hobby
Website	timbertimbre.com
Members
Taylor Kirk Simon Trottier Mika Posen

Timber Timbre is a Canadian folk music project, featuring Taylor Kirk, Simon Trottier and Mika Posen. The moniker refers to an early series of recordings made in a timber-framed cabin set in the wooded outskirts of Bobcaygeon, Ontario.

Timber Timbre released two albums independently before releasing a self-titled album on Out of This Spark in January 2009. They were subsequently signed to Arts & Crafts, who re-released the album on June 30 in Canada and July 28 internationally.^[1] The album was named as a longlist nominee for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize on June 15, 2009,^[2] and was deemed album of the year by Eye Weekly.^[3]

The band's song "Magic Arrow" was featured in the television show Breaking Bad, in the episode "Caballo Sin Nombre", as well as in the TV series The Good Wife, in the episode "Bitcoin for Dummies".

On June 16, 2011, the band's fourth album Creep On Creepin' On was named as a longlisted nominee for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize.^[4] On July 6, the album was named as a short listed (one of ten) nominee for the 2011 award.

Sound[link]

Timber Timbre's^[5] sound has been described as "an aesthetic rooted in swampy, ragged blues" ^[6] and "beautifully restrained blues from an alternate universe",^[7] which creates an atmosphere that is cinematic and spooky.^[8]

Members[link]

• Taylor Kirk (Vocals, Guitar, Baritone Guitar, Bass Guitar, Keyboards, Drums, Loops)
• Simon Trottier (Autoharp, Lapsteel, Electric Guitar, Baritone Guitar, Percussion, Loops, Sampler)
• Mika Posen (Violin, Viola, Keyboards, Percussion, Loops)

Discography[link]

• Cedar Shakes (2006)
• Medicinals (2007)
• Timber Timbre (2009)
• Creep On Creepin' On (2011)

Compilations[link]

• Friends in Bellwoods II (2009): "Water"

Other credits[link]

Kirk and Trottier have also produced albums for other artists, including the full-length debut album by Tasseomancy.^[9]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Timber Timbre

• Timber Timbre

Gary Moore
Moore in 2008
Background information
Birth name	Robert William Gary Moore
Born	(1952-04-04)4 April 1952 Belfast, Northern Ireland
Died	6 February 2011(2011-02-06) (aged 58) Estepona, Malaga Province, Spain
Genres	Blues rock, hard rock, heavy metal, blues, jazz fusion
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, producer
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, harmonica
Years active	1969–2011
Labels	Virgin, Eagle
Associated acts	Skid Row, Thin Lizzy, Colosseum II, Phil Lynott, Greg Lake, BBM
Website	www.gary-moore.com
Notable instruments
Gary Moore Signature Les Paul Fender Stratocaster

Robert William Gary Moore (4 April 1952^[1] – 6 February 2011), was a Northern Irish musician, most widely recognised as a blues singer and guitarist.

In a career dating back to the 1960s, Moore played with artists including Phil Lynott and Brian Downey during his teens, leading him to memberships with the Irish bands Skid Row and Thin Lizzy on three separate occasions. Moore shared the stage with such blues and rock luminaries as B.B. King, Albert King, Colosseum II, George Harrison and Greg Lake, as well as having a successful solo career. He guested on a number of albums recorded by high profile musicians, including a cameo appearance playing the lead guitar solo on "She's My Baby" from Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.

Early life and career[link]

Moore started performing at a young age, having picked up a battered acoustic guitar at the age of eight. He got his first quality guitar at the age of 14, learning to play the right-handed instrument in the standard way despite being left-handed. He moved to Dublin in 1968 at the age of 16. His early musical influences were artists such as Albert King, Elvis Presley, The Shadows and The Beatles. Later, having seen Jimi Hendrix and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers in his home town of Belfast, his own style was developing into a blues-rock sound that would be the dominant form of his career in music.

