In music / sound, we often talk about a “metallic tone” etc. Different materials have distinctively different tones, about 95% of the time I can tell whether a sound is produced by metal, wood, plastic, leather, glass, porcelain, etc. just by sound. Independent of geometry.

Elastic modulus ought to work together with geometry to influence tone – not elastic modulus alone.

It’s not clear to me why. Is it just elastic modulus and dampening or are other factors involved, such as surface roughness or hardness or something else?

Are there some tones that have never been heard because no materials have ever been made that produce them?
How is it possible to adjust some material to make it sound like a different material?
Is there a measurement technique that can turn each material-based tone into a unique visual representation?

Perhaps I should ask facebook?

So you are asking: What is the physics of woody versus tinny sounds?

http://www.animations.physics.unsw.edu.au/jw/timbre-envelope.htm

SCIENCE said:

http://www.animations.physics.unsw.edu.au/jw/timbre-envelope.htm

Excellent, that’s a good start. My sound system is out of action, so I’ll play it later.

Ian said:

So you are asking: What is the physics of woody versus tinny sounds?

Exactly.

Are there some tones that have never been heard because no materials have ever been made that produce them?

You get tones produced by planets, stars, black holes don’t you

Cymek said:

Are there some tones that have never been heard because no materials have ever been made that produce them?

You get tones produced by planets, stars, black holes don’t you

But the tone/timbre is still that of the loudspeaker that plays them.

mollwollfumble said:

Ian said:

So you are asking: What is the physics of woody versus tinny sounds?

Exactly.

In that case, here’s your reference material:

Woody and Tinny Words

Of course it is possible to have a tinny and a woody at the same time.

mollwollfumble said:

Cymek said:

Are there some tones that have never been heard because no materials have ever been made that produce them?

You get tones produced by planets, stars, black holes don’t you

But the tone/timbre is still that of the loudspeaker that plays them.

True
I wonder what various types of bone sound like

If we are still discovering sounds, then there must be more to discover.

Discordant sounds at the kitchen sink are very annoying, usually the sink itself, ceramic plates and metal utensils.

I wonder how many arguments are caused by people deliberately using the discordant sounds to provoke an argument?

that kind of discordant sound is called “speech”

SCIENCE said:

that kind of discordant sound is called “speech”

nah, you need the sound of cutlery on champagne flute to induce speech…

I wonder if people can fart in different keys?

Tau.Neutrino said:

I wonder if people can fart in different keys?

Loz’s magnificent 7-tone fart symphony.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

I wonder if people can fart in different keys?

Loz’s magnificent 7-tone fart symphony.

The Pitch Of The Average Fart.

A plethora of sound can be made by different instruments.

There might be some undiscovered instruments that sound really good.

Tau.Neutrino said:

A plethora of sound can be made by different instruments.

There might be some undiscovered instruments that sound really good.

undiscovered sounds of birds and animals and insects.

undiscovered sounds in the universe.

undiscovered sounds on other planets, like alien lifeforms

Also the sound of a material as as changes with temperature.

The sound of a material as it changes from one state of matter to another.

Do super condensates make sounds?

dv said:

Of course it is possible to have a tinny and a woody at the same time.

Many boaties do, I understand.

Tau.Neutrino said:

I wonder if people can fart in different keys?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Pétomane

I’m no expert, but it seems to me that there are a number of material properties that would affect the timbre. For example, internal friction would increase the rate of decay of any percussive notes. The stiffness of the material affects the speed of sound in the material, which in turn affects the resonances that occur for a given shape and size. Also, the shear modulus affects the speed of sound of the shear wave, which generally differs from the speed of sound of the compression wave, resulting in different resonances. There is also the anisotropy of the material as well as dispersion that affects the sound.

Anyone want to do an estimate of how many distinguishable sounds there are?

The Rev Dodgson said:

Anyone want to do an estimate of how many distinguishable sounds there are?

I estimate that it is almost infinite.

Michael V said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Anyone want to do an estimate of how many distinguishable sounds there are?

I estimate that it is almost infinite.

PSW

(please show working)

The Rev Dodgson said:

Michael V said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Anyone want to do an estimate of how many distinguishable sounds there are?

I estimate that it is almost infinite.

PSW

(please show working)

In a way, it was a joke (B.C. and all that). However, that said:

Sounds can be represented by graphs in 2-D to pseudo-multi-D space. Differences can easily be established either by computer or human spectral analysis. There are an awfully large number of materials and shapes and methods of assembly and sizes and combinations and methods of making sounds from them. It quickly multiplies out to a very large number of distinguishable sounds.

