VERBAL ATTRIBUTES OF SIMULTANEOUS WIND INSTRUMENT TIMBRES .1. VONBISMARCK ADJECTIVES

A study on the verbal attributes of timbre was conducted in an effort to interpret the dimensional configuration of the similarity spaces of simultaneously sounding wind instrument timbres. In the first experim ent, subjects rated 10 wind instrument dyads on eight factorially pure semantic differentials from von Bismarck's (1974a) experiments. Resul ts showed that the semantic differentials failed to differentiate amon g the 10 timbres. The semantic differential methodology was changed to verbal attribute magnitude estimation (VAME), in which a timbre is as signed an amount of a given attribute. This procedure resulted in bett er differentiation among the 10 timbres, the first factor including at tributes such as heavy, hard, and loud, the second factor involving sh arp and complex, a contrast with von Bismarck's results. Results of th e VAME analysis separated alto saxophone dyads from all others, but ma pped only moderately well onto the perceptual similarity spaces. It wa s suggested that many of the von Bismarck adjectives lacked ecological validity.