Moore's greatest influence in the early days was guitarist Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac who was a mentor to Moore when performing in Dublin. Green's continued influence on Moore was later repaid as a tribute to Green on his 1995 album Blues for Greeny, an album consisting entirely of Green compositions. On this tribute album, Moore played Green's 1959 Les Paul Standard guitar which Green had lent to Moore after leaving Fleetwood Mac. Moore ultimately purchased the guitar, at Green's request, so that "it would have a good home".^[2]

Moore performing at the Manchester Apollo, 1985

While less popular in the US, Moore's work "brought substantial acclaim and commercial success in most other parts of the world – especially in Europe".^[3] Throughout his career, Moore was recognised as an influence by many notable guitarists including Vivian Campbell,^[4] Patrick Rondat,^[5] John Norum, Paul Gilbert,^[6] Gus G, Slash, Orianthi, Joe Bonamassa, Adrian Smith, Doug Aldrich, Zakk Wylde,^[7] Randy Rhoads, John Sykes and Kirk Hammett^[8]

He collaborated with a broad range of artists including Phil Lynott, George Harrison, Trilok Gurtu, Dr. Strangely Strange, Colosseum II, Travelling Wilburys, Albert Collins, Jimmy Nail, Mo Foster, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, Jim Capaldi, B.B. King, Bob Dylan, Vicki Brown, Cozy Powell, Rod Argent, the Beach Boys, Ozzy Osbourne, Paul Rodgers, Keith Emerson, Roger Daltrey, Albert King and together with Colosseum II with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the composer's Variations album in 1978. He experimented with many musical genres, including rock, jazz, blues, country, electric blues, hard rock and heavy metal.^[9]

In 1968, aged 16, Moore moved to Dublin to join the group Skid Row with Noel Bridgeman and Brendan "Brush" Shiels. It was with this group that he earned a reputation in the music industry, and his association with Phil Lynott began.^[10]

Solo career[link]

Moore released his first solo album in 1973, Grinding Stone (billed as "the Gary Moore Band"). 'Grinding Stone' was issued in North America on Neil Kempfer-Stocker's fledgling record label imprint Cosmos. It received 'Album of the Year' accolades on KTAC-FM/Seattle-Tacoma, Washington in 1974. In 1978 his solo career continued with help from Phil Lynott. The combination of Moore's blues-based guitar and Lynott's voice produced "Parisienne Walkways", which reached the Top Ten in the UK Singles Chart in April 1979 and the Thin Lizzy album Black Rose: A Rock Legend which reached number two in the UK album chart. Moore appears in the videos for Waiting for an Alibi and Do Anything You Want To.

In 1987, he collaborated on the UK charity record "Let It Be", a cover of the Beatles track. He performed a guitar solo for inclusion on the recording, which was released under the group-name of 'Ferry Aid'. The record raised substantial funds for the survivors of the MS Herald of Free Enterprise disaster.

In 1993, he was included on a cassette called Rock Classics Vol. 1 with "Run to Your Mama", and "Dark Side of the Moog".

Moore performing, 23 October 2010

After a series of rock records, Moore returned to blues music with Still Got the Blues, with contributions from Albert King, Albert Collins and George Harrison. The album was well received by fans. He stayed with the blues format until 1997 when he returned to the harder rock, but with a softer, more pop and ballad-oriented sound on Dark Days in Paradise followed with another change of direction in 1999, when he decided to experiment with modern dance beats on A Different Beat; this left many fans, as well as the music press, confused. He also contributed guitar sections to Richard Blackwood's 2000 album, You'll Love to Hate This.

With Back to the Blues, Moore returned to his tried and tested blues format in 2001: he continued with this style on Power of the Blues (2004), Old New Ballads Blues (2006), Close As You Get (2007) and Bad For You Baby (2008).

In January 2005, Moore joined the One World Project, which recorded a song for the 2004 Asian Tsunami relief effort. The group featured Russell Watson, Boy George, Steve Winwood, Barry Gibb, Brian Wilson, Cliff Richard, Dewey Bunnell, Gerry Beckley and Robin Gibb on vocals (in their order of appearance), and featured a guitar solo by Moore. The song, entitled "Grief Never Grows Old", was released in February 2005, reaching #4 on the UK Singles Chart.^[11]

At a press conference in Russia, weeks before his death, he announced that he would not visit the "criminal state" of Israel "because of its racist policies against the Palestinian people".

