Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale

by William A. Sethares Here is a brief guide to Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale. Click for a quick rundown of the central ideas or for an overview, go to the complete table of contents by clicking on the appropriate chapter, or click to download the full book. The book includes a set of sound examples on CD, and the full text of one of the early seminal articles is now available on-line. Several pieces of music that exploit the sound techniques are also available for download in mp3 format. The Octave is Dead... Long Live the Octave Introducing a dissonant octave--almost any interval can be made consonant or dissonant by proper choice of timbre. Some basic ideas from psychoacoustics are required to understand the interaction between timbre (or spectrum) and sensory consonance and dissonance. Pairs of sine waves interact to produce interference, beating, roughness, and the simplest setting in which (sensory) dissonance occurs. Many scales have been used throughout the centuries. The ... Read full article.