1. What Is Music? From Pitch to Timbre

1. What Is Music? From Pitch to Timbre
Note:costituenti della musical intervallominore/maggiorr e psicologia innataquando un bimbo riconosce gli errori musicali

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The Catholic Church banned music that contained polyphony
Note:MINACCIATA L UNITÀ DIVINA... ES DI MUSICA COME CULTURA

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augmented fourth,
Note:TRITONO INTERVALLO DEL DIAVOLO... BANDITO

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tritone

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when Tony sings the name “Maria”).
Note:DOVE LO TROVI

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Diabolus in musica.

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pitch
Note:SCALPORE CH MIEVALE

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timbre
Note:SPAVENTA I CANTAUTORI

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African rhythms
Note:IMPAURISCE I GENITORI

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ways of describing different mechanical aspects
Note:MA COSA SONO QUESTI PARAMETRI? SOLO MECCANICA

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they have a deeper, neurological basis?
Note:O BIOLOGIA?

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The music of avant-garde
Note:SCANDALO!

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found objects in the world
Note:AVANGUARDIA OLTRE IL SUONO

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What do the music of Bach, Depeche Mode, and John Cage fundamentally have in common?
Note:QUANDO PARLIAMO DI MUSICA?

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“Music is organized sound.”
Note:VARÈSE

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loudness, pitch, contour, duration (or rhythm), tempo, timbre, spatial location, and reverberation.
Note:ELEMENTI

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Pitch
Note:Ttttt

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frequency
Note:COSTRUTTO PSICOLOGICO ABBINATO A...

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Rhythm
Note:Tttttttt

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durations of a series

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Tempo
Note:Ttttttttttttt

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speed or pace of the piece.

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Contour
Note:Tttttttttt

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shape of a melody,

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Timbre
Note:Tttttttt

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distinguishes one instrument from another

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color

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produced in part by overtones

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Loudness
Note:Ttttttttt

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how much energy
Note:COSTRUTTO PSIC LEGATO A

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how much air it displaces—

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Reverberation
Note:Ttttttt

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perception of how distant the source is from us

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these attributes are separable.
Note:PARAMETRI VARIABILI SINGOLARMENTE

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the way these fundamental attributes combine,
Note:A FARE UN GENERE

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Meter
Note:Tttttttttt COMBINAZIONI

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information from rhythm and loudness
Note:ELEMENTI COMBINATI

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Key
Note:Ttttttttt

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hierarchy of importance that exists between tones

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Melody
Note:Tttttttt

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the main theme of a musical piece,

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Harmony
Note:Ttttttt

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relationships between the pitches of different tones,

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music plays on not just what notes are sounded, but which ones are not.
Note:MILES DAVIS

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We’re usually interested in the music, not the technical devices that were used.

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QUEL CHE CONTA

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the precise temperature at which the chef introduced the lemon
Note:COSE CHE NN CI INTERESSANO QUANDO MANGIAMO

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the aperture of the lens
Note:COSE CHE NN CO INTERESSANO GUARDANDO UN FILM

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an inability to agree on a definition
Note:TERMINI AMBIGUI... TIMBRO

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defining timbre by what it is not.
Note:AL CONTRARIO

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everything about a sound that is not loudness or pitch.
Note:ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

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What is pitch and where does it come from?
Note:ALTRO ESEMPIO

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tell if a singer is offkey;
Note:ABILITÀ INNATE

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discriminate a question from an accusation (in English, a rising pitch
Note:NN SOLO IN MUSICA

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cycles per second, is often called Hertz
Note:FREQUENZA

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wiggling in and out of our eardrum;
Note:INFO SUI SUONI

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we can hear music under water or in other fluids
Note:VIBRAZIONI TRASPORTATE GRAZIE A UN MEZZO

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in the vacuum of space, with no molecules to vibrate, there is no sound.
Note:I MOTORI DI RAZZI E ASTRONAVI

