Instrumental Timbre
and Texture
in Popular Song

Megan Lavengood
mlavengo@gmu.edu

TOPS
Montreal, QC
June 5, 2025

Follow along

Slides

Bibliography

Workshop outline

Timbre vocabulary for a) pitched instruments and b) percussion
Process
Texture analysis
Refining definitions: texture analysis in EDM

1a. Timbre analysis:
pitched instruments

Explained in 2020 MTO article
Spectrograms are used to aid in describing timbre
- Visual analysis suffices for many features
- MIR (measuring spectral centroid) more helpful for brightness in particular
Timbre vocabulary set up in a system of binary oppositions

Oppositional vocabulary

Lavengood (2020), [1.9–1.19]

Spectral - sustain

bright/dark
pure/noisy
full/hollow
rich/sparse
beatless/beating
harmonic/inharmonic

Spectral - attack

percussive/legato
bright/dark

Pitch

low/high
steady/wavering

Markedness

Hatten (1994)

“the valuation given to difference” (Hatten 1994, 34)
One oppositional term carries more meaning than the other: more culturally specific
Inherently culturally situated
- Lavengood (2020) compares to a clean electric guitar sound
- Other contexts need to have a more appropriate context

Instrument-specific vocabulary

Lavengood (2020) is meant to be generally applicable, but it was built with the DX7 in mind as a case study; probably best for pitched instruments.
Vocal timbre: probably better to use Heidemann (2016) embodied terms
Percussion timbre: Lavengood and Barranco (forthcoming) based on orchestral music, but illustrates how different vocabulary is useful for percussion.

1b. Timbre analysis: percussion

Lavengood and Barranco (forthcoming)

Tambourines

dark/brilliant
wet/dry
pure/noisy
clicky/washy

Triangles

simple/complex
dark/bright
beatless/beating

Crash cymbals

dark/brilliant (attack)
dark/brilliant (decay)
thin/full

Tambourines

Brilliant/dark: High overtones that continue beyond the initial attack. Threshold: 11,500 Hz.
Dry/wet: Length of decay. Threshold: 0.7 seconds.
Pure/noisy: Clarity of individual jingles. Pure: overtones of decay are visually thin and separated; noisy: thicker bands that are closer together.
Clicky/washy: When shaken, measured with average spectral centroid measurements. Threshold: 9000 Hz.

Brilliant/dark: Percussionists associate a brilliant attack with one that has high overtones on striking the tambourine. To evaluate this, we measure the frequencies of these resonant overtones through spectrogram analysis, focusing on the frequencies that extend beyond the band of noise produced by the initial attack. For this analysis, we have chosen 11,500 Hz as our threshold: a tambourine with jingles resonating over 11,500 Hz is brilliant, while a tambourine with resonating jingles only below that value is dark.
Dry/wet: A wet sound has a decay that lasts for a substantial period of time, while a dry sound has a shorter decay. We measure this using the struck tambourine samples, and our threshold is 0.7 seconds—anything above is wet, and anything below is dry.
Pure/noisy: This opposition refers to the aural clarity of individual jingles in the sound when the tambourine is struck. On the spectrogram, a pure decay has overtones that are visually thin and separated from the other bands on the spectrogram. A noisy sound has thicker bands that are closer together, obscuring the pitches of the jingles.
Clicky/washy: This is the only opposition that refers to the tambourine when shaken instead of struck; it correlates to average spectral centroid measurements, and thus to the brightness of the shake. Samples with a centroid of over 9000 Hz are considered washy, while those below 9000 are clicky. In practice a washy tambourine would be particularly good for a smooth, shimmery tambourine shake-roll, while a clicky tambourine shake would have more subtle micro-attacks that render better rhythmic clarity.

Tambourines struck

brilliant/dark • dry/wet • pure/noisy

Tambourines shaken

clicky/washy

Triangles

Simple/complex: Number of overtones above -110 dBV at one second past the initial attack. Threshold: 18 overtones.
Bright/dark: Presence of high-pitched overtones as the instrument decays. Looking for overtones **below** the 1,300 Hz threshold (high overtones are always present).
Beatless/beating: Presence of acoustic beats.

Simple/complex

Percussionists tend to speak of triangles in terms of their simple or complex overtones. To evaluate this, we count the number of overtones above -110 dBV for each triangle sample, as shown in a spectrum plot of the sample at one second past the initial attack. For this study, we call triangles with less than eighteen such overtones simple, while those with eighteen or more are complex.

Bright/dark

Similar to brilliant/dark when discussing tambourines, bright/dark references the presence of high-pitched overtones as the instrument decays. With tambourines, we look for the presence of overtones above the specified threshold, but with triangles, we are looking for overtones below the threshold—in this case, 1,300 Hz. In other words, all triangles have high and low overtones, but dark triangles have particularly noticeable low-frequency overtones. If a relatively strong partial is present at 1,300 Hz or below, we consider the instrument dark, due to the foregrounded presence of these lower overtones. If an instrument does not have activity at or below 1,300 Hz, we classify it as bright.

Beatless/beating

These oppositions refer to acoustic beats created through interference between slightly different frequencies (not to be confused with triangle beaters), which may or may not be audible in the triangle’s decay. Visually, a beatless decay has thin, consistent lines on the spectrogram, while a beating decay has dotted lines.

Triangles

simple/complex • bright/dark • beatless/beating

Crash cymbals

Brilliant/dark (attack): Frequency of the highest-amplitude peak in the spectrum in the cymbal’s attack. Threshold: 400 Hz.
Brilliant/dark (decay): Spectral centroid of the sound signal at four seconds after the initial attack. Threshold: 2000 Hz.
Thin/full: The evenness of the amplitude of the decay across a broad frequency range.

