Customer Reviews

Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale

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While experimenting with musical instruments and sounds, the author observed a new relationship between the timbre of sounds and the tunings in which sounds are played. In an effort to understand this relationship the author hypothesized a mechanism for relating spectrum to scale. He then went to the heart of the matter, figured it all out, and proved the hypothesis. All of this and much more are clearly presented in Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale (TTSS).

TTSS is written so as to be comprehensible to a wide readership. It was a pleasure reading this informative and stunning book. In places it is even entertaining as the author's sense of humor shows through. The book should eventually find its way into many libraries (public, private, and institutional) because it contains new and important original contributions to many areas of music.

There are 345 pages divided into 13 sections and 6 short appendices. There is an extensive bibliography, a discography, an index, and an accompanying Compact Disk containing 33 sound examples. All sound examples are explained in the book, and they provide convincing support for the author's premises.

A succinctly written Prelude tells what Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale is all about. I found myself looking forward to learning more about the ideas outlined here. You'll find yourself anxious to learn where a particular concept will lead. The author has a knack for gradually building up an idea to its climax while keeping the reader involved, and this is rare amongst books where new ideas are being presented.

The book begins, in Section 1, with a challenge to current thinking concerning the consonance of musical octaves. A new idea is presented and its validity demonstrated using audio examples on the accompanying CD. ... Superb demonstration!... Section 1 also introduces a unique and practical method of quantifying the tonal consonance of any musical sound. The next four sections are entitled respectively: The Science of Sound, Musical Scales, Consonance and Dissonance of Harmonic Sounds, and Related Spectra and Scales. These sections taught me much about musical sounds and concepts. They are well written and include many informative figures, and they provide descriptions of more unique audio examples on the CD.

The Science of Sound section addresses the issue: what is sound? This leads into clear discussions of relevant terms. The reader is taken on a fascinating journey into timbre, pitch, scales, tunings, spectral analysis, beats and consonance. After reading about Musical Scales, you'll feel like an expert, and gain an appreciation of scales since the time of Pythagoras. You'll understand the profound influence they have had over the centuries in defining musics of an era.

The next section on Consonance and Dissonance provides a historical perspective of the way in which these terms have been used, and then focuses on Sensory Consonance. This has the unique property, amongst consonance/dissonance concepts, of being quantifiable in a scientific sense. It is here that one discovers a fundamental connection between the consonance works of Helmholtz 1877, Plomp & Levett 1965 and Partch 1974, which leads to a reasonably complete understanding of sensory consonance. The plot thickens as the connection between sensory consonance and musical scales unfolds. This connection is then transformed into practice as the author creates new and unique songs, A Bell, A Rock and A Crystal. It is amazing to observe musical passages created in this way.

The following section, Adaptive Tunings, describes the author's algorithms for tuning in real time, or , as is sometimes described, how to "tune on the fly". Once again, the accompanying CD provides adaptively tuned musical passages verifying algorithmic predictions. It seems that music is about to expand its domain of musical sounds in a significant way. Read the book to find out why and how this is happening.

The book contains much, much more. There is a section on Gamelans, a theory for 10 TET, dissonance curve computer programs, sensory consonance score of a Scarlatti sonata, analysis and synthesis of harmonic and non-harmonic sounds. Fourier Transform analysis and limitations, dissonance surfaces for chords, and a well thought out final section: Speculation, Interpretation, Conclusion.

I believe the author also recognized a basic limitation of Western music, and again went to the heart of the problem, figured it all out, and then proved his point. The result of these efforts is this exceptional book.

The author, while experimenting with a synthesizer, discovered that some kinds of scales sound good with some timbres and not with others, and likewise some kinds of timbres sound good in some scales and not in others. He set out to find out why, and the result was this book. The book examines these types of questions by looking at psychoacoustics and produces a model of musical perception that can predict what you will hear when you put certain timbres in specific musical contexts. The first few chapters examine the issues of tuning, timbre, spectrum, and scale in nonmathematical terms. Only in later chapters does the author introduce the math behind the modeling. A CD accompanies the book that allows you to listen to the sounds and the various tunings recommended in the book and verify that the model works correctly. This book is a good companion to Perry Cook's more basic book on psychoacoustics entitled "Music, Cognition, and Computerized Sound", which is a much less mathematical work. I enjoyed this book because I'm interested in multimedia computing and I'm always looking for texts that explore the relationship between images, sound, and mathematics. You'll need to be familiar with music theory before you tackle this book, since the author makes some assumptions there about his audience. However, he is fairly gentle with the mathematical portion.

Just ordered brand new book from Amazon at 90+ dollars. Contrary to book decsription no CD ROM with sound examples was included or attached. I will be returning it tomorrow. Has anyone received a CD with this book? Thanks

"This new and greatly revised edition of William Sethares' classic book includes an attached CD-ROM that contains over three hours of sound examples that demonstrate the ideas in action, as well as computer programs that enable readers to conduct their own explorations. "

Rating applied to missing content or false/ incorrect product description.

The other review is over-enthusiastic. Hardly an example of unbiased scientific inquiry, the author basically sets out to prove something and does so without searching for contradictory evidence. As a result, we get a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Very interesting, never-the-less.

Reader's should be warned that this is *not* an introductory text, and that it is not an overview of the area of tunings.

Additionally, it is interesting that the word 'timbre' is in the title, as there is not one iota of original perceptual research here...and timbre is a preceptual phenomenon.

Decades from now, this book will be seen as a seminal work -- a book that opened up spacious new frontiers to musical exploration and dramatically changed the sound of the world's popular music.

All previous analyses of music started and ended with the "harmonic series" -- the pattern of partials that is produced by virating strings, for example. The musical scale, tuning, and instruments of Western music have all evolved to maximize their "fit" with this pattern of partials.

But electronic music synthesis frees musicians from the restrictions of the harmonic series. This begs the question: can emotionally-satisfying music be made with inharmonic timbres? If so, how? What, exactly, is the relationship between tuning, timbre, spectrum, and scale?

By clarifying this relationship, Sethares lays the foundation for a "Grand Unified Theory" of music. That Grand Unified Theory has not yet been created -- which means that YOU can help design it; YOU can write its seminal works; YOU can perform music that's like nothing ever heard before, and yet which resonates as emotionally as the very best works of the Common Practice Era.

YOU can be the Beethoven of the 21st century -- but first, you have to BUY THIS BOOK. :-)

I am glad I found this book researching material for my dissertation on music and new technology. A unique book!