What's the difference between tone, timbre and tonality

[xanalog]

I tried AI but it gave some conflicting answers.

I keep wanting to believe {CLAUDE} but I asked it for the local Cadillac dealer service department phone# and the b*st*rd gave me the phone# of some telemarketer (that was asking if I am over 50 years old). And that was just yesterday!
{CLAUDE} >> Thought for 5s:

Strictly speaking, 'timbre' is defined by harmonic/spectral content (the mix and relative levels of overtones) and how that spectrum evolves over time. But two of them bear on it indirectly:

• Intermodulation distortion (IMD) has the most direct effect on timbre. IMD generates new sum-and-difference frequency components that weren't in the original signal, which literally alters the harmonic/spectral makeup of the sound — changing its perceived tonal color.
• Transient response affects timbre indirectly, since attack characteristics (how fast a note's onset rises and settles) are a major cue humans use to identify an instrument's timbre. A smeared or overshot transient can make an instrument sound "off" in character even if the steady-state spectrum is unchanged.
• Group delay is the weakest link to timbre — it's about phase/time offset between frequencies, which mostly affects imaging and how transients line up across the band rather than the tonal color itself, though severe group delay variation can indirectly muddy transient-driven timbre cues too.

So if you had to pick one: IMD is the most direct contributor to timbre; transient response is a secondary contributor; group delay is the least directly connected of the three.

This {CLAUDE} reply seems quite believable, so I got courageous and asked to correlate timbre to tonality:

...They're not apples to oranges — they're more like two different zoom levels on the same underlying thing (frequency-domain fidelity), so a direct comparison actually works well...

Much details are provided but you have to be patient and ask more than one single chatBot and bounce their answers between them for accuracy... which I will not do.

 

[Timcognito]

I don’t like your tone, mister!

:/)

Well one could say the speaker has a dark tone or that it has higher SPL in the mid to lower mid frequencies than the rest of its frequency band.

 

[xanalog]

Asking {CLAUDE} if there is "Any intersectionality between timbre/tonality with PRAT?":

Yes — actually more directly than either has individually with the other, because PRAT is fundamentally a time-domain/dynamic phenomenon, and that's exactly the domain where timbre lives too (as established above)....

On challenge:

Good catch — no, I overstated that, and I should walk it back.
The honest problem: I asserted a comparative claim ("more directly than either has individually with the other") without any real basis for ranking degrees of "directness" between three relationships, two of which (PRAT-timbre, timbre-tonality) aren't rigorously defined to begin with. I was pattern-matching to make the paragraph sound authoritative rather than actually establishing that ranking...

This is the only part that is not fuzzy logic:

There's no measurement or established framework that lets you rank "directness" across these three pairings — it's three loosely-related perceptual/technical concepts where the connective tissue is informed speculation, not established theory.

Just avoid employing those words, unless you want to impress or sound authoritative around naifs, like {CLAUDE}.

 

[Titurel]

I keep wanting to believe {CLAUDE} but I asked it for the local Cadillac dealer service department phone# and the b*st*rd gave me the phone# of some telemarketer (that was asking if I am over 50 years old). And that was just yesterday!
{CLAUDE} >> Thought for 5s:

This {CLAUDE} reply seems quite believable, so I got courageous and asked to correlate timbre to tonality:

Much details are provided but you have to be patient and ask more than one single chatBot and bounce their answers between them for accuracy... which I will not do.

There is only one big problem in CLAUDE'S attempt at Timbre: transient response is traditionally excluded from timbre, because it includes both volume and pitch, which are excluded in most (credible) definitions of timbre.

If you one wishes to make serious queries of chatbots, one need to be careful to narrow or define the domain in which useful or acceptable answers must fall. For instance, "In baseball, how do you throw a curve." The answer for cricket (though cricket probably has its own term) would be different. How to throw a conversational curve would yield another answer.

When related domains share many of the same tokens (terms), conflated or confusing answers should be expected.

Your second shot at CLAUDE points at part of the problem: the rigorousness of a definition is largely determined by its use within a particular domain. Comparing similar terms across domains is particularly odious.

 

[MattHooper]

Well one could say the speaker has a dark tone or that it has higher SPL in the mid to lower mid frequencies than the rest of its frequency band.

True.

And one can describe the result of that frequency profile as “warm and dark” sounding. Ultimately what matters is how the sound is perceived. And the character of that perception.

 

[xanalog]

There is only one big problem in CLAUDE'S attempt at Timbre: transient response is traditionally excluded from timbre, because it includes both volume and pitch, which are excluded in most (credible) definitions of timbre.

