Mental Representation of the Timbre of Complex Sounds

Abstract

Timbre, in contrast to pitch and loudness, remains a poorly understood auditory attribute. Persons attempting to understand it may be confused as much by its nature as its definition. Indeed, timbre is a ``strange and multiple'' attribute of sound (Cadoz, 1991, p. 17), defined by what it is not: it is neither pitch, nor loudness, nor duration. Consider the definition proposed by the American National Standards Institute (1973, p. 56): ``Timbre is that attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which a subject can judge that two sounds similarly presented and having the same loudness and pitch are dissimilar.'' Therefore, timbre is that perceptual attribute by which we can distinguish the instruments of the orchestra even if they play the same note with the same dynamics.