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By convention, when we press keys nearer to the left of the keyboard, we say that they are “low”
Note:SOLO UNA CONVEMZIONE

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those sounds that vibrate slowly,

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Greeks talked about sounds in the opposite way
Note:RELATIVISMO CULTURALE

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The distance that the string covers with each oscillation
Note:INTENSITÀ

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we should simply say that pitch is the same as frequency;
Note:RISCHIO

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The word pitch refers to the mental representation
Note:MENTE

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pitch is a purely psychological phenomenon

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entirely in our heads,

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Sound waves—
Note:NN HANNO UN TONO

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We perceive color in a similar way,
Note:ANALOGIA

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light is colorless,

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color has to occur inside our brains.

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heat is not made up of tiny hot things.
Note:ALTRA ANALOGIA

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A bowl of pudding only has taste when I put it in my mouth—
Note:ANALOGIA

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If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Note:IDEALISMO RADICALE...BEEKELEY

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Simply, no—sound is a mental image

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the colors that we actually see are only a small portion of the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
Note:COLORI NN VISTI

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from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz.

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a few seconds of sound at 15 KHz, inaudible to most adults over 40!
Note:A DAY IN A LIFE

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The sound that a singer hits when she causes a glass to break might be 1000 Hz.
Note:ELLA

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physical objects, has a natural and inherent vibration frequency.
Note:VIBRAZ NTERNA

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A standard piano has eighty-eight keys.

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27.5 Hz.
Note:IL TASTO PIÙ BASSO

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give the illusion of motion.
Note:COINCIDENZA CON LA FREQ DEI FOTOGRAMMI

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(twenty-four frames per second)

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We perceive smooth, continuous motion

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When molecules vibrate at around this speed we hear something that sounds like a continuous tone.
Note:COINCIDENZA... CONTINUITÀ

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cards in the spokes of your bicycle
Note:BRUM BRUM

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Above 20,000 Hz most humans don’t hear

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high note can convey excitement, a single low note sadness.
Note:EMOZIONE

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the innate capacity to learn the linguistic and musical distinctions of whatever culture we are born into,
Note:CULTURA E NATURA

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infinite number of pitches:
Note:CONTINUM

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cultures don’t use distances much smaller than a semitone
Note:INTERVALLI

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The ability to detect differences in pitch is based on physiology, and varies from one animal to another.
Note:FISIOLOGIA

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The membrane acts like a motion-detector lamp you might have in your garden;
Note:MOVIMENTI

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electrical signal on up to the auditory cortex.
Note:INVIO

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be able to determine what pitches were being played to a person just by looking at the brain activity.
Note:LEGGERE LA MUSICA NEL CERVELLO

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In Western music—music of the European tradition—these pitches are the only “legal”
Note:LEGALITÀ

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Sounds in between are considered mistakes (“out of tune”)

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doubling and halving of frequencies.
Note:REGISTRI

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culture we know of has the octave as the basis
Note:OTTAVA NATURALE

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circularity in pitch perception,

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An interval is the distance between two tones. The octave in Western music is subdivided into twelve
Note:ANVCORA INTER

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perfect fourth and perfect fifth
Note:PARTICOLARMENTE PIACEVOLI

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we have not yet been able to find the neurological basis for the encoding of pitch relations;
Note:BASI NEURO?

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middle of the piano keyboard has been fixed to have a frequency of 440 Hz.
Note:VARIABILE

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Led Zeppelin often tuned their instruments away from the modern A440

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Many purists insist on hearing baroque music on period instruments,
Note:FREQUENZA NATURALE

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We can fix pitches anywhere we want because what defines music is a set of pitch relations.
Note:CONVENZIONE

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frequencies

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distance
Note:QUEL CHE CONTA

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The idea of proportional change

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The twelve notes in our musical system are called the chromatic scale.
Note:SCALA

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we use a subset of seven

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children, as well as adults, are better able to learn and memorize melodies that are drawn from scales that contain unequal distances
Note:TONALITÁ CONVENZIONALI MA CON ELEMENTI NATURALI

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the minor scale.

