The Continuum of words, voice and music. In search for a vocabulary for the timbre of song and voice

This text offers some principal and methodogical issues on studies of timbre in words, music and vocal performance. Timbral relationships between word and music can be conceptualized as a continuum following an fictive axis running from meaning and timbre of words, through melody and music to performance. Sometimes the order might be different, but the ingredients will always be there. To get a grip on the totality of timbre and meaning involved in the songs and performances of one single artist, Swedish balladeer Olle Adolphson, a study was conducted along this research design. The interplay between the inherent timbres in vowel sounds and melody were firstly studied in the songs themselves and relationships were noted that showed signs of systematic appearance. Perspectives from these observations were intergrated with analyzes of timbral bearings on meaning and signification in words and musical settings of a number of songs. Following the axis to performance, aspects of timbre were studied with aid of visual representations of the signal as waveforms, melograms and spectograms, verifying observations and as tools for identification and discussion. The study points further towards timbre and emotional cues in vocal performances as signs of individual/enviroment interactions. Background in first discipline (acoustics, musicology, popular music studies) They all posess the true ballad art in some respect - the way of spinning the story and the poem together, not with the crude drama of the concert singer, but with the subtle nuance and understatement that is fitting to to ballad art. [...] They sing in their traditional country ways, conforming to vocal styles which in many cases predate concert singing, and are far more apropriate to their material […] Their art, for they have an art, is to mould the words and tune together into a whole, introducing subtle variations into the melody and shading their intonation as the song runs on. (Lomax, Alan. Liner notes to the album “Songs of courtship”, Topic LP, 1961) These are the words of Alan Lomax, written more than 40 years ago, and are very well applicable to popular music, blues and folk song today. Still at this time, the cultures of classical and popular music are separate ones, sethered by dark depths, especially when it comes to the social and hierachical evaluative domains. Studying relationships between word, voice and music in popular song is as intriguing and urgent as ever today and raises needs for conceptualization both of the details and the totality of song and voice. To get easier access to these matters and the interactions between the components involved, I will in this paper suggest that the conception, composition and performance of popular song can be conceptualized as a continuum. A continuum following an axis running from meaning and timbre of words, through melody and music to the actual performance. This is to get a handle on it, starting out with a general musicological approach, however one “soon hits the harder stuff” as the poet says. When the game gets tough, this time it is in phonetics, linguistics and acoustics.