The Colours of Music
Timbre and Orchestration Blog | Timbre Stories | January 26th, 2022
The Colours of Music
By Martha de Francisco
[Translated from the original Spanish version of the extended Introduction in Musical collaborations, timbre, and recorded sound ]
The world of music is a resplendent and colorful world. In analogy with the visual world in which we live, the sounds that surround us are presented in an immensity of tones and varied nuances. When sounds are used to produce music, performed by musicians, instrumentalists and singers, the variety of tonal colors that they have at their disposal contributes to creating a wide universe of sound details, which enrich the communication of the musical content that the musicians share with their listeners.
One of the integral components of sound is that of musical timbre or color. Like pitch, intensity, and duration (or the frequency, volume, and duration time of each sound), timbre represents additional complex characteristics, encompassing the composition and harmonic quality of each tone, the distribution of the energy of the overtones, and the presence of formants. Each tone that we hear is actually a set of sounds made up of several frequencies that sound at the same time, some radiating directly from the instruments, others acoustically reflected by surfaces in the room where the music is played. This complex mixture of sound waves gives each tone we hear, expansion, detail, and warmth. Thus, the totality of each tone, connected to the next, or sounding at the same time with others, is what constitutes the sound material that makes up the music.
Musicians use timbre, musical colors, to shape their performances. Timbre plays a particular role in establishing the quality of music, especially in expressive music making. A perceptive music lover learns to recognize the sound that characterizes a musical group, a solo singer, or a symphony orchestra, by being able to hear and naturally get the characteristics of each one's sound.
As a recording engineer and producer of classical music (Tonmeister) my main objective is to capture the full sound and to illustrate, with the help of recording technology, the many artistic and acoustic particularities in which music manifests itself. Whether it is to record the sonic intimacy of a guitar alone playing softly or the monumental masses of a symphony orchestra with choir and soloists representing an expansive musical landscape, the challenge of capturing each piece of music in the most appropriate way is constantly present, and it keeps those of us who record music very active, dedicated to finding the best sound for each recording.
Tonmeisters specialized in classical music are versed in representing sound with life-like fidelity. Their objective is the faithful capture of balanced proportions of sound between instruments and instrumental sections but also the capture of direct and diffuse sound components which coexist simultaneously in the concert hall. Constantly looking for the best ways to capture music, they base their work on auditory analysis, learning to discern sound with detailed acuity, perceiving and understanding a plethora of sonic nuances that inform their decisions during the entire process of music recording, from the meticulous placement of microphones to the precise mixing decisions in postproduction.
In the last twenty years my professional experiences as a sound engineer and record producer have been consolidated with the academic and teaching domains. Many of my observations collected throughout my career can be used to illustrate the recording and production processes. In recent years a new component related to musical timbre has been in the foreground of my research, as it offers me the opportunity to investigate in a multidisciplinary context, various aspects of how music works.
The Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration (ACTOR) Partnership is an international and interdisciplinary project centered on timbre and orchestration: the selection, combination, and juxtaposition of musical sounds to achieve a musical end. It brings together a diverse team of composers, music theorists, musicologists, computer and signal processing scientists, psychologists, acousticians, sound specialists, and conductors, who center on the problem of understanding what makes orchestration practice work. Interesting and varied projects are being developed as part of ACTOR. Among others, there is research on the sound of a symphony orchestra, examined at the same time by a conductor, an acoustician, a sound engineer, and a specialist in musical perception[1]. Other projects deal with timbre semantics, or orchestration analysis taxonomies. Still others focus on research on artificial intelligence and new computational tools for orchestration.
As part of these activities, we [share] here an interview in which, following the Socratic method, a teacher and a student discuss issues of music, sound and music recording to illuminate sound panoramas of light and color.
References
[1] de Francisco, M. et al, “ODESSA: Orchestral Distribution Effects in Sound, Space and Acoustics: an interdisciplinary symphonic recording for the study of orchestral sound blending” in 149.ª Audio Engineering Society Convention AES, New York USA. (2020). http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=20982
