24-December-2024 and the day is grey. A soft grey with just a hint of fog swirling lightly. The sounds of the environment have a muffled tint to them. The refuse trucks didn’t make a loud clatter when collecting the waste of the consumer paradise. The neighbors are not blasting the basic bass rhythm of the hip-hop artist of the week. The dogs are snoozing quietly nearby. Their gentle snore resembling a low pitched guiro being scraped slowly. Meanwhile music drifts around me from the laptop computer that I am using to type these words. The keyboard itself creates a soft rhythmic click as a sonata of words slowly appears on the blank page before me. All that is missing is the gentle sound of sleigh bells… …echoing in the background.

I’m not sure I captured the timbre of this moment correctly. How does one transfer the quality of sound into words that a reader can perceive them similarly to the writer. Yes, timbre. The quality of a sound or tone. The phonetic identity, the color of the tone, or the mixture of many different frequencies and wavelength shapes. The wave shape primarily determines the timbre of the sound, while the wavelength determines the pitch. For some reason a particular moment can remain etched in my memory based on the quality of the sound. Listening to the environment on this cold December morning there is a weight upon the sound. The articulation of the sound seems flat (or fat) as if more of the surface is being struck by the other object. The bird tweets are lethargic. There is more pause between the notes of their song…

Timbre is my favorite characteristic of speech and music. The distinction or delivery of the sound also affects my perception in various ways. The hushed delivery of a lyric in a love song can provoke an emotional experience. The brass players during the final movement of Symphony #2-The Resurrection by Gustav Mahler provoke a different emotional experience. The timbres mixed together cause the hair on my neck and arms to rise. My skin feels a rush of blood as the adrenaline of the moment spikes my blood pressure. When this happens our bodies are responding to the timbres before us, and our minds are having a visceral aesthetic experience. This is a great reason to do music.

Timbre is how we identify musicians, composers, songwriters, and pieces of music. As I was listening to music, I noticed a title coming up on my play list. The title was Concerto for Wind Ensemble. I thought I was going to hear and listen to Steven Bryant’s piece. Steven Bryant writes some wonderful works for the concert band medium in case you want to check him out. Anyway, within 5 seconds of listening this wasn’t Bryant’s piece. Within 30 seconds I identified the composer as being Karel Husa. Husa has a distinct orchestration style or sound. The motivic development of this Concerto for Wind Ensemble resembled his most famous work, Music for Prague: 1968. I recognized this using timbre.

We all do this with music unconsciously, but music of today is more difficult to identify due to sampling, autotune, and a lack of timbral diversity. Most hip-hop music sounds the same. The lyrics and the artist delivering them are the only thing that separate them from being the same piece of music. Popular music also tends to revolve around three to four chords with similar electronic instruments and rhythmic feels. I have trouble identifying Katy Perry and Dua Lipa from just their music alone. Their voices are distinctly different, but I usually lose interest quickly. The same is true with country music. Rick Beato spends a lot of time discussing this on his You Tube channel. Now if the artists actually play real instruments I do become much more interested. These musicians are invested in their craft in a deeper fashion.

It is very easy to tell the difference between Styx, Kansas, Toto, Aerosmith, Journey, and Boston. It is also very easy to hear the difference between Lacuna Coil, Evanescence, Rage against the Machine, Metallica, and Five Finger Death Punch. Each one of the groups I mentioned have a particular timbre. When you add a vocalist with some skill on top of that timbre you get an interesting listening experience that may or may not cause an aesthetic reaction. I feel the greatest difference between all of these bands is the sound of the drum kit and guitars. Drummers really don’t get enough musical respect for their work. The Police doesn’t sound like The Police unless you have Stewart Copland on drums. Rush does not sound like Rush without Neil Peart. If you don’t believe me listen to Chicago or Tower of Power at different points of their career when the drummer changed. Their whole sound changed. Better yet listen to Sting’s music with Omar Hakim or Vinnie Coliauta. Huge change in tone color between those two drummers. Sting’s music sparkles in unexpected ways between the two.

Why this interest in timbre? The characteristics of this day drew me into the listening experience today. It all started with a String Quartet in E-flat major by Franz Shubert. I don’t remember the quartet number, but the four string instruments all play these huge warm double stops (two notes at the same time.) The articulation was so gentle and warm. The sound just bathed my senses in a soft light. The overtones aligned perfectly creating a resonance that was… perfection. Classical music always pulls me in, because there is so much more sound to listen to. Greater timbre complexities. I imagine the non-classical listener is familiar with John Williams the composer of the Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Indiana Jones films. Start there and then branch off. Take a listening journey. Really listen to all the different sounds. There you will find the aesthetic experience of music. Timbre transcends the metaphor of a lyric. Together timbre and lyrics can create a wonderful musical experience too, but remember most people listen horizontally to one item or another. Try listening in a different way and allow all of the sounds to be your focus.

In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, “Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in the tough times of my life, I can listen to music and it makes such a difference.”

“Turn off the t.v. Turn off your phone….” –Dave Matthews

“…. …. ….. …… ……. ………. ” -John Cage