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without what psychologists call declarative knowledge—the ability to talk about it;
Note:CONOSCERE SENZA POTERNE PARLARE

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For reasons that are largely cultural, we tend to associate major scales with happy or triumphant emotions, and minor scales with sad or defeated emotions.
Note:ENTUSIASMO E TRISTEZZA

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these are not culturally universal

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Blues music generally uses a five note (pentatonic) scale
Note:BLUES

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Chinese music uses a different pentatonic

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our brains try to make an association
Note:OGNI VOLTA CHE ASCOLTIAMO

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No one who has seen Hitchcock’s Psycho can hear Bernard Hermann’s screeching violins without thinking of the shower scene;

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DOCCIA

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ordinary listeners have incorporated the principles of this hierarchy in their brains, through passive exposure to music and cultural norms.
Note:ESPOSIZ CULTURALE

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A chord

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The most basic rock and country music songs use only major chords: “Johnny B. Goode,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Honky Tonk Women,”

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Minor chords

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“Light My Fire”

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You know that it would be untrue

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the age of five, most children have internalized rules about what chord progressions are legal,
Note:5 ANNI

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just as easily as we can detect when an English sentence is malformed,
Note:SINTASSI

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“The pizza was too hot to sleep.”

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several modes of vibration.
Note:STRUMENTI

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1) “Long Tall Sally,” Little Richard 2) “Roll Over Beethoven,” the Beatles 3) “All Along the Watchtower,” Jimi Hendrix 4) “Wonderful Tonight,” Eric Clapton 5) “Little Red Corvette,” Prince 6) “Anarchy in the U.K.,” the Sex Pistols
Note:6 CANZONI X CAPIRE IL ROCK

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Timbre was what defined rock for Pierce.
Note:TIMBRO

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pitches that we use in music—the scales—have remained essentially unchanged since the time of the Greeks,
Note:I TONI INVARIARI

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a refinement—of the equal tempered scale during the time of Bach.
Note:BACH

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timbre has become increasingly important.
Note:LA RIVOLUZIONE

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to restate a melody using different instruments—
Note:UNA PRATICA DEL PASSATO

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Pierre Schaeffer
Note:IL TIMBRO

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demonstrated an important attribute of timbre

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“cut bell” experiments.

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using a razor blade, he cut the beginnings
Note:TAGLIATI GLI ATTACCHI

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the impact itself has a rather noisy quality that is not especially musical—
Note:L ATTACCO DEL SUONO È SEMPRE PARTICOLATE

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Following the attack is a more stable phase
Note:POI CI SI STABILIZZA

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nearly impossible for most people to identify the instrument that was playing.
Note:EFFETTO DEL TAGLIO DELL ATTACCO

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Michelle Castellengo

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you can create entirely new instruments
Note:GIUNTURE TRA SUONI SENZA ATTACCO

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flux—
Note:COME CAMBIA UN SUONO CHE RISUONA

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cymbal or gong has a lot of flux—

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timbre of an instrument sounds different when playing high and low notes.
Note:ALTRA VARIAZIONE

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straining, reedy voice
Note:POLICE IN ROXANNE

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high part of Sting’s register pleads with us urgently

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comical timbre of the bassoon in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker
Note:TIMBRO COME ELEMENTO COMPOSITIVO

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sensuousness of Stan Getz’s saxophone

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Substitute a piano for the electric guitars in the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”
Note:AHAH

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Ravel used timbre as a compositional device in Bolero,

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When we think of Jimi Hendrix, it is the timbre of his electric guitars

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Scriabin and Ravel talk about their works as sound paintings,

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While I believe timbre is now at the center of our appreciation of music, rhythm has held supreme power over listeners for much longer.