Brilliant/dark (attack): This opposition accounts for the frequency of the highest-amplitude peak in the spectrum in the cymbal’s attack. If a cymbal has a dark attack, the highest amplitude peak occurs at a lower frequency. Therefore, a brilliant classification would indicate that the highest amplitudes occur at a higher frequency. This measurement reflects the way that specific frequencies might be detected by the listener in the initial attack. For this study, we determined 400 Hz to be the dividing line.
Brilliant/dark (decay): This opposition is based on the spectral centroid of the sound signal, measured at four seconds after the initial attack, which gives ample time for the wash of noise in the initial contact sound to dissipate; only the strongest overtones will continue to ring at this point. For this study, 2000 Hz was a useful dividing line between brilliant/dark.
Thin/full: This opposition summarizes the amplitude of the decay across a broad frequency range. A cymbal crash is full if the amplitude of the decay is relatively even across the entire frequency range. If the crash has an unusually narrow range, or if the amplitude is particularly uneven in certain ranges of the spectrogram, then the timbre is thin.

Triangles

brilliant/dark (attack, decay) • thin/full

2. Process

Data collection

Analyst determines which timbres to focus on
Obtain isolated audio for that timbre (recreate, rebalance in iZotope, look for stems online, pull from a stripped-down texture) and generate spectrograms for that audio … or just listen really closely
Go through each opposition and assign a term
(+, −, ∅, ±)

Interpretation

Assigning +/− is a first step in analysis, like identfiying Roman numerals. It is not in itself very meaningful.
The analyst must go on to do something with that data: compare it to other data, etc.

Research questions I like

How does the way people talk about the timbre of x compare to what I see/hear?
How does an original timbre compare to a substituted timbre?
How can timbre be used as a proxy for instrumentation?
How does timbre indicate genre/style/context?
What are the relationships between timbre and texture?

2. Texture: Functional Layers

Expanding on work by Allan Moore (2012)
Traditional terms—homophony, polyphony, heterophony, monophony—are not very useful for analyzing pop (or classical…? …or anything?)

Explicit beat layer
Functional bass layer
Harmonic filler layer
Melodic layer
Novelty layer

Novelty layer

(see also Biamonte/Reymore workshop)

Often melodic in content, but not necessarily
Intermittent—cuts in and out of the texture, often in call-and-response with melodic layers
Least common of all functional layer types
Typically uses marked timbres and instruments

Explicit beat layer

“articulate[s] an explicit pattern of beats”
uses unpitched percussion
part of the song’s groove

Functional bass layer

“connect[s] root position harmonies in one or more ways”
also part of the groove

Moore (2012), 20

Melodic layer

primary and secondary melodic lines; “the tune”
“articulate[s] the songs lyrics”
most memorable and identifiable

Harmonic filler layer

“fill[s] the ‘registral space’ between these bass and treble layers”
contributes greatly to a listener’s sense of genre in a song

Moore (2012), 20

Moore’s textural layers are certainly an improvement on traditional texture terms, but
Moore’s definitions rely on intuition and unspoken rules
Based in mainstream pop and rock music

How do other genres complicate these definitions?

How can these complications reveal more about what the definitons should be?

3. Breakout activity

download mp3 • open shared doc

Identify instruments (by name, by timbre, onomotopoeia)
Categorize instruments as belonging to functional layers (melody, harmony, bass, beat, novelty)
Transcribe rhythmic motives

slides again

Discussion: Jlin

How do we need to modify functional layer definitions to accommodate music like this?

Explicit Beat Layer

“articulate[s] an explicit pattern of beats”
uses unpitched percussion
part of the song’s groove

Discussion: Jlin

How do we need to modify functional layer definitions to accommodate music like this?

Functional bass layer

“connect[s] root position harmonies in one or more ways”
also part of the groove

Discussion: Jlin

How do we need to modify functional layer definitions to accommodate music like this?

Melodic layer

primary and secondary melodic lines; “the tune”
“articulate[s] the songs lyrics”
most memorable and identifiable

Discussion: Jlin

How do we need to modify functional layer definitions to accommodate music like this?

Harmonic filler layer

“fill[s] the ‘registral space’ between these bass and treble layers”
contributes greatly to a listener’s sense of genre in a song

Discussion: Jlin

What does our analysis of “Hatshepsut” tell us about pop music textures more generally?

Reflection

Texture has a lot to do with domains besides pitch, especially rhythm and timbre.
Looking at EDM forces us to concentrate more on rhythm and timbre, since these domains are more salient than pitch.
Timbre studies replicates our bias toward pitched sounds; we should talk more about percussion.

Slides

Bibliography

Instrumental Timbreand Texturein Popular Song

Workshop outline

1a. Timbre analysis: pitched instruments

Oppositional vocabulary

Spectral - sustain

Spectral - attack

Pitch

Markedness

Instrument-specific vocabulary

1b. Timbre analysis: percussion

Tambourines

Triangles

Crash cymbals

Tambourines

Triangles

Crash cymbals

2. Process

Data collection

Interpretation

Research questions I like

2. Texture: Functional Layers

Novelty layer

Explicit beat layer

Functional bass layer

Melodic layer

Harmonic filler layer

3. Breakout activity

Discussion: Jlin

Explicit Beat Layer

Discussion: Jlin

Functional bass layer

Discussion: Jlin

Melodic layer

Discussion: Jlin

Harmonic filler layer

Discussion: Jlin

Reflection

Instrumental Timbre
and Texture
in Popular Song

1a. Timbre analysis:
pitched instruments