{"id":4621,"date":"2013-12-01T21:44:59","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T03:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=4621"},"modified":"2013-12-01T21:55:11","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T03:55:11","slug":"the-seven-basic-tone-qualities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/4621","title":{"rendered":"The Seven Basic Tone Qualities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nothing has created more confusion about how to describe sounds than tone quality.<\/p>\n

Tone quality is the distinctive voice<\/em> of a sound — the thing that allows you to tell the difference between a violin and a trumpet when they’re both playing the same note. It comes in very handy when identifying birds by sound, but people have tended to differ in their notions of how to describe it.\u00a0 Today, we’re going to break sounds down into just seven basic qualities<\/strong>, which in combination make up the huge variety of sounds that birds can create.<\/p>\n

And here they are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Whistled sounds<\/h4>\n

Whistles are the most basic and common type of bird sound. They appear on the spectrogram as simple nonvertical lines<\/strong>. Non-bird sounds with a whistled tone quality include typical human whistling, and the sounds of flutes and piccolos.\u00a0 Bird examples are plentiful:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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