Name: Tuning, timbre, spectrum, scale
ISBN: 9781852337971

Tuning, timbre, spectrum, scale

The only things truly universal in music are those that are based on biological and/or perceptual facts. Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale focuses on perceptions of consonance and dissonance, which are defined in the Harvard Dictionary of Music: "Consonance is used to describe the agreeable effect produced by certain intervals as against the disagreeable effect produced others. Consonance and dissonance are the very foundation of harmonic music... consonance represents the element of smoothness and repose, while dissonance represents the no less important elements of roughness and irregularity.^ Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale begins by asking (and answering) the question: How can we build a device to measure consonance and dissonance? The remainder of the book describes the impact of such a "dissonance meter" on music theory, on synthesizer design, on the construction of musical scales and tunings, on the design of musical instruments, and introduces related compositional techniques and new methods of musicological analyses his new and greatly revised edition of William Sethares' classic book includes an attached CD-ROM that contains over three hours of sound examples that demonstrate the ideas in action, as well as computer programs that enable readers to conduct their own explorations. A new chapter contains a detailed explanation of how the software works.

What Hacker News says

klaffJul 2026

Have you read Sethares' Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale book or the shorter paper? It gets right in on the topic of the interrelationship between timbre and dissonance. As you say, the timbres of the instruments are very important to how dissonance is or isn't experienced by the listener.

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BigTTYGothGFJul 2026

I agree that there's a lot to be desired in the pedagogy of music theory, but this is pretty bad. There are so many little things wrong with it that if I started trying to address them all I'd be here forever.

Anybody interested in this stuff would be better off with something like Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale (https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/ttss.html) or Music a Mathematical Offering (https://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/d.j.benson/pages/html/maths-mus...)

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superb-owlApr 2024

Highly recommend the book “Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale” for engineers interested in music theory

https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/ttss.html

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jsennOct 2023

The books Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale [1] and Rhythm and Transforms [2] by Sethares have a lot of detail about the perception of higher level phenomena like pitch and rhythm. Plus he's an electrical engineer, so you get some code out of the deal. He doesn't dwell too much on the neuroscience aspect though--in both cases he's after a more functional explanation.

[1] https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/ttss.html [2] https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/RT.html

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shirleyquirkMar 2023

I grew up in a family of classical musicians, got a degree in music, and was briefly a professional classical musician myself. So my advice may be very out of touch with the experience of someone learning for the first time, but my experiences learning beyond European classical music theory left me feeling insulted.

The basics of music theory are presented as though they are the foundations upon which all subsequent music is derived. In fact, teaching scales and chords is like teaching that the electron orbits the nucleus - a 'simplification'. There _are_ real psychoacoustic truths, alongside equally fascinating historical forces, that underpin music theory.

Learn the language and idioms of music theory, by all means, but don't think of it as being in any way true. Its a syncretist cargo cult of hacks and rules of thumb handed down by centuries of men with dubious motives.

I recommend Adam Neely on YouTube, he illustrates music theory concepts clearly, engagingly, and with an appropriate skepticism for received wisdom.

Here's his discussion of some more political criticisms of music theory: https://youtu.be/Kr3quGh7pJA

I recommend Sethares' _Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale_ to anyone interested in the underpinnings of why some notes sound good together and others don't.

[2]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287019948_Tuning_ti...

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mreidJun 2021

I'm not the parent, but I think they are referring to William Sethares' book "Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale": https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781852337971

It's a fascinating take on how those concepts relate to each other. You can find some of the papers that were synthesized into that book on his web page: https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/pubs.html

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