1. Hearing & Deafness (5)
Timbre, Music & Speech

2. Vocal Tract

3. Source & Filter
Larynx
Vocal tract
Output sound

4. Pitch and Formants
1. Harmonics (giving pitch) produced by vocal cord vibration
2. Formant frequencies: resonances of the vocal tract
3. Formant frequencies change as you change the
shape of your vocal tract

5. Vowel production

6. Tuvan throat music

7. Tuvan throat music - 2

8. Vocal tract change Me (m) Shorter vocal-tract Higher pitch
(higher formants)
Both (-> f)

9. narrow-band spectrogram
SWS
narrow-band spectrogram
sine-wave speech

10. Adding harmonics to make an instrument’s timbre
Track 53
Different notes on clarinet and oboe

11. What determines an instrument’s timbre
1. “formant” frequencies
2. Amplitude envelope
3. Onset / offset transients

12. Instrument timbre does not scale - it is more like speech formants
Cheap synthesisers do this to generate different notes
Natural instruments and good synthesisers do this

13. Bassoon & violin notes
Track 57

14. Forwards & backwards temporal envelopes
Track 54
Track 56

15. Onset transients 0.7817 ﾐ0.6922 0.0842 Time (s) 0.7817 ﾐ0.6922 0.0842
ﾐ0.6922
0.0842
Time (s)
0.7817
ﾐ0.6922
0.0842
Time (s)

16. Why are some intervals consonant and others dissonant?
Consonant musical intervals form simple ratios
octave 2/1
fifth 3/2
fourth 4/3
major third 5/4
minor sixth 8/5
minor third 6/5
major sixth 5/3
major second 9/8
consonant
dissonant

17. Two complex tones separated by a perfect fifth (3:2)
Consonant intervals have
maximally separated component frequencies