Develop Timbre Skills

[Cabsy]

As a guitar teacher, the biggest thing I see missing in young players is an understanding of Timbre.

 

In a nutshell, timbre is the tone or sound quality you get from your instrument.

 

A good instrument will deliver a lot more timbre possibilities but every instrument is capable of pumping out a variety of different tones.

 

The best way to exemplify it is if i told you something serious in a funny voice... you'd hear the words, but the tone of my voice would make you think i was joking. If I told you something loving in a screaming tone, you'd hear the words, but be confused by why I was yelling.

 

This seems obvious.

 

But I've seen students playing lullabies with the twangiest slap

and heavy tunes with a delicate fear of the instrument

 

Notes need to be delivered in the right way

 

Think about the emotion or feel of the song your playing and try to reflect this in your tone... happy songs... bright tone... sad songs... soft tone... heavy songs... aggressive tone... etc

 

It's not easy and takes a long time to develop good timbre skills, you need to get to know how the areas on your guitar create certain sounds... experiment.

 

Try writing a small song/melody everyday with a different emotion... sad, happy, excited, angry, relaxed, etc

 

Also, sound-scapes are cool ways to explore sounds.... try getting your instrument to create sounds from the beach, or the forest, or space.

 

here's a daily melody i wrote when I went to see a 20 week scan of my baby in the womb...

 

It is all done on an acoustic guitar... I tried to imagine some sounds the baby would hear and musically recreate some emotions... the big chords represent the mothers feelings, and the small melodies that answer represent the babies response to these emotions...

 

http://dailymelodies.com/player/?file=2008-03-17.mp3

 

Interested to see if anyone has thought about these points in their learning or whether any other teachers share my views

 

thanks!

 

http://dailymelodies.com

[jonfinn]

Yeah man! your stuff is really cool!

 

I like the ideas. One thing I tend to do as a teacher is let those things be self-evident with the student. You're right that beginners tend to be not so concerned with timbre. I think it's because so many other things seem to overwhelmingly difficult that timbre seems like "I can work on that anytime, but not now." So for me to push it too much can be counterproductive at times. depends on the student.

 

Your thing with timbre sounds very similar to what I tell my students about intonation:

 

"If your guitar is in tune, it sounds better. If your guitar sounds better, you'll want to play it more. If you play it more, you'll get better. If you get better, it's more fun. If it's more fun, you'll play more. Let's tune."

[gennation]

I think you mean Inflection more so than Timbre.

 

Inflection: http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsInflection.htm

 

"Inflectional operations ground the semantic content of a root according to place, time, and participant reference, without substantially affecting the basic semantic content of the root."

 

and

 

"Inflectional operations

 

* are grammatically required in certain syntactic environments"

 

Timbre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbre

 

"For example, timbre is what, with a little practice, people use to distinguish the saxophone from the trumpet in a jazz group, even if both instruments are playing notes at the same pitch and amplitude."

 

I especially see Inflection more than Timbre with your voice v/s words statement. The type of vocal used makes a serious line funny. That's due to the Inflection, or if you will, the accent or the delivery. The Context doesn't matter due to the Inflection.

 

And this: "...sad, happy, excited, angry, relaxed, etc" this is due to the Inflection.

 

The Timbre would be me making a statement in pitch, and another person making the same statement in the same pitch....same words, same pitch, different Timbre. This is due to the delivery points persay. Like two different instruments playing the same note...same note, same pitch, different Timbre.

 

A great explanation of Timbre for a guitarist is this:

 

play a C note at the 5th fret of the G string

now play the C note at the 10th fret of the D string

 

Same note, same pitch, different Timbre. The Timbre is why the same note and pitch on a different string sound different. This is due to the string size, how far you are fretting from the nut and bridge, as well as how far away you are picking the sting from the fretted note. These are all VERY important in the Timbre.

 

A great explanation of Infection for a guitarist is this:

 

Play the C note at the 5th fret of the G string, then play the D note at the 7th fret of the G sting

 

now play the C note at the 5th fret of the G string and bend it to the D note that's found at the 7th fret of the G string.

 

Now try the same thing again but slide the note from the 5th fret to the 7th fret.

