Contemporary thinking and research on timbre and its use as a dynamic, structural component in music performance have been profoundly influenced by the insights and insounds of David Wessel. His intrepid and creative approach opened up vistas of timbre spaces navigable through multidimensional trajectories. Wessel’s experiments with timbre streaming [Computer Music J. 3, 4552, (1979)] inspired my own work on perceptual organization of complex-tone sequences [Singh, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 82, 886-899 (1987)]. The finding of a timbre “interva” akin to a pitch interval as a threshold for streaming reinforced Wessel’s notion of timbral analogies [Ehresman and Wessel, IRCAM Rep 13/78, (1978)]. Later work on measuring timbre differences through FO thresholds for streaming (Singh and Bregman, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 102(4), 1943-1952, (1997)) also lent support to the idea of intervallic relationship between timbres. More recently, my work relating Auditory Scene Analysis to Hindustani rhythms brought us together again, presenting and drumming in a multicultural percussion session at the ASA meeting in San Francisco in 2013. For a person so into timing and timbre, David’s untimely departure dealt a discordant blow that can be partially assuaged through such tributes that review, extend, and honor his work.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
May 2017
Meeting abstract. No PDF available.
May 01 2017
Pitching timbre analogies with David Wessel
Punita G. Singh
Punita G. Singh
Sound Sense, 16 Gauri Apartments, 3 Rajesh Pilot Ln., New Delhi 110011, India, [email protected]
Search for other works by this author on:
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 141, 3561 (2017)
Citation
Punita G. Singh; Pitching timbre analogies with David Wessel. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 May 2017; 141 (5_Supplement): 3561. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4987554
Download citation file:
93
Views
Citing articles via
All we know about anechoic chambers
Michael Vorländer
A survey of sound source localization with deep learning methods
Pierre-Amaury Grumiaux, Srđan Kitić, et al.
Does sound symbolism need sound?: The role of articulatory movement in detecting iconicity between sound and meaning
Mutsumi Imai, Sotaro Kita, et al.
Related Content
David Wessel—The IRCAM years
J Acoust Soc Am (May 2017)
David Wessel—The Michigan State years
J Acoust Soc Am (May 2017)
David Wessel: A few stories of an antidisciplinarian
J Acoust Soc Am (May 2017)
David Wessel—A scholar and a performer
J Acoust Soc Am (May 2017)
David Wessel—A unique professor in Berkeley
J Acoust Soc Am (May 2017)