Unveiling the Mystery of Timbre

Timbre has always been thrown around in my music lessons since I was a kid. It seemed to be like a catch-all for anything that couldn’t be described using pitch, rhythm, etc. It somehow meant tone, embouchure, dynamics, resonance, and colour all at once. You just had to guess which one based on context. Everyone loved to use it to elevate their music terminology, but nobody could actually say what it meant. And for a while, I accepted it as another one of life’s great mysteries…