In 20th century music, such a characteristic of sound as timbre began to play a key role in the concept of new musical styles and in the formation of new vocal techniques. What is timbre and what are its varieties?
Timbre in music - what is this category?
"Timbre" is translated from fr. as a "distinctive sign." A timbre in music is a specific coloring of a sound. If you use the same note of the same pitch or volume on different instruments, the sound will still differ significantly due to the timbre characteristics of the instrument. The same vocal parts performed by two different vocalists are easy to distinguish by ear thanks to the special timbre coloring of the voice.
The concept of “timbre” is far from the only definition in music, but they all boil down to the fact that timbre is the same important characteristic of sound as, for example, volume, pitch or duration. A variety of adjectives are used to describe the timbre: low, dense, deep, soft, bright, muffled, voiced, etc.
Types of timbres according to A.N. Sohoru
The timbre in music is a multi-component phenomenon. Famous musicologist A.N. Sohor identifies 4 types of timbre:
- instrumental - depends on the structural features of the instrument and the nature of sound extraction;
- harmonic - depends on the nature of the combination of sounds;
- register - depends directly on the natural voice tessitura or instrument register;
- textured - depends on the level of density and "viscosity" of sound, acoustics, etc.
Voice tones
The timbre in music is an important characteristic for a singing voice. Especially in a variety of competition, it is important how much the vocalist has a memorable timbre.
The timbre of the human voice depends primarily on the structure of the vocal apparatus. The degree of development and “training” of the vocal apparatus also has a sufficient effect on timbral characteristics. Often, after persistent studies with vocalists, the timbre of the voice changes to a higher one, and after the diseases of the vocal apparatus, the timbre becomes lower.
One way or another, among the male voices there are three main tones - bass, baritone and tenor. Among women - contralto, mezzo-soprano and soprano.
Why are timbre characteristics important?
The need to highlight another category among the characteristics of sound - timbre - is dictated by a number of reasons. The most important of them is that the timbre (it doesn’t matter whether it is instrumental or voice) helps to give the musical work the right mood, to place important accents.
When a musical arrangement is made (especially if it is an orchestration), it is simply impossible to ignore the creative task and timbre characteristics of the instruments. For example, it will not be possible to give lightness and airiness to sound if you entrust the performance of a musical passage to double bass or trombone, in which the timbre of the sound has a large number of low overtones; it is impossible to achieve the effect of forcing the atmosphere using gentle overflows of harp.
The same thing happens during the selection of a repertoire for a vocalist. As a rule, blues and jazz parts do not work well for soprano or tenor performers, because this requires a dense, velvet, juicy, low timbre, possibly even with a “hoarse sound” - this is required by the specifics of the genre (the smoky atmosphere of cabaret, cafesanthans and etc.). At the same time, performers with low tones are disadvantageous in many other musical genres and performing techniques (for example, in “screaming”, which is designed specifically for high voiced voices).
Thus, a timbre is a characteristic that largely determines the atmosphere of a sounding musical work, and most importantly, a person evokes certain emotions about what he has heard.