Uncovering the Meaning of Four Semantic Attributes of Sound

Title: Uncovering the Meaning of Four Semantic Attributes of Sound: Bright, Rough, Round and Warm
Authors: Victor Rosi
Source URL: https://www.timbreandorchestration.org/tor/modules/video-series/symposiums-workshops/y2/rosi

Abstract:

Bright (brillant), round (rond), warm (chaud) and rough (rugueux) are four terms vastly used in French language for sound description in sound creation processes such as music performance, orchestration, sound engineering or sound design, yet they lack formal, standardized definitions. Therefore, the intent of the present study is to obtain definitions and matching sound samples on those four terms as they are interpreted by different sound professionals. This work was organized around individual interviews with 32 sound professionals (musicians, composers, sound designers, acousticians...), during which they were asked to give definitions of the four terms and to discuss their opposite concepts. The analysis of the interview verbatims through qualitative analysis and standard NLP (Natural Language Processing) methods allows us to unravel the various sound description strategies performed by the different professionals. A literature review on timbre semantics applied to our corpus reveals relevant semantic categories for the clustering of the descriptions across the 4 terms. These categories mainly group acoustic, source related, and metaphorical descriptions produced by the sound professionals. The experts were also asked to choose sound samples from a musical instrument database to complete the definition of each word. By analyzing the descriptions and comparing them to the selected sound samples, we formulate definitions on the 4 terms along with hypothesis on the acoustic correlates involved, thus assessing the potential plurality of perception among the experts