(De)Constructing Timbre at NIME: Reflecting on Technology and Aesthetic Entanglements in Instrument Design

Charalampos Saitis, Courtney N. Reed, Ashley Laurent Noel-Hirst, Giacomo Lepri, and Andrew McPherson

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

Timbre, pitch, and timing are often relevant in digital musical instrument (DMI) design. Compared with the latter two, timbre is neither easy to define nor discretise when negotiating audio representations and gesture-sound mappings. We conduct a corpus assisted discourse analysis of "timbre" in all NIME proceedings to date (2001-2024). Combining this with a detailed review of 18 timbre-focused papers at NIME, we examine how definitions of timbre and timbre interaction methods are constructed through, for instance, Wessel's numerical timbre control space, synthesis tools and programming languages, machine learning and AI approaches, and other trends in digital lutherie practices. While acknowledging the practical utility of technical constructions of timbre in NIME (and other digital music research communities), we contribute discussion on the entanglement of technology and aesthetics in instrument design, which constitutes what "timbre" becomes in NIME research and reflect on the tension between technoscientific and constructivist understandings of timbre: how DMIs and musical practices have been reconstituted around particular timbral values operationalised in NIME. In response, we propose ways that the NIME community can embrace more critical approaches and awareness to how our methods and tools shape and co-create our notions of timbre, as well as other musical concepts, connecting more openly with diverse types of sonic phenomena.

Citation

Charalampos Saitis, Courtney N. Reed, Ashley Laurent Noel-Hirst, Giacomo Lepri, and Andrew McPherson. 2025. (De)Constructing Timbre at NIME: Reflecting on Technology and Aesthetic Entanglements in Instrument Design. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15698835 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@article{nime2025_29,
 abstract = {Timbre, pitch, and timing are often relevant in digital musical instrument (DMI) design. Compared with the latter two, timbre is neither easy to define nor discretise when negotiating audio representations and gesture-sound mappings. We conduct a corpus assisted discourse analysis of "timbre" in all NIME proceedings to date (2001-2024). Combining this with a detailed review of 18 timbre-focused papers at NIME, we examine how definitions of timbre and timbre interaction methods are constructed through, for instance, Wessel's numerical timbre control space, synthesis tools and programming languages, machine learning and AI approaches, and other trends in digital lutherie practices. While acknowledging the practical utility of technical constructions of timbre in NIME (and other digital music research communities), we contribute discussion on the entanglement of technology and aesthetics in instrument design, which constitutes what "timbre" becomes in NIME research and reflect on the tension between technoscientific and constructivist understandings of timbre: how DMIs and musical practices have been reconstituted around particular timbral values operationalised in NIME. In response, we propose ways that the NIME community can embrace more critical approaches and awareness to how our methods and tools shape and co-create our notions of timbre, as well as other musical concepts, connecting more openly with diverse types of sonic phenomena.},
 address = {Canberra, Australia},
 articleno = {29},
 author = {Charalampos Saitis and Courtney N. Reed and Ashley Laurent Noel-Hirst and Giacomo Lepri and Andrew McPherson},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.15698835},
 editor = {Doga Cavdir and Florent Berthaut},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 numpages = {10},
 pages = {197--206},
 title = {(De)Constructing Timbre at NIME: Reflecting on Technology and Aesthetic Entanglements in Instrument Design},
 track = {Paper},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2025/nime2025_29.pdf},
 year = {2025}
}