Since sound cannot exist without the passing of time, and as such it can be hard to hold on to, it makes sense to try to establish a vocabulary for talking about qualities of the sound. When talking about sound we can point at different aspects of a sound, and how we hear them. Let us in this context mention the point that different people may experience sound slightly differently, as with all perceptual phenomena. Each individual has her own perception, and her own interpretation of any words used to describe it. To some extent we will commonly agree on what is meant by any descriptive terms, and we will agree more the simpler terms we use to describe the sound. Examples of simple terms may be loud/soft, bright/dull etc. Obviously, simple terms will only be able to capture simple characteristics of the sound, so we will need to progress beyond this somehow.
Within acoustics, significant research has been put into sound descriptions and tests of subjective attributes. We provide here a brief summary, both as a starting point for a vocabulary, but also for the purpose of showing that there might be ambiguities in the interpretation and use of each term even though we can clearly see statistical significant coherence.
Within the field of electroacoustic music composition, the problem of describing timbre has been researched from the perspective of “musique concrete”, music made from recorded sounds, a style of composition that emerged during the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. This has later led to the development of spectromorphology, aiming to describe how spectra change over time, how their shapes change. Over the years, a highly developed language of sonic descriptors has evolved.
The above research both within acoustic and spectromophology provides a useful perspective on description and discussion of the characteristics and qualities of a sound. We have, however, refrained from determining an absolute glossary. It is our view that understanding of, and agreement upon the meaning of specific terms are better developed when listening together, discussing and negotiating relationships between terms and sounds. It is clear that this may lead to different sound description in different groups of people. The term “distorted” might mean something else to a a classical tonmeister than what it means to a rock guitarist. This is all ok, as long as we know that our verbal description may convey different things to different people.