António Florença

Either from a Tristan Murail lecture or interview — I can’t remember exactly which, — I read about David Wessel’s Fourier analyses of (the sounding notes of) several instruments while he was at IRCAM… Would anyone know if these are available as a database somewhere, somehow? Or if there are any such databases currently available, perhaps even more recent and exhaustive ones?

Any hints or insights on this issue would be much appreciated.

PS: I had no success in finding an answer to this at IRCAM's web forum, so I decided to try out my luck here.

Hi,
Either from a Tristan Murail lecture or interview — I can’t remember exactly which, — I read about David Wessel’s Fourier analyses of (t

on-david-wessel’s-spectral-analyses-of-instruments

 with sources, I was able to trace the original source of the analyses, it’s John Grey’s experimental work for his PhD — his thesis can be found here: 

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/papers/exploration-of-musical-timbre

His work later inspired, and developped into, (the same) Grey, Moorer, Snell and Strawn’s “Lexicon of Analyzed Tones” published in the 

 from MIT Press, in three installments from April 1977 to September 1978.

But here’s the bittersweet twist at the end, as Moorer himself explained in an interview with Curtis Roads:

And this is it, as far as I could gather, they never made such a database.

After a bit of ping pong with sources, I was able to trace the original source of the  analyses, it’s John Grey’s experimental work for his PhD — his thesis  can be found here: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/papers/exploration-of-musical-timbre

His work later inspired, and developped into, (the same) Grey,  Moorer, Snell and Strawn’s “Lexicon of Analyzed Tones” published in the Computer Music Journal from MIT Press, in three installments from April 1977 to  September 1978.

There is another musical project we talked about but never done. It  is an enormous project, the fabled “Lexicon of Analyzed Tones.” […] I  would like to see someone go through the entire pitch range of each  orchestral instrument at several dynamics and articulation styles and  analyze and categorize each tone.
 

On David Wessel’s Spectral Analyses of Instruments