Generation of Musical Sounds, Complex Tones, and the Perception of Timbre

Abstract

In the preceding two chapters the two principal tonal attributes pitch and loudness have been analyzed, mainly on the basis of pure, single-frequency tones. These are not, however, the tones that play an active role in music. Music is made up of complex tones, each one of which consists of a superposition of pure tones blended together in a certain relationship so as to appear to our ear as unanalyzed wholes. A third fundamental tonal attribute thus emerges: tone quality, or timbre, related to the kind of mixture of pure sounds, or harmonic components, in a complex tone (Section 1.2).