On Thursday, Apr 22, 2004, at 11:47 America/New_York, Thomas Grill wrote:
So as an indicator of this, I thought it would be interesting to see what kind of words people use a lot when they are talking about timbre. The main words I hear from the Classical tradition are "brightness", "warmth", "breathiness", "bite". I think that the only one of these words that I hear from electronic musicians is "warmth", but not that much. Words like "crunchy", "fat" ("phat"), "thick" are more common there, in my experience. To me this points to a different perception of timbre (but is not evidence enough to prove it).
Hi, to my experience this very much depends on the genre where electronic music is used. In fields of dance or club music the latter notions might well be used, but i never heard this in contemporary "serious" or improvised music.
I am interested in composers who discuss timbre, whether they are "serious" or not. I am especially interested in the words used by composers who are as distant from a Western Classical musical education as possible. Most composers of "serious" music probably come out of the Western Classical tradition, being trained listening to the instrumentation of that tradition, so such composers would be educated in that timbre space, and to use and be familiar with those words in relation to that timbre space.
Club/Dance music composers are very likely to be quite removed from the Western Classical education, therefore would be a good contrast. So far "crunchy", "grainy", and "phat" are the most common, and the only word in common with Western Classical words I have gotten has been "bright" from one person. But again, this is very informal, just to get an idea of what's out there.
.hc