We often reach for crossmodal metaphor to describe music--it sounds warm, or velvety, or rough, spiky, jagged, smooth, glassy, or bright, etc. What if these metaphors were not as subjective as we might think, but had a scientific, neurological basis?

One of the most curious aspects of timbre and its manifestation through orchestration is its ability to create what is known as a timbral emergence: the synthesis of a new timbre whose component instruments are unidentifiable as themselves.