Gods of Timbre

Xurtio · 12-06-2016, 07:54 PM

If we consider a guitarist and a pianist hitting the same exact pitch on their instrument for the same duration, we will immediately notice differences between the two despite them producing the same pitch. In short, that difference is the timbre. Melodic phrasing says nothing without a timbre to convey the tone of those melodic phrases.

The discussion surrounding music theory has always emphasized timing and pitch. The rest of music, that we often don't explicitly discuss, comes down to timbre. Often people refer to the "feeling" or the "passion" with which an artist plays, and a lot of this comes down to timbre - if we can tie the dynamic intensity of attacks or techniques like bends or stops to the dynamics of emotional intensity, we can communicate those emotions.

There is not a neatly unifying theory for timbre like there is for concepts like pitch (including harmony) and rhythm. Timbre can be analyzed through wave forms and the waveforms themselves have properties like attack, decay, sustain, and harmonics. The first three are analysis of timing, the last is a pitch. Consider the following waveform:

A pure tone would just be a sine wave of that tone's frequency. Real acoustic instruments also generate harmonics - higher order ratios of the fundamental frequency, or tone that you identify it's pitch as. Most of the above waveform has a consistent pattern that that slowly decays to nothing. But in the beginning of the waveform you see the signal is a bit more compact. When you first strike a guitar string, for instance, it's not really ringing at a single frequency. Rather, it is unstable, starting at a frequency sharper than the note you are tuned to and falling quickly to that epected note - but this happens so quickly, the ear interprets it more of a stylistic flourish on the note. As you control the force with which you hit the string, you control how much energy you give the string. Together with the material properties of the string, this generates the attack and decay pattern above.

So, without further ado, my first submission will be a big influence of mine, David Gilmour. Gilmour is well known for his unique tone - and most of it is in his fingers.

One of Gilmour's premiere techniques is that he bends up to the note he wants, and he often does it very quickly. This is interesting from a timbre point of view because he has somehow replaced his attack with a rising tone instead of a falling tone that a typical attack brings.

The Song
Pink Floyd: Animals: Dogs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDH6dcbRtuU

The Technique
First off, the timbre of the acoustic guitar goes really well the 9th 13th, sustain /whatever jazzy chords that are being played here, but we're going to focus on Gilmour's solos. An additional note on the tone here. This was done with a splitter patch going to two amps, one of them a revolving leslie speaker (which gives the leads a very prominent howl)

You can see how the main solo is done here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYDrSnCE6RQ

Notice how he bends right up to the note. The bends are being used more as an attack than what we think of as a bend. What's more, Gilmour often does the traditional bend on top of these, so he'll bend up two half steps as an alternate attack, then do a traditional half step bend from there.

Another trick Gilmour employs for timbre mastery is mixed strings. He will mix different gauges of strings so that his highs are better for bending and his lows are better for those gutteral chugga chuggas.

Hope you enjoyed this first entry!

Blank. · 12-07-2016, 10:57 AM

This is absolutely fascinating! I sincerely hope you continue with this.

Trollheart · 12-07-2016, 11:18 AM

This will probably be too technical for the likes of me, but fair play for going beyond the generally prescribed boundaries of music reviews. I'm sure all the musicians (and others too) here will find this fascinating. Great start.

Xurtio · 12-07-2016, 12:31 PM

Hendrix is well known for his unique tone. There's a famous quote about his music being 'like listening to heavy metal falling from the sky'. Often attributed to the first coinage of the term 'heavy metal' in music (but it's not actually the first usage). Hendrix, again, has a lot of timbre expression in his fingers and his choice of distortion and tone - a lot of it can be heard in Little Wing, including harmonics, scrapes, double stops, doodly-doos, :

Little Wing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Vki76x-EU

Another popular component of Hendrix is the wah wah pedal. The opening to Voodoo child has a notable tone to it. And again note how the expression of the wah wah pedal is being used on the attack and then a bit like a vibrato (and along side an actual vibrato) in the sustain. Wah wah pedals basically change the ratios of tones, favoring low end tone when it's bottomed out and high end tone when it's topped out.

