Verbal Attribute Glossaries 1-17.

Timbre Identification: uses of perceptual verbal attributes.

The following pages present a review of verbal attributes used as descriptors of tone in various studies of tonal perception, music reviews, interviews with pianists and piano builders, journal articles and piano brand websites. The perceptual attributes used in the Piano Contrasts audience survey questions derived from these sources are compiled into glossaries (1-17). Attributes used by participants in their descriptive comments found in these sources are also entered into the glossaries.

Perceptual verbal attributes such as ‘bright’, ‘dark’, ‘clear’, ‘dull’ have provided the relational measure in studies of the timbre identification since the studies of Litche in 1941²⁷⁰ . In these studies, participants’ ability to recognize instrumental sounds were measured with respect to various alterations of the stimuli.²⁷¹ A series of studies on piano tone conducted in the 1960s, at Bingham university by Harvey Fletcher and E.Blackham,²⁷² altered the stimuli of the harmonic partials of synthetically assembled piano sounds, to demonstrate the degree of inharmonicity in piano tone, by adjusting the in harmonic frequencies of piano tone to be perfectly harmonic.

Synthetic tones that were built up of perfectly harmonic partials were described by musicians and non musicians alike as lacking ‘warmth’.²⁷³

Descriptions of hammer felt density and the iron frame in the Blackham & Fletcher studies illustrate the use of other perceptual attributes:

If the felt is too hard and produces a harsh tone, it can be pricked with a needle to loosen its fibres and will produce a mellower tone. If the tone is too mellow and lacks brilliance the felt can be filed and made harder.²⁷⁴

The development of the full cast iron frame gave the sound of the piano much greater brilliance and power.²⁷⁵

More recent studies have scaled verbal attributes to achieve finer degrees of interpretation. Many studies of timbre discernment test the attributes potential for categorizing sounds into groups of similarity. The Piano Contrast survey questions illustrated later in the chapter compare the differences of timbre within the one class of instrument, so the most successful attributes would generate responses of the widest differential within a narrow choice, due to the instruments belonging to a similar class. A wide differential response that creates a majority +50%, and a minority -50% is a good result in that it clearly demonstrates a perception of a majority of the participants. The attributes used in the Piano

²⁷⁰William Lichte, “Attributes of Complex Tones.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 28.6 (1941) : 455–481.
^{271     3} Brent,7
^{272     2}Fletcher,H. & Blackham, & Stratton,27.
^{273     3}Fletcher,H. & Blackham, & Stratton, 32.
^{274     4
275     5}Fletcher,H. & Blackham, & Stratton, 29.
5Fletcher,H. & Blackham, & Stratton, 28.