Sound and Timbre - Sound Sources

SOUND SOURCES

Music may be produced through three (3) Main Musical Sound Sources:

1. The Human Body and Voice
2. Traditional and Non-Traditional Instruments
3. Electronically Generated 

1. Human Body and Voice

A. Voice:

Ways of using the voice: singing, humming, whistling, mouth pooping, speaking, chanting, tongue clicking, rhythmic breathing, grunting, beat-boxing, rapping, etc

4 Main Categories of Human Voice

Women                Soprano

                            Alto

Men                     Tenor

                            Bass

Shortened to SATB.

B. Body Percussion:  the art of utilizing the human body to create sounds and rhythms.

Body percussion techniques: clapping, thigh-slapping (patsch), finger-clicking, top tapping, chest thumping, stomping, high fives, stepping, hand 'warming', etc.

2. Traditional and Non-Traditional Instruments:
A. Traditional instruments: may be classified in a number of ways. We will focus on orchestral families

Orchestral families

• Stings
• Woodwinds
• Brass
• Percussion

Two (2) other families are the Keyboards and Electronic.

B. Non-Traditional  instruments: home made instruments, folk instruments etc.

Examples of non-traditional instruments include:
pot and spoon, desk top, water xylophone, grater, bagpipe, banjo, cuatro, djembe, fiddle, guitar, lute, pan flute, sitar, steelpan, etc.

3. Electronically Generated Sounds/Instruments

Produced by synthesizers, samplers, keyboards, drum-machines, computers - MIDI, electronic guitar, electronic drum, drum machine, etc.