Michael V said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Michael V said:

I estimate that it is almost infinite.

PSW

(please show working)

In a way, it was a joke (B.C. and all that). However, that said:

Sounds can be represented by graphs in 2-D to pseudo-multi-D space. Differences can easily be established either by computer or human spectral analysis. There are an awfully large number of materials and shapes and methods of assembly and sizes and combinations and methods of making sounds from them. It quickly multiplies out to a very large number of distinguishable sounds.

Yeah, I got that :)

But what you said makes sense.

The way I was thinking about it was that any wave form can be reduced to a combination of sine waves, but given that there are a large number of sine wave tones that we can distinguish (I don’t know, maybe 500), and there would be quite a few overtone levels that would be distinguishable (no idea how many really), you’d probably end up with a pretty huge number of different sounds.

Maybe not near infinite, but almost.

A “sound” has a time and frequency signature. The sound of a gong includes the exponential decay. Also, in any meaningful sense, the useful time period of the universe is finite. The number of possible sounds that can exist is infinite.

However, human ability to distinguish sounds is finite. Even the best human ears can’t tell the difference between 225 Hz and 225.001 Hz, or between a 1:0.3 harmonic ratio and a 1:0.2999 harmonic ratio. The number of sounds that a human would under optimal conditions be able to distinguish would be finite. It would be over a googolplex, but finite.

I wonder if there is any sound in a black hole?

Does dark energy or dark matter have any sound?

Do magnetic fields generate sound?

Does electricity in cables generate any sounds?

Tau.Neutrino said:

Does electricity in cables generate any sounds?

Would a gravity wave generate sound as it passes?

Tau.Neutrino said:

I wonder if there is any sound in a black hole?

Does dark energy or dark matter have any sound?

To talk about sound in dark energy seems a mismatch in concepts.

The nature of dark matter is completely unknown and its existence is disputed, so any answers to your question would be purely speculative.

There can be “sound” in a black hole in terms of moving vibrational waves. OTOH there can’t be anyone there to hear it, so…

Tau.Neutrino said:

Do magnetic fields generate sound?

Magnetic fields can generate sound and indeed this is how speakers work.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Does electricity in cables generate any sounds?

Yes

Tau.Neutrino said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Does electricity in cables generate any sounds?

Would a gravity wave generate sound as it passes?

The frequency would be very low.

Thanks for those replies, I’ll get back to them later. Perhaps if I can get this article. It looks good but makes at least one simple mistake. Just because something is multidimensional doesn’t mean that “no rational organisation is possible”.

Got the paper through sci-hub.

“At that time Penderecki understood timbre primarily as a function of
the materials-in the most common sense of the word-employed in any
individual process of sound generation. Therefore the timbral categories
in Penderecki’s sonorism are based upon materials most commonly used
in the construction of the musical instruments and accessories of the tra-
ditional symphonic orchestra: metal, wood, leather, felt, and hair.”

Hmm, the article is not as useful as I thought, being just a guide to why Peoderecki introduced new instruments into the orchestra, including the typewriter. Followed by a musical analysis of one of his compositions.

“it is clear that the notion of a musical
instrument is useless-not to mention anachronistic-in Penderecki’s
pieces based on the timbre system”

A FORMAL MODEL TO ORCHESTRATION AND TEXTURAL
COMPOSITION
Igor Maia

“Consider a given ensemble E, its associated Timbre Space T(E) is the set of all possible sounds
from this ensemble together, possibly, with extended techniques the composer marked on the score.
For example, for an ensemble with just one violin the timbre space includes all notes played on
different strings together with techniques such as pizzicato, sul tasto, sul ponticello.
Therefore if the score uses n instruments we can construct up to 2n – 1 textures.”

Nah, that’s useless. Try again.

Kauê Werner
CARACTERIZAÇÃO DE ASPECTOS DO TIMBRE DE
PRATOS DE PERCUSSÃO ATRAVÉS DE ANÁLISES
PSICOACÚSTICAS

Oh dear, that’s a PhD thesis.

“In this work,
objective characterization of the sound emitted by cer-
such as driving and attacking,
conducting experimental measurements together with subjective evaluations.
you involve percussionist musicians.”

Darn you Google translate. Ah, here’s a correct translation of the same sentence.

“In the present
work, an objective characterization of the sound emitted by cymbals
is proposed, using data of experimental recordings for ride and crash
impacts, followed by judgment evaluation of the audio signals by musi-
cians (drummers).”

