Orchestration Postdoc Blog (OPDB) #7
Project Blog | Postdoc | Conference Summary | Lindsey Reymore | September 10, 2020
Hi all,
Lindsey here, reporting on a fantastic virtual conference that took place last week, September 3–4, “Timbre 2020.” While it was certainly disappointing not to be gathering in Greece as planned, this second international conference on timbre was still a golden opportunity for #timbregeeks around the world to gather together and share their latest discoveries. The opening session chats included “hellos” from researchers in London, Milan, Paris, Dublin, Denmark, Stockholm, Colombia, Magdeburg, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Portugal, Sydney, Riga, Hiroshima, the United States, Athens, Strasbourg, Montreal, and Finland; registrations for the conference came from 41 countries.
Timbre 2020 registration by country
‘Onomatopoeia cloud’ from Bodo Winter and Marcus Perlman’s talk on descriptions of bird vocalizations
Timbre is a relatively new area of music research and has been gaining more and more momentum recently, leading to a 2017 Interdisciplinary Workshop on Timbre in Berlin and the first international timbre conference in 2018 hosted at McGill University . (Fun fact: postdoc Matt Zeller and I were both in Montreal for that 2018 conference!) This year’s conference underscored the enthusiasm for timbre among a diverse array of research communities and highlighted the truly multidisciplinary nature of timbre research.
The four keynote talks themselves covered a wide array of topics: Morwaread Farbood (New York University) described her research on timbre and perception of musical tension; Stefan Bilbao (University of Edinburgh) offered perspectives from engineering, giving an introduction to physical modelling synthesis; Jennifer Bizley (University College London) discussed auditory processing in ferrets as a model for human processing; and David Howard (Royal Holloway University of London) interrogated the relationship of timbre and intonation in relation to a capella singing.
Themed sessions for oral presentations included “Affect,” “Semantics,” “Instruments,” “Perception,” “Orchestration,” and “Analysis,” though as might be expected, there was a great deal of intriguing overlap among these themes! As a researcher who is especially interested in the kinds of language we use to communicate about timbre, I was excited to see a range of research probing diverse lexicons, revealing both similarities and discrepancies in how different linguistic communities approach timbre. Jason Noble (Universite de Montreal), Kit Soden (McGill) , and Zachary Wallmark (University of Oregon) presented early results from a corpus study examining how authors of orchestration treatises describe blends of instruments, revealing that there appears to be some key differences in vocabulary as compared to written descriptions of single instrument sounds. My own poster reported my research on orchestral instrument description by musicians. However, the discussion did not stop at the linguistics of orchestral timbres! Maria Perevedentseva (Goldsmiths, University of London) gave a fascinating talk on the language used to describe timbre in the EDM (electronic dance music) community; Ben Hayes and Charalampos Saitis discussed semantic dimensions of FM synthesis; and Bodo Winter and Marcus Perlman provided a captivating account of the the incredible diversity of linguistic description used to describe bird vocalizations, with a focus on crossmodal language and very excellent examples of unique onomatopoeia. These varied presentations, all concerned in some way with language and meaning, really emphasized the point for me that humans have an incredible capacity for developing timbral discourse. Despite historical views of sound description as inconsistent, wishy-washy, vague, and unsystematic, this set of presentations made it blatantly evident that musical communities develop extremely creative and unique lexicons for timbre that allow for successful communication. That’s not to say timbre description doesn’t offer its challenges—but research that focuses on the compelling ways in which musical communities overcome these challenges is a promising avenue for learning more not only about music, but about language, cognition, and identity.
“Social” events at the conference, including online schmoozing via the platform “Gathertown,” a speed-dating event via Zoom, and a more informal panel session provided some opportunity to make connections with other researchers. Sessions were also punctuated by live musical performances showcasing a range of colorful timbres, including didgeridoo, toy melodica, and beatbox.
Looking forward to the 3rd International Conference on Timbre—and keeping my fingers crossed that we’ll be able to meet up in person!
