The Singer’s Formant
Timbre Lingo, Essays J Marchand Knight Timbre Lingo, Essays J Marchand Knight

The Singer’s Formant

Have you ever wondered how opera singers sing so loudly?  In the voice studio, operatic singing is not actually thought of as loud but rather as possessing resonance (in singers’ terms, not acousticians’ terms), focus (sometimes visualized as a laser point), cut (a non-technical term meaning the voice can cut through the texture of an orchestra), or squillo (an Italian word for the buzzy quality in an operatic voice)A classically trained voice can be heard despite being accompanied by strings, percussion, woodwinds, and, in the case of Wagner’s Die Walküre, twenty-two brass instruments. 

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Flourish — Sarah Hennies
Amazing Moments in Timbre, Essays J Marchand Knight Amazing Moments in Timbre, Essays J Marchand Knight

Flourish — Sarah Hennies

From the very beginning of the piece, Sarah Hennies’s Flourish for two vibraphone players, leads us into an extraordinary, mystical, new world of sound. What is so enigmatic about this piece is that a lot of the music happens in a realm of timbre beyond what is written and what is played. Precisely and cleanly scored in minimalist fashion of single-measure repeating cells, the atmospheric reverberations produced by the vibraphone are here left to write their own counterpoint….

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Envelope
Timbre Lingo, Essays J Marchand Knight Timbre Lingo, Essays J Marchand Knight

Envelope

In synthesis and sound recording and mixing, envelope describes how a sound’s amplitude (volume) changes over time.  When recreating the timbre of an instrument (or other sounds such as a firetruck siren), it is equally important to get the overtone series right as it is to reconstruct or preserve the contour of the sound….

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