Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale

by William A. Sethares

Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale focuses on perceptions of consonance and dissonance, and how these are dependent on timbre. This also relates to musical scale: certain timbres sound more consonant in some scales than others. Sensory consonance and the ability to measure it have important implications for the design of audio devices and for musical theory and analysis. Applications include methods of adapting sounds for arbitrary scales, ways to specify scales for nonharmonic sounds, and techniques of sound manipulation based on maximizing (or minimizing) consonance. Special consideration is given here to a new method of adaptive tuning that can automatically adjust the tuning of a piece based its timbral character so as to minimize dissonance. Audio examples illustrating the ideas presented are provided on an accompanying CD. This unique analysis of sound and scale will be of interest to physicists and engineers working in acoustics, as well as to musicians and psychologists.

Genres: Music, Science, Mathematics

345 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2004

Reviews

[Mark Moon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had fun and learned a lot! Now I understand the relationship between the nearly-harmonic timbre of most traditional Western musical instruments, on the one hand, and the tunings typically used for Western music (i.e. 12-tet and various just intonations). The author also explores the relationship between the timbre of musical instruments and the tunings/scales in use in both traditional Indonesian music and traditional Thai music. There are many very cool ideas in here, including ideas about how to design tunings for given timbres, and vice versa. I learned lots of interesting things about the details of real-life tunings; for example, a professionally-tuned piano will typically have slightly stretched octaves (around 1202 cents), and this is related to the inharmonicity of piano wire that makes it ring a few cents sharp towards the end of a note.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read two editions of this book, and found it completely fascinating. It's a great source of information for a lot of the stuff about tuning, consonance, and dissonance, and perceptions, which they do not teach in ordinary music school. I used concepts from this book in tinkering with my own synthesized sounds and tunings, to good effect. A must-read for all microtonalists.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant practical fusion of mathematics and music. If you've ever sampled metal percussion and had a hard time making it sound good, the solution, quantified and graphed, is here.

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