Timbre

Introduction

Timbre is generally a pretty straightforward topic for most. When you listen to a piece of music, there are some things you always expect to find: rhythm, pitch, meter, etc. Well, timbre is another of these constants. But, what exactly is it?

What is timbre?

Timbre, also called color, simply describes the sound of each individual instrument or voice. But, do not confuse timbre with instrumentation. While instrumentation describes the entire set of instruments or voices that make up the performing group, timbre describes what makes the sound of each individual instrument/voice different from each other, even if they are two of the same instruments.

Interestingly, the College Board calls instrumentation performance media. You should be familiar with many common examples of standard performance media, including:

But, unique ensembles may be established using a distinctive mix of voices and instruments. This is especially common with new music ensembles, groups that are devoted to premiering new works of classical music. For example, one of many, many new music ensembles based in New York City is called loadbang. You should peruse their website if you are interested in exploring new music ensembles, but their unique instrumentation includes: trumpet, trombone, baritone voice, and bass clarinet.

The sound quality between different instruments is also affected by how high or low they are playing in their specific range. This range is called register. The most comfortable part of each instrument's range is called its tessitura.

Instrumental Families

Instruments can be grouped into families based on their timbres and registers. Common groupings include: strings, woodwinds, brass (sometimes called brasswinds), percussion, and keyboards. Each of these families has many standard members.

Take a look at this catalogue of instruments in the orchestra: https://www.symphonyrockies.org/instruments-of-the-orchestra

To supplement the above link, here are a few more instruments that aren't actually commonly included in the orchestra, but you should still know:

Be sure that you can recognize each of these instruments if played individually.

There are also some other groupings of instruments that are commonly used, including:

Note that basso continuo was mostly used in Baroque-era music.

Reflection: Comparing Performances

Les Miserables is one of the most popular musicals of all time. As you can imagine, it is performed a lot, and has many recordings of different songs posted on YouTube! Take a listen to the same song from this musical, called Stars, performed by six different people.

Kinda corny, I know. Respond to these questions:

Here are some potential to answers to the questions, those yours may vary:

For more on overtones, see this video: 

Practice

For the following excerpts of this piece, describe the instrumentation/performing media.

0:00-1:23 (melody and accompaniment)

15:15-15:50 (melody)

36:19-36:40 (melody)

For each indicated excerpt, determine the performing media and their instrument group.