Timbre Archive

This might be of interest to members of this list, especially those
with samplers and Csound or other programs which generate timbres by
additive synthesis. Some of these could be tweaked to improve the
consonance of non-harmonic tunings (by using Bill Sethares's
algorithms).

--John


Date: Fri, 01 Mar 1996 12:01:53 -0600 (CST)
From: "Gregory J. Sandell"
Subject: SHARC Timbre Database
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Announcing the
SHARC TIMBRE DATABASE
and invitation to join a Timbre Discussion email list

SHARC is a public domain database of musical timbre information by
Gregory Sandell. It stands for "Sandell Harmonic Archive." People for
whom this dataset may be useful are Acousticians, Psychoacousticians,
researchers in Music Percepion and Cognition, researchers in Digital
Signal Processing, Music Theorists, and Musicologists.

Over 1300 different notes have been analysed. Complete chromatic runs
from the standard playing range of essentially all the non-percussive
instruments of the modern orchestra have been included; for example,
individual analyses of 32 different oboe notes (the chromatic scale
from the pitches a#3 to f6) are available.

A WWW front end for SHARC is available at:

http://www.parmly.luc.edu/sharc/

This page contains links to explanations of what SHARC is, how the
database can be downloaded, as well as a number of graphic plots of
various aspects of the data. Of special note is the ability to plot the
spectra for individual notes in various ways, and to hear syntheses of
the spectra over the web (if your computer is suitably set up for
audio).

I have a Listserver, or distributed email list, set up to keep people
informed about changes I make to SHARC. I am now also inviting all
timbre researchers to join to the list and use it as a forum for
general discussions of issues of musical timbre. If postings
become suitably frequent, and the dialogues lively, I am open to the
idea of starting an independent listserv devoted to the topic. But for
now, it will serve the dual purpose of being devoted to both SHARC and
timbre discussion in general. The list currently has 50 members. Please
join the list and tell us about your research interests in musical
timbre!

You can actually join SHARCLIST through a web page! (Many times less
painless than the usual way of joining by sending obscure commands
through email!) Simple connect to
http://www.parmly.luc.edu/lwgate/SHARCLIST/SHARCLIST.html
..and follow the instructions. (Note: your web browser has to support
"Forms".)

Have fun!
- Greg Sandell

(* SHARC is unrelated to the DSP chip of the same name. )
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