He also took part in a comedy skit entitled "The Easy Guitar Book Sketch" with comedian Rowland Rivron and fellow musicians Mark Knopfler, Lemmy from Motorhead, Mark King from Level 42, and David Gilmour.

Personal life[link]

Moore grew up on Castleview Road opposite Stormont's Parliament Buildings, off the Upper Newtownards Road in east Belfast, as one of five children of a promoter named Bobby and housewife, Winnie, but he left the city as a teenager, because all was not well in their household. His parents parted a year later. He left just as The Troubles were starting in Northern Ireland.^[12]

Aiming to become a musician he moved to Dublin at the age of 16 and joined Skid Row, a band that then included Phil Lynott. Moore would later join Lynott again in 1973 when he first joined Thin Lizzy, after the departure of founding member Eric Bell and again in 1977. He moved to England in 1970 and remained there, apart from two short periods in America. In 2002 he bought a five-bedroom detached Edwardian house in Hove, just west of Brighton, Sussex, to be near his sons, Jack and Gus, from his former marriage which had lasted from 1985 to 1993. Since 1997 he was living with his partner, an artist named Jo, and their daughter Lily (b. 1999) and Saoirse.^[12] His residence was reported to be on Vallance Gardens in Hove, East Sussex.^[13]

Death[link]

Moore died of a massive heart attack, associated with consumption of large amounts of alcohol,^[14] at the age of 58 during the early hours of 6 February 2011. At the time, he was on holiday at the Kempinski Hotel in Estepona, Spain, with his girlfriend, who raised the alarm at 4:00 am. His death was confirmed by Thin Lizzy's manager Adam Parsons.^[10][15][16] Tests revealed that Moore died after consuming huge amounts of alcohol. He had 380 mg of alcohol per decilitre of blood in his system – 30 mg more than the amount usually associated with such deaths. Although he wasn't driving, that amount would have put him nearly five times over the legal limit for driving in the UK.^[14]

Moore was laid to rest in St Margaret's Churchyard, Rottingdean, East Sussex, England, which is close to Brighton, in a private ceremony with only the family in attendance.^[17]

Legacy[link]

This article mainly consists of lists. The information may be better understood by either replacing or supporting with prose. You can help by consulting the relevant guideline and making appropriate changes or additions. Editing help is available. (September 2011)

Since his death, many fellow musicians have commented on Gary Moore's talents including Ozzy Osbourne,^[18] Eric Singer,^[19] Doug Aldrich,^[20] T mi,^[21] Bob Geldof,^[22] Roger Taylor,^[23] Brian May,^[24] Brian Downey,^[25][26] Andy DiGelsomina,^[27] Ricky Warwick,^[28] Glenn Hughes, Bryan Adams, Henry Rollins, Scott Gorham,^[29] Ignacio Garay,^[30] and Mikael Åkerfeldt.^[31] On 18 April 2011, a number of musicians including Eric Bell and Brian Downey, Silverbird and The Business blues band gathered for a tribute concert in Whelan's bar in Dublin, Ireland titled 'The Gig For Gary'.^[32]

Fans have called for popular magazines such as Classic Rock, Guitarist and Total Guitar to do tributes. In March 2011 Guitarist produced a tribute special with unreleased footage from 2009. Twitter was flooded with tributes from fans for several days after the news was revealed.^[33]

Moore left an estate worth more than £2 million following his death.^{[citation needed]}

Discography[link]

• Grinding Stone (1973)
• Back on the Streets (1978)
• G-Force (1980)
• Corridors of Power (1982)
• Dirty Fingers (1984)
• Victims of the Future (1984)
• Run for Cover (1985)
• Wild Frontier (1987)
• After the War (1989)
• Still Got the Blues (1990)
• After Hours (1992)
• Blues for Greeny (1995)
• Dark Days in Paradise (1997)
• A Different Beat (1999)
• Back to the Blues (2001)
• Scars (2002)
• Power of the Blues (2004)
• Old New Ballads Blues (2006)
• Close As You Get (2007)
• Bad for You Baby (2008)

Tributes:

• Give us Moore! - Gary Moore Tribute (Lion Music 2004)^[34]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gary Moore