Voodoo Child
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZBlqcbpmxY

Sevie Ray Vaughn reproduced a lot of Hendrix style and did excellent covers of both of the above as well as developed a sound of his own that put a southern twist on the Hendrix sound.

Perhaps my favorite song by Hendrix is All Along The Watch Tower. Originally written by Bob Dylan, but Dylan - a great song writer - is not a God of Trimbre. He probably shat himself when he heard Hendrix's version.

All Along The Watch Tower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY

compared to:

Bob Dylan - All Along The Watch Tower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzanOzyqgas

In terms of both vocals and guitar work, Hendrix dominates the timbre of these two songs (also way more interesting melodic phrasing in the solos).

Xurtio · 12-10-2016, 05:52 PM

Every time I steal a lick from David Gilmour,
I'm more likely stealing a lick form Albert King:

If you are familiar with Gilmour, you may recognize many of his licks in this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jhx5Jg27txo

In the verses, you can hear a lot of similarities with Pink Floyd's earlier albums while the solos are more reminiscent of Dark Side of the Moon era.

Albert King has another connection in this thread - he was an influence of Steve Ray Vaughn's, too. The two actually played together (they nearly didn't, as King had never heard of Vaughn - but he chanced to recognize Vaughn as a kid who sat in on one of King's Texas sessions).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR01T4EPNYA

12-06-2016, 07:54 PM	#1 (permalink)
Xurtio Brain Licker Join Date: Apr 2014 Posts: 1,083	Gods of Timbre If we consider a guitarist and a pianist hitting the same exact pitch on their instrument for the same duration, we will immediately notice differences between the two despite them producing the same pitch. In short, that difference is the timbre. Melodic phrasing says nothing without a timbre to convey the tone of those melodic phrases. The discussion surrounding music theory has always emphasized timing and pitch. The rest of music, that we often don't explicitly discuss, comes down to timbre. Often people refer to the "feeling" or the "passion" with which an artist plays, and a lot of this comes down to timbre - if we can tie the dynamic intensity of attacks or techniques like bends or stops to the dynamics of emotional intensity, we can communicate those emotions. There is not a neatly unifying theory for timbre like there is for concepts like pitch (including harmony) and rhythm. Timbre can be analyzed through wave forms and the waveforms themselves have properties like attack, decay, sustain, and harmonics. The first three are analysis of timing, the last is a pitch. Consider the following waveform: A pure tone would just be a sine wave of that tone's frequency. Real acoustic instruments also generate harmonics - higher order ratios of the fundamental frequency, or tone that you identify it's pitch as. Most of the above waveform has a consistent pattern that that slowly decays to nothing. But in the beginning of the waveform you see the signal is a bit more compact. When you first strike a guitar string, for instance, it's not really ringing at a single frequency. Rather, it is unstable, starting at a frequency sharper than the note you are tuned to and falling quickly to that epected note - but this happens so quickly, the ear interprets it more of a stylistic flourish on the note. As you control the force with which you hit the string, you control how much energy you give the string. Together with the material properties of the string, this generates the attack and decay pattern above. So, without further ado, my first submission will be a big influence of mine, David Gilmour. Gilmour is well known for his unique tone - and most of it is in his fingers. One of Gilmour's premiere techniques is that he bends up to the note he wants, and he often does it very quickly. This is interesting from a timbre point of view because he has somehow replaced his attack with a rising tone instead of a falling tone that a typical attack brings. The Song Pink Floyd: Animals: Dogs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDH6dcbRtuU The Technique First off, the timbre of the acoustic guitar goes really well the 9th 13th, sustain /whatever jazzy chords that are being played here, but we're going to focus on Gilmour's solos. An additional note on the tone here. This was done with a splitter patch going to two amps, one of them a revolving leslie speaker (which gives the leads a very prominent howl) You can see how the main solo is done here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYDrSnCE6RQ Notice how he bends right up to the note. The bends are being used more as an attack than what we think of as a bend. What's more, Gilmour often does the traditional bend on top of these, so he'll bend up two half steps as an alternate attack, then do a traditional half step bend from there. Another trick Gilmour employs for timbre mastery is mixed strings. He will mix different gauges of strings so that his highs are better for bending and his lows are better for those gutteral chugga chuggas. Hope you enjoyed this first entry! __________________ H̓̇̅̉yͤ͏mͬ͂ͧn͑̽̽̌ͪ̑͐͟o̴͊̈́͑̇m͛͌̓ͦ̑aͫ̽ͤ̇n̅̎͐̒ͫ͐c̆ͯͫ̋ ̔̃́eͯ͒rͬͬ̄҉ Last edited by Xurtio; 12-07-2016 at 11:57 AM. Reason: spelling, grammar, typos, etc.