I would not dare ask a chatBot but I am not sure if my understanding of 'timbre' includes a variable called 'volume'.
But I can ask YOU.

 

[xanalog]

I don’t like your tone, mister!
:/)

I think you hit it on the nail:
I tend to associate tonality (what ever it means subjectively) with human voices... and I just had a fight with my fave chatBot and I lost!

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

I've thought timbre had to do with harmonics for a long time. I've never seen a knowledgeable source on the subject so it's speculation on my part. An acoustic guitar string can produce a pure tone if you hold it gently over a fret but don't press down on the string. At the 12th fret it produces a pure tone an octave above the fundamental of the string. If you fret the string there it produces the same pitch but the note sounds very different. Stringed instruments get the sound of the box. Reed and brass instruments are different. Oh, with singing, head and chest voice sound different at the same pitch. Wind instruments when "overblown" sound different from the conventional embouchure. My cigar box guitar sounds like a banjo.

 

[Multicore]

I've thought timbre had to do with harmonics for a long time.

Harmonics play a big part many instrument's sound production but usually it's more complicated. Vocal sound production for example is very interesting and there's a lot more to it than harmonics.

 

[Curvature]

Tone or tonality has no fixed meaning and changes depending on context. Timbre refers to the subjective reception of sound in psychoacoustics, while in musicology it is a quality of the source, like an instrument. Frequency response is a physical measurement of energy distribution across wavelengths.

 

[Titurel]

Harmonics play a big part many instrument's sound production but usually it's more complicated. Vocal sound production for example is very interesting and there's a lot more to it than harmonics.

Absolutely right. The problem for non-musicians thinking about timbre is getting intellecutally trapped by ideal strings or cylindrical pipes and their readily computed overtones. The sound of most musical instruments is far more complex, in some ways verging on chaotic. Signals from human voice are especially complex.

Fortunately audio equipment owners and designers don't need to concern themselves with those complexities except being able to record, store, and retransmit them at whatever volume level the end user desires. What the sounds are and how they came into being is not relevant, or, as my old high school physics teacher said, "Don't concern yourself. It's magic." I would add to that, don't borrow the musician's misery by borrowing their terminology.

 

[xanalog]

{CLAUDE}: That WordWeb definition is actually the formal music-theory sense (key/scale framework), which is different from the audiophile "frequency balance" sense we've been using

Okay then, provide the definitions (from 3 top dictionaries that you think are the 3 top dictionaries) for tonality and timbre:

{CLAUDE}:
Tonality:
*Merriam-Webster: Simply, tonal quality — with the fuller entry defining it as the character of a piece of music based on its key or on the relation of its tones and chords to a particular keynote.
*Cambridge Dictionary: A particular musical scale or key.
*American Heritage: A system or arrangement of seven tones built on a tonic key, with Webster's New World adding a broader sense: quality of tone. That entry also lists timbre and tone color as synonyms of tonality.
Timbre:
*Merriam-Webster: The quality given to a sound by its overtones — including the resonance that lets the ear recognize a voiced speech sound, and the tone quality distinctive of a particular singing voice or musical instrument.
*Cambridge Dictionary: A quality of sound that makes voices or musical instruments sound different from one another.
*Dictionary.com: The characteristic quality of a sound, independent of pitch and loudness, from which its source or manner of production can be inferred — determined by the relative strengths of different frequency components via resonance. It also gives the music-specific sense: the characteristic quality of sound produced by a particular instrument or voice — tone color.

Hoping these definitions were not fabricated (I did not check links provided).

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I tried AI but it gave some conflicting answers.

I'm curious, what say ye?

It's been done to death in this thread:

What is timbre and can we measure it?

My understanding is timbre is describing the differences in sound of different instruments playing the same note. My understanding is also that this site effectively evaluates musical equipment by passing a set frequency (a note) and evaluating how faithfully the equipment reproduced that...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Multicore]

I tried AI but it gave some conflicting answers.

I'm curious, what say ye?

So, how are we doing @Mort ? Any clearer than the chatbot?

 

[Mort]

So, how are we doing @Mort ? Any clearer than the chatbot?

Ha. Well at least here there are two clearly defined camps that don't agree. The AI just smashed both together and said it with a smile.

 

[Multicore]

Ha. Well at least here there are two clearly defined camps that don't agree. The AI just smashed both together and said it with a smile.

Yeah, and I think that reflects reality. Ofc I'm in the literal-minded camp, preferring not to get caught, or catch myself, in loose or reckless use of language. I wonder if that relates to my difficulty with appreciating poetry. Otoh I am keen on and involved in art that isn't made of words, e.g. music!

 

[danadam]

I think tone and timber are related,

But only for wood instruments