Timmers, R. and Desain, P. (2000) Vibrato: the questions and answers from musicians and science. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition Keele, UK: Keele University, Department of Psychology. CD-Rom. ISBN-9539909-0-7.
Abstract
Vibrato is the periodic fluctuation in pitch, amplitude and/or timbre of a musical tone. It is an important expressive component of musical performances, especially for singers and string players, and has been studied quite extensively in scientific inquiries. After an experiment we have extensively interviewed musicians (violin, cello, tenor, theremin, and oboe) with regard to their knowledge about vibrato-use. It was quite surprising for us how articulate professional musicians are in their opinion on vibrato characteristics, the use of vibrato as expressive device and the relation of the controlled vibrato parameters to the musical structure. However, the statements were often made in a language that was far removed from the measurable physical attributes of the sound. Regarding the scientific literature, we see a focus on essential but quite basic physiological and psycho-acoustical aspects of vibrato that are not too difficult to formalize and test. Examples are the perceived pitch of a tone with vibrato, extensive measurements of isolated characteristics like the mean vibrato rate and extend for different musicians. From this side the results become quite dry and meaningless for musicians. In music cognition research one might hope that the scientific inquiries can be inspired by hypotheses stemming from experts who devote their life to refining their control of musical parameters for expressive means, and teaching that to students. Vise versa, we hope the scientific results may somehow achieve a musical meaningfulness and value, also for musicians and teachers. And in vibrato research only recently the aim has indeed shifted to the use of vibrato as an expressive device. This paper summarizes the ideas on vibrato that were articulated by the musicians in the interviews. It also analyses the relation between musical structure and vibrato rate, vibrato extent and note intensity. The results of the analyses sometimes agreed with the musicians' intuition, and sometimes opposed them. Mostly, however, the analyses and the musicians' ideas did not correspond to each other; they "talked" about different things. A proposal is made for the two perspectives on vibrato to better inspire each other.
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