about Music: Element 3 — Timbre (Part 1)

Introduction to “about Music”: the Art of Listening: Element 3: Timbre

Anitra’s Dance in bright colours — AI Generation

Hello from me, Brian, and welcome to our third adventure and exploration into the vast forest called music. Forests are made up of individual trees, and individual trees are made up of roots, branches, and leaves. Music, similarly, is made up of individual songs or pieces, which in turn are made up of notes, beats, and colour. Today we are looking at that element colour, also called timbre, or Tone Colour, Quality of sound, Tone, Ring, or Resonance.

Now that we know a lot more about the first two elements of sound, which are pitch (low/high) and duration (long/short), we are ready to explore this third element of music — Timbre, also called Tone Colour.

Let’s think of timbre as the resonance or quality of tone by which our ears recognize and identify the distinctive sound of a particular singing voice or musical instrument. In addition to its role in distinguishing between different instruments, timbre is used to convey emotion, mood, or style in music. Come and explore these concepts with me in our third topic “about Music”.

Please listen to:

Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, the first piece called “O Fortuna”. Put the volume up nice and loud!