Only cymbals, yuk.

The thesis splits the analysis of timbre into two parts, spectral analysis and temporal analysis. It occurs to mollwollfumble that neither of these is adequete, tentatively suggest wavelet analysis in order to capture pitches of very short duration.

“Schouten , where the concept was divided into five
characteristics:
• The difference between tonal and noisy character;
• The spectral envelope;
• The temporal envelope, in terms of growth, duration and de-
trimming;
• Variations in the spectral envelope over time, known
as formant-glide;
• The prefix, or beginning of sound, that is related to the shape
how the instrument is played.”

“In , the author created a multidimensional scale of four dimensions, relating some attributes verbal as dull-sharp (amorphous-sharp) with the point of concentration
spectrum; and compact-scattered (compact-scattered)
the tonal / noise ratio according to the density of the spectrum.”

“Figure 2.2 – Comparison of some dimensions obtained with
MDS and semantic concepts analyzed. Left picture:
Comparison of dimensions 1 and 2.
of dimensions 1 and 3. Each color is related to a type of
instrument. Orange: strings (violin, cello, etc); Red:
flutes; Green: metals (trumpet, trombone, etc); Blue: reed
simple (saxophone, clarinet, etc); Purple: double vane (oboe,
bassoon, etc.). Source: .”

This pair of charts compares the timbre of different musical instruments.

GREY, J. M. Multidimensional perceptual scaling of musical
timbres. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
Acoustical Society of America, v. 61, n. 5, p. 1270–1277, 1977.

IVERSON, P.; KRUMHANSL, C. L. Isolating the dynamic
attributes of musical timbrea). The Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America, Acoustical Society of America, v. 94, n. 5,
p. 2595–2603, 1993.

DARKE, G. Assessment of timbre using verbal attributes. In:
Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology. Montreal,
Quebec. , 2005.

SCHUBERT, E.; WOLFE, J.; TARNOPOLSKY, A. Spectral centroid and timbre in complex, multiple instrumental textures. In: Proceedings of the international conference on music perception and cognition, North Western University, Illinois. , 2004. p. 112–116. BISMARCK, G. von. Timbre of steady sounds: A factorial investigation of its verbal attributes. Acta Acustica united with Acustica, S. Hirzel Verlag, v. 30, n. 3, p. 146–159, 1974.

ELLIOTT, T. M.; HAMILTON, L. S.; THEUNISSEN, F. E.
Acoustic structure of the five perceptual dimensions of timbre in
orchestral instrument tones. The Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America, Acoustical Society of America, v. 133, n. 1,
p. 389–404, 2013.

mollwollfumble said:

Thanks for those replies, I’ll get back to them later. Perhaps if I can get this article. It looks good but makes at least one simple mistake. Just because something is multidimensional doesn’t mean that “no rational organisation is possible”.

Yes, we’d have a slight problem doing science or engineering if that was true.

Perhaps a big project would be to deconstruct the sound generation mechanisms in a foley album such as this one. Note how metal, wood, glass, and body impacts are considered as separate sound sources, material is more important than geometry or size.

https://www.sound-ideas.com/Product/79/Foley-Sound-Effects

Foley Sound Effects

1680 Sound Effects for Download for $295.00 USD.

For the first time ever, we’re bringing our sound effects whizzes, swooshes, clunks, squishes, crashes, clashes, bumps, binks, sizzles, creaks, rattles, clinks, cracks and impacts straight to you.

Disc One content – Metal Impacts
Disc Two content – Wood and Glass
Disc Three content – Medieval Battle Sounds
Disc Four content – Punches, Kicks and Body Blows
Disc Five: Card games and coin jingles, soft kisses and hard hugs, soda fizzles and beer gulps, flag flaps and animal traps to leaves rustling, chains clanking, jewelry jingling and hand shaking, this potpourri of sounds will surely round-out your personal foley library.

None of these references even started to touch on the physics of “why?”

> GREY, J. M. Multidimensional perceptual scaling of musical
timbres. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
Acoustical Society of America, v. 61, n. 5, p. 1270–1277, 1977.

Listeners were told to rate the similarity of two tones (of 13 orchestral wind instruments and 3 strings) on a scale of 1 to 30. Results were subjected to a hierarchical clustering algorithm. Results are plotted on three axes. Axis 1 measures narrow vs wide spectral bandwidth. Axis 2 measures synchronicity of high harmonics together with spectral fluctuation through time. Axis 3 measures high vs low frequency during the attack phase.

