There’s more to timbre than musical instruments: semantic dimensions of FM sounds

Much previous research into timbre semantics (such as when an oboe is described as “hollow”) has focused on sounds produced by acoustic instruments, particularly those associated with western tonal music (Saitis & Weinzierl, 2019). Many synthesisers are capable of producing sounds outside the timbral range of physical instruments, but which are still discriminable by their timbre. Research into the perception of such sounds, therefore, may help elucidate further the mechanisms underpinning our experience of timbre in the broader sense. In most timbre semantics research, listeners rate a set of sounds along scales defined by descriptive adjectives. By reverse engineering the standard paradigm, a smaller number of studies have provided evidence that musicians can manipulate timbre in abstract synthesis scenarios to match certain adjective descriptions. For example, Wallmark et al. (2019) employed a simplified FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis interface to study the relationship between semantic descriptors and sound creation, showing an association between word valence and specific acoustic features.