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8th October 2020

I presented a poster at the 2nd International Conference on Timbre on our work exploring the acoustic dimensions of a perceptual timbre space for sounds produced by a subtractive synth.

Reflections on Timbre 2020 on the topic of sound synthesis:
  • The timbre community is still searching for new descriptions of timbre as a musical control structure.
  • In electronic music, timbre is perhaps now considered to be more important than tonality and pitch - timbre defines whole electronic music genres and composition.
  • Neural audio synthesis             AI poses new questions for timbre perception research - what lives in the extrapolated parts of timbre space? Can AI bring us timbres that are intangible via physical mediums?
  • Semantic descriptions of FM synth sounds could pose new ways to interact with the notoriously untameable FM timbre galaxy. Through factor analysis & an online listening experiment, my colleagues determined the principal semantic dimensions for a set of FM sounds, that were generated and rated by domain experts            There’s more to timbre than musical instruments: semantic dimensions of FM sounds
  • Physical modelling synthesis enables definition of resonant bodies and excitation sources that transcend physical limits - this is exciting for composition of novel abstract timbres              see Stefan Bilbao

Timbre Space Representation of a Subtractive Synthesizer
Timbre 2020              International Conference on Timbre



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