> IVERSON, P.; KRUMHANSL, C. L. Isolating the dynamic
attributes of musical timbre. The Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America, Acoustical Society of America, v. 94, n. 5,
p. 2595–2603, 1993.

In separate experiments, subjects heard complete orchestral instrument tones, the onsets of those tones, and tones with the onsets removed. Orchestral instruments are vibraphone, tubular bells, piano, violin, cello and 11 wind instruments.

SCHUBERT, E.; WOLFE, J.; TARNOPOLSKY, A. Spectral
centroid and timbre in complex, multiple instrumental textures.
In: Proceedings of the international conference on music
perception and cognition, North Western University,
Illinois. , 2004. p. 112–116.

No use: “ This paper investigates the dependence of perceived timbral brightness on
pitch and spectral centroid for single notes and pairs of simultaneous notes. In both cases,
brightness is better correlated with the spectral centroid fc than with the ratio of fc to the
pitches of the notes.”

> BISMARCK, G. von. Timbre of steady sounds: A factorial
investigation of its verbal attributes. Acta Acustica united
with Acustica, S. Hirzel Verlag, v. 30, n. 3, p. 146–159, 1974.

Gets a 4-D result, but these are steady sounds and perceptual only. “An attempt was made to extract from the timbre percept those independent features which can be described in terms of verbal attributes. Pairs of opposite attributes, such as dark – bright or smooth – rough etc. Four orthogonal factors accounted for 90% of the variance. The factor carrying most of the variance (44%) was represented by the scale dull – sharp.”

> ELLIOTT, T. M.; HAMILTON, L. S.; THEUNISSEN, F. E.
Acoustic structure of the five perceptual dimensions of timbre in
orchestral instrument tones. The Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America, Acoustical Society of America, v. 133, n. 1,
p. 389–404, 2013.

Again only steady tones. Again only ordinary musical instruments. “Timbre space of sustained instrument tones occupies 5 dimensions.”

I can’t help feeling these people are overcomplicating it.

I mean it’s all just vibrations in the air.

material is more important than geometry or size.

————-

I not sure if that is universally true. Consider a cymbal’s sound vs that of a steel drum. Admittedly the steel drum is usually struck with a rubber-headed mallet.

Ian said:

material is more important than geometry or size.

————-

I not sure if that is universally true. Consider a cymbal’s sound vs that of a steel drum. Admittedly the steel drum is usually struck with a rubber-headed mallet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06eyqLosXjU

roughbarked said:

Ian said:

material is more important than geometry or size.

————-

I not sure if that is universally true. Consider a cymbal’s sound vs that of a steel drum. Admittedly the steel drum is usually struck with a rubber-headed mallet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06eyqLosXjU

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lithophone+pr%C3%A9historique

Steel drum? As in Trinidad “steel band”?

Classifying xylophone bar materials by perceptual, signal processing
and wood anatomy analysis
Loïc BRANCHERIAU

58 tropical wood species used in xylophone.

Table IV. Characteristic parameters computed from dynamic test
results.
No. Characteristic parameters
1 Density
2 Longitudinal modulus of elasticity (EL)
3 Shear modulus (GTL)
4 Ratio: modulus of elasticity/density
5 Ratio: shear modulus/density
6 Rank 1 vibration frequency (fundamental)
7 Rank 2 vibration frequency (1st harmonic)
8 Harmonicity factor (HF)
9 Spectral center of gravity (SCG)
10 Spectral range (SR)
11 Fundamental amplitude (β1)
12 1st harmonic amplitude (β2)
13 Fundamental damping coefficient (α1)
14 1st harmonic damping coefficient (α2)

The present findings do not comply
with the theory that the narrow diameter and high frequency of
vessels in wood is detrimental to acoustic quality

The percussive acoustic quality of a wood, as determined
empirically by the xylophone maker, can first be related to the
two sound signal parameters (obviously), i.e. temporal damping of the fundamental frequency and to a lesser extent the amplitude of this
frequency. The wood density doesn’t impact this acoustic quality,

The axial parenchyma should be paratracheal, and not very abundant if possible.
The rays (horizontal parenchyma) are another important feature. They should be short, structurally homogeneous but not very numerous.
The other characteristics are not essential, but they could enhance the acoustic quality. These include:
– Small numbers of vessels (thus large);
– A storied structure;
– Fibres with a wide lumen (or a high flexibility coefficient).

From mollwollfumble, to summarise the summary, for best acoustic quality the wood should be as uniform as possible, bleedin obvious when you think about it.