Visualising Musical Timbres - Quick Drawing Exercise (Illusion of Life: Week 5 Test)

By Helen Kwok

I was curious if there were any patterns / correlations in the visualisation of musical timbres between different people. So I decided to conduct this quick, preliminary test.

I asked eleven other students to listen to short recordings of ten different musical instruments and visualise them using only abstract shapes and lines. They were then asked to write 1-3 keywords describing the sound. These were the results.

I thought it was interesting how some results showed no obvious correlation, while for some others there were these emerging patterns, for e.g.:

1. Flute: wavy or swirly lines
2. Oboe: purple or brown colour
3. Clarinet: circular or blobby shapes
4. Bassoon: n/a
5. French Horns: red colour, sharp, jagged lines
6. Strings: flowing lines, bright colours
7. Drums: rectangular, distinct shapes
8. Xylophone: orangey-brown colours, small, busy but connected
9. Cello: horizontal, flowing lines, blue/purple theme
10. Piano: colourful, distinct, repetitive, scattered shapes

There's a lot of ideas that can be drawn from these drawings; that will provide a good basis for future test/experiments.

Participants: Jessica, Rachael, Valerie, Emmett, Rui, Yao, Ben10jamin, Carlo, Shawn, Adrian, Chris and Helen (myself)