What is timbre?

Timbre or tone color is the unique sound of an instrument. It’s the specific sound of an instrument or piece of music that makes it unique. Imagine a flute playing “Happy Birthday.” Now imagine it being played on a piano. Those two instruments sound very different, even though they’re playing the exact same notes and rhythms. They’re playing the same melody, but they sound different.

It’s the sound of an instrument that makes it sound like that instrument.

Timbre and tone can be described in lots of different ways. Some sounds are shrill or tinny. Some are warm and full. Some are screeching or thin or muddy.

There’s also a difference between hearing a single instrument versus a section of instruments.

If we take a listen to the Schindler’s List theme by John Williams we can hear this difference.

The solo violin sounds much harsher and grittier than a section of violins.
That difference is timbre. I know that’s a small difference to be able to hear, but a solo violin has a lot more sound from the bow than a section of violins.

You can hear this with singers as well. A section of multiple singers sounds different than one solo singer. That difference is timbre.

One big reason is that you hear multiple starting points and multiple slightly different pitches. If you have one person playing violin you only hear the sound of that one bow attacking the strings. You only hear one amount of vibrato. If you have sixteen people playing violin you have sixteen different starting points for notes and sixteen different amounts of vibrato. You’re hearing sixteen ever so slightly different pitches. They’ll all sound in tune and be the same note, but on violin there are no frets. That causes there to be these tiny differences in pitch between different players. That creates a completely different sound than just one player.

It’s the same with singers. Singers all have slightly different ways of using vibrato and of attacking notes and transitioning between notes. They can all be on pitch and all be singing the right rhythm, but they’ll be ever so slightly off. All of those tiny little differences create this new sound that can’t be made somewhere else.

This idea is something that producers use to make really big and massive sounding synths.

Porter Robinson does this a lot.

That huge sound halfway through the song is created by having all of these ever so slightly different synths added together. Reason Studios even has a plugin built into it that does this. It’s called Unison.

And Reason isn’t the only DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to have a plugin that does something like this. It’s a fairly common thing to do specifically because it gives this bigger, fuller, and larger sound than leaving it at just one synth.

That’s an intro to timbre. There’s definitely more to get into, but those are the basics.

ISJ