A little about Woodwind Timbre and Oboe Timbre specifically

I've always been fascinated by timbre: the quality of a sound, or tone, that distinguishes it from other sounds of the same pitch and volume.

I have (or had) perfect pitch, the ability to identify or reproduce a musical note without a reference point.

I've written quite a bit about this. Here, what I want to say (or repeat) is that I came to this by a fascination with the timbre of a particular note, the lowest note on a cheap Gemieinhardt. The lowest note on woodwind instruments is the most funky, and while the timbre variation on the flute is not as pronounced as on other instruments like the oboe (which this will largely be about), still there is some variation.

Woodwind instruments as a class of instruments are unusual in this respect: the variation in their timbre across individual notes, from one instrument to another, and between different instruments of the family are great. Much more than say string instruments, a piano, or electronically synthesized instruments, even electronically synthesizing woodwind instruments.

There is a reason for this, but I won't go into the technical reasons here.

But to try to get this idea of inhomogeneity between different woodwind instruments, consider opening from a woodwind quintet by Jacques Ibert, Trois Piece Breves:

Notice how the instruments don't blend together. In this clip, to me it feels like there are at least 3 separate color palettes for the 3 sections of this little clip. In the opening, there is the sound of all of the instruments together. And there is a section with the horn solo which has the lower instruments. In the last section of the clip we this particular clip, there is the oboe solo with its predominantly bassoon accompaniment which gives it a more reedy palette.

Note: not all of the instruments in a woodwind quintet are strictly woodwinds; there is one brass instrument, the French Horn.

To give a more extreme sense of not blending in, here is a more extreme example that I like. It adds more brass and some percussion too:

My heartbeat and blood pressure rise every time I hear the above clip.

Now compare this to the string family in the opening passage from Elgar's Enigma Variations, Nimrod Variation:

These examples were selected and contrived to show my point in the extreme. In particular, the Elgar violin, viola, and cello parts are divided so that the first viola parts match the lower violin parts, the lower viola parts match the upper cello part, and the lower cello part matches the bass. So there is deliberate extra blending going on here.

But the point still remains. To me, this is like the differences in paintings I mention in Key and Psychology

Ok. So let me now tie this non-homogenity into the oboe in particular. But in a later post, I may show how the oboe also blends and how that had a historical importance.

Above I gave an example of nonhomgeniety between different members of the woodwind family: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon.

For the oboe, the timbres of the instrument vary greatly as well and that is a whole topic on its own.

However, within a single instrument played by a single person, there is variation between adjacent notes in a scale across the three or so octaves that the oboe spans.

To ease into demonstrating this, consider this pretty well-known example from Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf:

This passage is in the lower part of the oboe's range. As I mentioned briefly for the flute, the lowest notes of a woodwind instrument are the "rawest", not blending, or are richest in overtones.

I suspect Prokofiev picked this low region for its honkiness and duck-like quality. As a friend sarcastically remarked: The versatility of the oboe (which to him always sounds like a duck) and the genius of Prokofiev combine to produce startling barn-yard effects!

Timbre changes in wind instruments are related in a way similar to the elements in the Chemical Periodic table; think of each octave of a flute or oboe as being a row in the periodic table. It has a row-like character or "heaviness". But pitches within an octave (or periodic table columns) also have a timbre similarity as well. (For the clarinet the term "octave" is changed to "register", because the relation at the lowest level is an octave and a fifth

Here is a guide to oboe timbres heard in this passage. The non-natural notes Eb and Db are more muted than their neighboring notes E natural and D. C, since it was the original lowest note of the instrument is also very honky, like a duck. In the last two notes of measure 4 where we jump up to D and B, some of the rawness goes away but you can hear traces of it.

If this is too involved to follow, just focus on the first four distinct pitches, E, Eb, D, and Db; see if you notice how the timber quality changes. In particular open E, muted Eb, Open D, muted Db.

The above was about the lower range of the oboe near Middle C. As for timbres in the last part of the solo: 

The sound of the upper C above middle C has less of that lower rawness and is more pure. The neighboring Eb while having the second octave characteristic still has some of the timber of its lower Eb counterpart, just less pronounced.  

 The Eb is a little more muted than say its surrounding notes E or D. Similarly Db which appears in the second measure is muted too (a little bit more so than the Eb). Bb while not as muted as the lower Eb is still muted compared to C. F is a little muted compared to G that follows. And notice the change in timbre between the C above Middle C and the Eb below it.

Here is the same passage that is heard an octave higher that appears later in this piece. Notice how the register timbre is different and a lot of the coarseness has been removed.

Towards the end of the passage, the oboe goes into the lower part of the 3rd octave above middle C and the upper part of the second octave of middle C. And here the coarseness is removed even more. (But again, I can hear the timbre changes between individual notes.)

I realize all of this may be hard to hear, and may seem like a wine connoisseur describing different kinds of wine profiles.

When I hear an orchestra, as a result of these slight timbre changes, I can pick out the specific notes that are being played, and thus calibrate my perfect pitch sense. I can do the same on hearing a flute as well. I should say that since I played both of these instruments in the past, these kinds of timbre changes have been ingrained.