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Music vocabulary · Instruments and Voice

Timbre

Meaning in music, with examples

/ˈtæmbər/nounCommon term

In music, timbre means: The quality or colour of a sound that lets you tell two instruments or voices apart, even when they play the same note at the same volume.

In Turkish: tını, ses rengi

How it is used

Used in theory, orchestration and audio. Musicians describe timbre as bright, dark, warm, thin, nasal or rich. 'Tone' and 'tone colour' are common everyday alternatives: 'She has a beautiful tone'.

Example sentences

  1. The oboe and the clarinet have very different timbres, even on the same note.

  2. Changing the microphone completely changed the timbre of her voice on the recording.

Common collocations

  • warm timbre
  • bright timbre
  • vocal timbre
  • tone colour
  • change the timbre
  • instrumentAn object made or used to produce musical sounds, such as a piano, violin, guitar, drum or ney.
  • pitchHow high or low a sound is. Pitch depends on the frequency of the sound wave: the faster the vibration, the higher the pitch.
  • vocalsThe singing parts of a piece of music, especially in pop, rock and jazz. The main singer sings the lead vocals, and others sing the backing vocals.
  • EQShort for equalisation or equaliser: adjusting the balance of low, mid and high frequencies in a sound, or the tool that does this.
  • microphoneA device that turns sound into an electrical signal so that it can be amplified or recorded. Dynamic and condenser microphones are the most common types.

More terms: Instruments and Voice

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