Re: initial transients of musical instruments

[beauchamp james w <j-beauch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alexander Lerch wrote:
> I am looking for references or links to publications about the
> intial transients of musical instruments. I'm particularly
> interested in woodwind and string instruments.

Two doctoral dissertations shed some light on this topic:

John M. Grey, "An Exploration of Music Timbre", Ph. D. Dissertation,
Stanford University, Dept. of Music, CCRMA Report No. STAN-M-2 (1975).

John M. Hajda, "The Effect of Time-Variant Acoustical Properties on
Orchestral Instrument Timbres", Ph. D. Dissertation, Univ. of California
Los Angeles, Dept.  of Music (1999).

These works briefly discuss the spectral structure of the attack. A lot
more work needs to be done to explain the uniqueness of attacks for
different orchestral instrument families.

Jim Beauchamp
j-beauch@uiuc.edu