 

Same notes, same pitchs, different Infection. The Inflection is why the same note and pitch FEEL different when played these three different ways. This is due to how you reach the destination note.

 

A great example of both Inflection and Timbre is a singer who can sound like another singer. The Inflection is the biggest part here. IOW, you can have the correct, or very close, Timbre as someone else's voice, but it's the Inflection due to the range, enunciation, slopes, breathe, etc...in the persons voice that makes them sound close to the other persons voice, as long as the Timbre is fairly close. The Timbre can be dead on but if the Infections aren't...you wouldn't be comparing the two. A good example is Robert Plant and David Coverdale, different Timbre's but very similar Inflections.

 

Make sense?

 

I'm only trying to help, keep up the good work.

[Cabsy]

I like everything you said... and it emphasizes a similar need to think about how you deliver your notes...

 

but we differ in our interpretation of timbre... as an extension of your example, another way to show timbre on a guitar is play any note with the pick at the base of the neck, then play that same note with your pick at the bridge

 

two completely different tones

 

inflection is a grey area in my mind because you need timbre to create the inflection in the first place...

 

To me, inflection is a combining of timbre, pitch, dynamic, duration, and techniques like slides, grace notes, bends, etc

 

It doesn't matter which angle players come from at the end of the day, as long as they work on delivery as much as the notes.

 

Nice discussion, and it's good to hear how other people think about these points... cheers guys

[Ericjake]

And to add a little more, there's anoher musical aspect called dynamics, that has nothing to do with timbre or tone, but with the volume of the note.

Timbre has to do with harmonics or overtone content and in some way is the DNA of an instrument. That's how we can recognize different instruments by just hearing them, regardless of the inflections and/or dynamics the performer might do. It is so relevant that, thanks of it, we can distinguish the same acoustic guitar with different strings (steel or nylon), or even the same electric guitar with new strings. That is timbre.

 

Timber in electric guitars can be changed in several ways, as Mike said, execution can affect timbre: picking near the bridge enhances high overtones

-by switching or combining pick-ups

-turning tone knobs

-artificially by means of effect pedals.

:blah:

[gennation]

 

inflection is a grey area in my mind because you need timbre to create the inflection in the first place...

 

 

Not really. You can play either of those C notes I mentioned the same way or in any lick or inflection and the timbre will be different between them. It's not really the "way" you play it, it's which one you play.

 

 

To me, inflection is a combining of timbre, pitch, dynamic, duration, and techniques like slides, grace notes, bends, etc

 

 

Inflection is the combination of pitch, dynamic, duration, and techniques like slides, grace notes, bends, etc. Timbre would be the difference between one guy playing it on guitar and another guy playing it on sax. Same notes, pitch, duration, techniques like slides, grace notes, "bends"...so, same inflections. The different sounds of the instrument is the timbre.

 

 

It doesn't matter which angle players come from at the end of the day, as long as they work on delivery as much as the notes.

 

 

Again, the "delivery" or the "touch" is the inflection, not the timbre.

 

You can play a C Note anyway you want on one string, and yes the "tone" can change...but it's the same string so the timbre is the same.

 

Again, I'm not trying to give a hard time, but there is a difference between timbre and what you explained. Your terminology is incorrect. But you are dead on explaining inflections. Change everything to Inflection and you'll be able to post this anywhere with rave reviews.

[Rudolf von Hagenwil]

In music, timbre is one quality parameter of a musical note or sound that distinguishes types of sound production:

 

The range between tonal and noiselike character

The spectral envelope

The time envelope in terms of rise, duration, and decay

The changes both of spectral envelope and fundamental frequency

etc.

 

 

In music, inflection is tone, sound impression, color, shade etc., for example to lift the voice in a singing character while speaking, or speaking with an accent etc., but the term inflection is rather used in articulation of speech, in phonetics and linguistics.

 

.

[gennation]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_Ar3vrEIpA

 

Ran across this and thought it was appropriate. Segovia shows "the same thing, but different" as he moves the same line across different string creating a different timbre each time. And then shows the different timbre's of the guitar as it relates to timbre's specific to orchestral instruments.

[Eddie]

I don't recall the site right now, but I remember reading about an oriental string instrument and detailed descriptions of dozens of ways to "pick" the notes. Each way yielding a slightly different sound.