Instrumental Texture

Commonly used instruments and their texture-

• Brass- bright, shimmering, sharp
• Woodwind- soft, mellow, breathy
• Strings- eerie, sharp, harsh
• Keyboards- light, quick
• Acoustic guitar- mellow, soft, dull
• Overdriven electric guitar- harsh, rough, distorted

Vocal Texture

The types of vocal texture are as follows-

• Breathy sound
• Cry in Voice (vocal fry)
• Spikes
• Velvet (rounder, resonant)
• Whispers
• Character

It can also be grouped up in terms of the singing style of a person-

• Soprano- The highest form of female voice, usually ranging between middle C and high C.
• Alto- Lowest form of female voice.
• Tenor- Highest form of male voice, usually ranging from C1 to C5
• Bass- The lowest form of male voice, supporting the bottom end of the soundscape in a choir.
• Falsetto- A vocal technique in which the edges of the vocal chords are used, enabling the singer to hit notes above their vocal range.
• Choir- A group of voices usually containing all of the above layered on top of one another.

The Science of Sound

-Harmonic content is the number of individual harmonic frequencies within a waveform.
 
 Sound textures-

• Monophonic- A single melodic line with no accompaniment.
• Homophonic- Melody + Accompaniment. eg. Multiple voices within which one voice stands out and the other sit in the background.
• Contrapuntal- Two or more melodies.  Can sound very messy.

-Tone Colour refers to the sound of an instrument, and is also known is timbre. eg. Shimmering, dark, rich etc.
-

Acoustic Environments

Acoustic Environments-  The acoustic quality of a space can be affected by many different physical characteristics, most prominent of which is probably the general size of a room.  For example, the sound of hitting a snare drum in the centre of a small booth in comparison with doing the same in a concert hall is phenomenal.  In the booth the sound will be mostly attack with little reverb if any, and in the large hall the sound waves will bounce around the space creating a reverberation/delay effect on the sound, causing what most people would describe as an echo.  The shape of the room also has a great effect on the sound, and when pairing that with the material of which the walls are made of, a producer is capable of naturally changing the sound they're recording.  If I were to record the sound of someone clapping in a box room it would sound dull and dry, if I elongated or widened the room, the possibility for the sound waves to bounce around the room and echo would be greatly heightened.  It is for this reason that producers place instruments (most likely drums) in larger spaces, to capture some natural reverberation on the original recording, therefor easing the need to add in that effect post-recording.
The Sound Spectrum- A sound spectrum is a representation of a sound in terms of the vibration of each individual frequency, usually represented in a graph as shown below.