Vocabulary Clarification: Tone, Timbre, Note, Pitch, and Texture

Here’s another set of words that are often misunderstood and used interchangeably, sometimes rightfully so. These terms all have something to do with frequency, which is part of what makes them so easy to mix up.

Sound is the vibration caused by the movement of an object, as perceived via the information provided to the brain by the ear. The ear doesn’t really hear anything itself; rather, it simply measures the vibration of the air (or whatever puts pressure on the eardrum, though I’ve never seen an underwater bedroom studio) and transmits those measurements to the brain, which interprets them as what we call “sound.”

Based on its movement and the material with which an object is made, the vibrations it creates will vary in speed. This speed, which we call “frequency,” is measured in hertz (Hz), or wave cycles per second. The frequency spectrum, when it comes to music production, is the range of vibration speed that can be measured by the human ear and spans from about 20 Hz to about 20,000 Hz, or 20 kHz.

All sounds, including those inaudible to humans, are comprised of at least one frequency. Most are comprised of many. Sometimes certain frequencies in the same sound are more noticeable than others.

Pitch is the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. Frequencies above the pitch of a sound are referred to as “overtones.”

A note is a named pitch. I will not be discussing much music theory in this series, but if you’re a budding bedroom producer, you’re probably already familiar with the chromatic scale used in most Western music, which contains 12 total notes, referred to by the letters A through G, and which uses “sharps” and “flats” to denote half-steps up or down from the 7 main notes.

Timbre refers to the quality of a sound, based on its pitch and its overtones. We typically use terms like “warm,” “fat,” “round,” or “muddy” to describe timbres that live towards the low end of the frequency spectrum. “Bright,” “airy,” “harsh,” and “shrill,” typically describe high-end timbres.

Tone is a word that can be used interchangeably with both “note” and “timbre,” but I prefer to use it to describe the quality of a sound, due to its popularity among musicians when describing their instruments or voices. When I talk about “tone-based” plug-ins, for instance, I’m talking about plug-ins that affect the timbre of a waveform, not the pitch or note (although they may do that too).

Texture is used to describe the quality of layered sounds, or the way that different timbres interact with each other.

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This is it! Next week I'll begin discussing actual plug-ins, what they do, and how to use them properly in your mix. Stay tuned!