Conclusions:
Sound Color

Sound color has nothing to do with the color of the person playing the instrument, the color of the instrument, or the style of music. Sound color is specifically how bright or dark the sound seems to be.

A bright sound is made by having lots of overtones over the root harmonic. In essence the more harmonics, the brighter the tone. Thus a player on a marching field who is playing with a loud, sharp, brassy tone trying to get more projection is doing so by getting the ear to vibrate in more places inside the inner ear.

As significant harmonics lessen in number and intensity, the sound becomes darker. The ear hears fewer overtones. The edginess of the sound lessens. I believe that this is because upper end harmonics are actually very close in pitch and create dissonances in the tone even if it is well tuned and producing a characteristic sound. I conjecture that what makes this different than a poor tone quality is that the dissonance is regular, expected, and is still within the harmonic system that we all learn at a very young age to expect and interpret at a single pitch.

Press here to return to the main conclusion page

Back to the Home Page

Back to the Outline