Connecting Media - Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg

model of the evolving physical world. The storage is structured in relevant ways with respect to
what is important in the world. In the field of classical music these are the primary qualites (like
pitch and rhythm) to which the greatest importance had been assigned. Present music education
does not support the development of systematic categories and representations for perception of
musical timbre and unconsciously influential music transmitted by the everyday media deals also
almost exclusively with primary parameters. With the spread of the electronic media in music skills
for categorization and proper representation of sonorities seems to become important, if not indis-
pensable for appreciation of certain kinds of music.
Our research was based on David Wessel‘s timbral dimensions which were extended to synthesized
and processed sonorities. Stephen McAdams concerns about the form bearing capacity of timbre
dimensions had been taken into consideration. From the results of psychoacoustic investigations a
conclusion had been formalized stating that timbre possesses a form-bearing capacity, but its be-
haviour substantially differs from the behaviour of the primary parameters which change over one
dimension. According to our results timbre is able to determine a musical form in such cases, when
it changes over sufficent amount of dimensions, and its complex parameter-changes create clear
subjective percepts.
To explore the behavior of the dimensions of the timbre the notion of reduced timbre space has
been introduced. A reduced timbre space is a matrix including limited number of timbre dimensions,
which make it possible to control the partials of sonorities and their limited combinations separate-
ly. In the form of real-time sound synthesis and processing programs (written in MAX/MSP) certain
timbre dimensions were modelled and different reduced timbre spaces were originated.
A timbre solfège thesaurus has been composed containing timbre matrices (limited timbre spaces)
based on standard sound synthesis and processing techniques (like additive synthesis, subtractive
synthesis, FM synthesis, granular synthesis). Beyond default timbres the user can create further ex-
amples, since the matrices are convenient for putting together a large number of logically ordered
sonorities.
Depending on the educational needs different interfaces were created for different target groups. The
interfaces differ in the method of representation (graphical, descriptive, parametric) of the individual
timbre dimensions.