12-07-2016, 11:18 AM	#3 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	This will probably be too technical for the likes of me, but fair play for going beyond the generally prescribed boundaries of music reviews. I'm sure all the musicians (and others too) here will find this fascinating. Great start. __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

12-07-2016, 12:31 PM	#4 (permalink)
Xurtio Brain Licker Join Date: Apr 2014 Posts: 1,083	Hendrix is well known for his unique tone. There's a famous quote about his music being 'like listening to heavy metal falling from the sky'. Often attributed to the first coinage of the term 'heavy metal' in music (but it's not actually the first usage). Hendrix, again, has a lot of timbre expression in his fingers and his choice of distortion and tone - a lot of it can be heard in Little Wing, including harmonics, scrapes, double stops, doodly-doos, : Little Wing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Vki76x-EU Another popular component of Hendrix is the wah wah pedal. The opening to Voodoo child has a notable tone to it. And again note how the expression of the wah wah pedal is being used on the attack and then a bit like a vibrato (and along side an actual vibrato) in the sustain. Wah wah pedals basically change the ratios of tones, favoring low end tone when it's bottomed out and high end tone when it's topped out. Voodoo Child https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZBlqcbpmxY Sevie Ray Vaughn reproduced a lot of Hendrix style and did excellent covers of both of the above as well as developed a sound of his own that put a southern twist on the Hendrix sound. Perhaps my favorite song by Hendrix is All Along The Watch Tower. Originally written by Bob Dylan, but Dylan - a great song writer - is not a God of Trimbre. He probably shat himself when he heard Hendrix's version. All Along The Watch Tower https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY compared to: Bob Dylan - All Along The Watch Tower https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzanOzyqgas In terms of both vocals and guitar work, Hendrix dominates the timbre of these two songs (also way more interesting melodic phrasing in the solos). __________________ H̓̇̅̉yͤ͏mͬ͂ͧn͑̽̽̌ͪ̑͐͟o̴͊̈́͑̇m͛͌̓ͦ̑aͫ̽ͤ̇n̅̎͐̒ͫ͐c̆ͯͫ̋ ̔̃́eͯ͒rͬͬ̄҉ Last edited by Xurtio; 12-07-2016 at 02:42 PM.

12-10-2016, 05:52 PM	#5 (permalink)
Xurtio Brain Licker Join Date: Apr 2014 Posts: 1,083	Every time I steal a lick from David Gilmour, I'm more likely stealing a lick form Albert King: If you are familiar with Gilmour, you may recognize many of his licks in this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jhx5Jg27txo In the verses, you can hear a lot of similarities with Pink Floyd's earlier albums while the solos are more reminiscent of Dark Side of the Moon era. Albert King has another connection in this thread - he was an influence of Steve Ray Vaughn's, too. The two actually played together (they nearly didn't, as King had never heard of Vaughn - but he chanced to recognize Vaughn as a kid who sat in on one of King's Texas sessions). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR01T4EPNYA __________________ H̓̇̅̉yͤ͏mͬ͂ͧn͑̽̽̌ͪ̑͐͟o̴͊̈́͑̇m͛͌̓ͦ̑aͫ̽ͤ̇n̅̎͐̒ͫ͐c̆ͯͫ̋ ̔̃́eͯ͒rͬͬ̄҉

12-07-2016, 10:57 AM	#2 (permalink)
Blank. Jacob Sartorius Join Date: May 2016 Location: Dank memes Posts: 4,034	This is absolutely fascinating! I sincerely hope you continue with this.