Acoustics, perception and modelling of musical timbre

音色指的是除音高、持续时间、响度和空间位置以外的声音的许多维度。我的长期研究项目研究音乐音色的感知和认知，目的是为在音乐实践和听众接受音乐以及日常听觉体验中发挥重要作用的现象提供感知模型。与音色相关的声学描述符已经被开发出来，但我们需要测试这些描述符随时间变化的方式是否对感知至关重要。我们还将研究乐器声音中音色与音高和演奏努力的协变性，并研究在极端音域下演奏时无法识别乐器的认知机制。我们还将研究音高和演奏努力的音色变化的长期表示如何体现在音乐音源行为的心理模型中。应用心理力学的方法，并使用数字模型，可以模拟代表探测物体和使它们振动的动作的过程，我们将通过结合不太可能的动作和物体(如吹板和被击中的气柱)来探索声源行为的心理模型。音色在音乐组织中扮演着多种角色。它是由声音成分与听觉事件的感知融合而产生的一种新特性，包括由不同乐器产生的几个事件的混合，以创造新的音色。我们将检验这样一种假设，即组合的突现音色特性取决于它们的混合。其他工作将探索房间混响、乐器的空间位置和麦克风放置对音乐录音中音色混合的性能和感知的影响。我们将研究音色属性，这些属性在将声音序列分割成可以在工作记忆中处理的模式方面发挥关键作用。在许多管弦乐中，音色相似性与其他音乐参数，如音高和音乐质地，在将乐器较松散地分组为前景和背景管弦乐层方面发挥了作用。我们将研究音色对听觉突显的贡献，将一些音乐材料带到前景，吸引听众的注意力。对音色的记忆在音乐中也是至关重要的。我们将研究单个事件和音色序列的音色的短期记忆过程。音色属性也会强烈地影响音乐的情感基调。我们将探索音色在音乐中传达情感和诱导情感反应的作用，并将描述个体差异、文化适应和对乐器的熟悉在感受情感中的作用。这项研究对听觉心理学、听觉假体、听觉警报、音乐推荐引擎、管弦乐模拟、音乐表演和音响工程都有重要的意义。

Timbre refers to many dimensions of sound other than pitch, duration, loudness, and spatial position. My long-term research program studies the perception and cognition of musical timbre, with the aim of providing perceptual models for phenomena that play a significant role in musical practice and in the reception of music by listeners, as well as in everyday auditory experience. Acoustic descriptors related to timbre have been developed, but we need to test whether the way such descriptors vary over time is crucial to perception. We will also study timbre's covariation with pitch and playing effort in musical instrument sounds and will study the cognitive mechanisms responsible for the failure to identify instruments when played in extreme registers. We will also study how long-term representations of the timbral variations across pitch and playing effort are embodied in mental models of the behaviour of musical sound sources. Applying the psychomechanical approach and using digital models that can simulate processes representing sounding objects and the actions that make them vibrate, we will explore mental models of sound source behaviour by combining unlikely actions and objects (such as a blown plate and a struck air column). Timbre plays several roles in musical organization. It arises as an emergent property from the perceptual fusion of acoustic components into auditory events, including the blending of several events produced by separate instruments to create new timbres. We will test the hypothesis that emergent timbral properties of combinations depend on their blending. Other work will explore the effect of room reverberation, spatial position of instruments, and microphone placement on performance and perception of timbral blend in music recordings. We will study the timbral properties that play a crucial role in the segmentation of sound sequences into patterns that can be processed in working memory. In much orchestral music, timbral similarity plays a role, in concert with other musical parameters such as pitch and musical texture, in the looser grouping of instruments into foreground and background orchestral layers. We will study the contribution of timbre to auditory salience that brings some musical materials to the foreground, capturing a listener's attention. Memory for timbre is also of paramount importance in music. We will study short-term memory processes for the timbre of single events and timbral sequences. Timbral properties also strongly affect the emotional tone of music. We will explore the role of timbre in communicating emotion and inducing emotional response in music and will characterize the role of individual differences, acculturation, and familiarity with the instruments in felt emotion. This research has important implications for auditory psychology, hearing prostheses, auditory alarms, music recommendation engines, orchestral simulation, music performance, and sound engineering.