Timbre Quotes

• A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre; the realization of it, for destiny.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Destiny, Poetry, Realization

  Joseph Brodsky (2011). “Less Than One: Selected Essays”, p.177, Penguin UK

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no one part of the brain which recognizes or responds emotionally to music. Instead, there are many different parts responding to different aspects of music: to pitch, to frequency, to timbre, to tonal intervals, to consonance, to dissonance, to rhythm, to melodic contour, to harmony.

  Oliver Sacks

  Brain, Different, Harmony

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• A certain color tones you up. It's the concentration of timbres.

  Henri Matisse

  Color, Tone, Certain

  Henri Matisse (1977). “Henri Matisse Paper Cut-outs: National Gallery of Art Color Slide Program”

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Shh. Listen to the sounds that surround you. Notice the pitches, the volume, the timbre, the many lines of counterpoint. As light taught Monet to paint, the earth may be teaching you music.

  Pete Seeger

  Teaching, Light, Sound

  "How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger". Book by David King Dunaway, 1981.

  37 Copy quote

  Show source

• What separates great jazz musicians from average ones is Taste. Those who have taste consistently choose notes, tempos, timbres and voicings that seduce and satisfy attentive listeners.

  Marc Myers

  Average, Taste, Musician

  9 Copy quote

• The truly miserable have a timbre in their voices strong enough to erase smiles from the faces and souls of the contented.

  St. Jerome

  Strong, Sadness, Voice

  8 Copy quote

• Singing is not about timbres or category labels, singing is about fascinating acoustical properties like the colors of the human voice which derive from thought and emotion.

  Thomas Hampson

  Color, Voice, Singing

  7 Copy quote

• Or the other process that is important is that I compress longer sections of composed music, either found or made by myself, to such an extent that the rhythm becomes a timbre, and formal subdivisions become rhythm.

  Karlheinz Stockhausen

  Important, Formal, Made

  8 Copy quote

• The emotional, physical and aesthetic value of a sound is linked not only to the causal explanation we attribute to it but also to its own qualities of timbre and texture, to its own personal vibration. So just as directors and cinematographers (even those who will never make abstract films) have everything to gain by refining their knowledge of visual materials and textures, we can similarly benefit from disciplined attention to the inherent qualities of sounds.

  Michel Chion

  Emotional, Quality, Gains

  21 Copy quote

• There is a timbre of voice that comes from not being heard and knowing / you are not being heard / noticed only by others / not heard for the same reason.

  Audre Lorde

  Voice, Knowing, Reason

  Audre Lorde (2000). “The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde”, p.369, W. W. Norton & Company

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Voice, Giving

  6 Copy quote

• The force of what was called Panther rhetoric or word mongering resided not in elegant discourse but in strength of affirmation (or denial), in anger of tone and timbre. When the anger led to action there was no turgidity or over-emphasis. Anyone who has witnessed political rows among the Whites will have to admit that the Whites aren't overburdened with poetic imagination.

  Jean Genet

  Imagination, Political, Denial

  Jean Genet (2003). “Prisoner of Love”, New York Review of Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Words when spoken out loud for the sake of performance are music. They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume. These are the properties of music and music has the ability to find us and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can't.

  Josiah Bartlett

  Moving, Sake, Way

  19 Copy quote

• I sometimes wish taste wasn't ever an issue, and the sounds of instruments or synths could be judged solely on their colour and timbre. Judged by what it did to your ears, rather than what its historical use reminds you of.

  Jonny Greenwood

  Issues, Historical, Wish

  "Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and Shye Ben Tzur Talk Junun Project". Interview with Jazz Monroe, pitchfork.com. December 3, 2015.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Grand telegraphic discovery today … Transmitted vocal sounds for the first time ... With some further modification I hope we may be enabled to distinguish … the “timbre” of the sound. Should this be so, conversation viva voce by telegraph will be a fait accompli.

  Alexander Graham Bell

  Discovery, Today, Firsts

  11 Copy quote

• I think people are complacent about sound, because we're so limited by the textures and timbres we hear in music, but in our everyday life we hear the most incredible things.

  Herbert

  Thinking, People, Everyday

  Source: pitchfork.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lennon's was one of the first voices I emulated when I began to sing. When we held tryouts in my pal's dad's living room for the singer in our band, I sang a Beatles song that Lennon sang. There is something about the timbre of his voice, something that it conveys, that still gets to me. The quality and the poetry of his lyrics. The wry sense of humor. And the boyishness, in the beginning. There are a great many things that touch me about him... Lennon was, to put it in his own words, a 'working-class hero.'

  Don Henley

  Song, Dad, Hero

  14 Copy quote

• I suppose I was affected by raw sounds and timbres more than a lot of other composers. Had I been involved with orchestral composing, I think the aspect that would have most endeared me to that field would have been the orchestration.

  Wendy Carlos

  Thinking, Fields, Sound

  4 Copy quote

• Within the context of Western music, jazz has always contained certain radical or revolutionary aspects. These are: improvisation, collective composition and individuality or the personal sound (based on amazing variations in sonority, timbre and pitch).

  Michael Snow

  Individuality, Sound, Variation

  Michael Snow, Louise Dompierre (2010). “The Collected Writings of Michael Snow”, p.189, Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I love to work with Julia [Holter] because our voices have a similar timbre, and she's very unique. She finds very avant-garde harmonies that I adore.

  Linda Perhacs

  Unique, Voice, Avant Garde

  Interview with Ian Cohen, pitchfork.com. February 20, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-children's will be. But we learn to live with that love.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Hurt, Children, Loss

  "Everything Is Illuminated". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, April 16, 2002.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for a while. Plain sailing is pleasant, but you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way. We articulate the truth of a situation by carrying the whole experience in the voice and allowing the process to blossom of its own accord. Out of the cross-grain of experience appears a voice that not only sums up the process we have gone through, but allows the soul to recognize in its timbre, the color, texture, and complicated entanglements of being alive.

  David Whyte

  Adversity, Color, Voice

  David Whyte (2007). “The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America”, p.93, Crown Business

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are some superficial things that connect me to the stream. There's instrumentation, there's timbre, use of electronics, the way that samples are used, the way the electric guitar is used. I'm thinking of things that are particular to this era. But I don't always feel particularly close to the music of my peers. I often feel that I have more in common with writers and visual artists. I try to connect to people in an emotional kind of way.

  Missy Mazzoli

  Artist, Emotional, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Music has always been important to me. Rhythm, in particular, features in most of the things I do. I stumbled recently upon an old notebook in which I'd written, 'Touch, timing and timbre... keys to the heart.' That just about says it all.

  James Nares

  Notebook, Heart, Keys

  9 Copy quote

• The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.

  Alain de Botton

  Order, Ideas, Dimensions

  4 Copy quote