[neltnerb]

My electronic music professor literally defined exactly what this article is trying to describe as "timbre" meaning the overtone sequence (oddly "overtone" and "timbre" are not present in the article?) plus off-harmonic frequencies that are present for any real instrument.

This is pretty well studied, but kudos to the author for trying to explain it again, it's an odd topic. But I suggest looking up "timbre" at least and perhaps updating the article with the terms used by actual musicians to mean exactly this.

Timbre - "the quality of tone distinctive of a particular singing voice or musical instrument"

[PeterWhittaker]

Yes, this! Failing to mention timbre in an article on why the same note sounds differently on two instruments is missing the point, metaphorically being so focused on a detailed simulation of treestuff that one fails forestry.

(Yeah, OK, that was terribly said, sorry 'bout that.)

For timbre, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbre e.g.

FFTs, etc., give us visualization tools, but they miss the point. Different materials resonate differently across the auditory spectrum, emphasizing or diminishing various harmonics, resulting in complex sound profiles that make each instrument distinctive.

Or, to put it most simply: Different materials react to sound differently, and each instrument's materials and construction are what give it its distinctive timbre.

On an unrelated note, Daniel Levitin, former music producer and director of the Grammys, and current neuroscientist at McGill, was once asked what makes each musical era distinctive: timbre was, in his opinion, the single most important factor (source: one of his books, probably still in a moving box in my basement, otherwise I'd look it up).

[computator]

> Daniel Levitin: what makes each musical era distinctive: timbre was, in his opinion, the single most important factor

That's a fascinating idea; I googled and found what might be the story you're looking for:

[quote]

In the best seller “This is your brain on music” by Daniel Levitin, he talks about John R. Pierce (inventor of the travelling wave vacuum tube and the first telecommunications satellite) who, interested to discover rock music, asked him to summarize the genre in a concise list of six songs. Levitin ended up with a list of songs from Little Richards, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Prince and the Sex Pistols.

Interestingly, while listening, Pierce was not really interested by the songs themselves, their melodies, their harmonic structures or their rhythm characteristics, but he said he found the “timbres” to be remarkable and described them as being new, unfamiliar, and exciting.

Levitin concludes his story by saying: “The way in which instruments were combined to create a unified whole - bass, drums, electric and acoustic guitars, and voice – that was something he (Pierce) had never heard before. Timbre was what defined rock for Pierce. And it was a revelation for both of us.”

Quoted from "An Overview of the Concept of Timbre and its Use in Contemporary Music and Record Production" by Mathieu Bedwani

[PeterWhittaker]

That's the one!

[cannam]

> asked what makes each musical era distinctive: timbre

Anyone interested in this might enjoy the paper about the "Scanning the Dial" experiment. (It's about contemporary music rather than historical eras, but the idea is related)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248906443_Scanning_...

The punchline is that listeners can typically assign a genre to a recording after hearing a single quarter-of-a-second clip, but the paper is worth reading for its notes on genre and timbre in general.