In search of perceptual and acoustical correlates of polyphonic timbre

2009

Polyphonic timbre refers to the overall timbre mixture of a music signal, or in simple words, the 'global sound' of any piece of music. It has been proven to be an important element for computational categorization according to genre, style, mood, and emotions, but its perceptual constituents have been less investigated. The aim of the study is to determine the most salient features of polyphonic timbre perception by investigating the descriptive auditory qualities of music and mapping acoustic features to these descriptors. Descriptors of monophonic timbre taken from previous literature were used as a starting point. Based on three pilot studies, eight scales were chosen for the actual exp…