City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2017 A New Approach to the Analysis of Timbre Megan L. Lavengood The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2188 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact:
[email protected] A NEW APPROACH TO THE ANALYSIS OF TIMBRE by MEGAN LAVENGOOD A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Music in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2017 ii © 2017 MEGAN LAVENGOOD All rights reserved ABSTRACT A New Approach to the Analysis of Timbre by Megan Lavengood Advisor: Professor Mark Spicer Two distinct approaches to timbre analysis exist, each with complementary strengths and limitations. First, music theorists from the 1980s adopt a positivist mindset and look for ways to quantify timbral phenomena, often using spectrograms, while avoiding any cultural dimensions in their work. Second, writings of the past five years focus on the cultural as- pects of timbre but make no use of spectrograms. This dissertation builds upon these two ap- proaches by synthesizing them: discussion is grounded in spectrogram analysis, but situated within a broad cultural context, through interactions with listener experience and ethno- graphic study of music periodicals and other published interviews. The theory is applicable to any genre of music, but 1980s popular music is used as a case study, with a particular fo- cus on the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, used in much of this music.