Electric Guitar Pickups: a Dictionary of Sonic Signatures

1
Electric Guitar Pickups a Dictionary of Sonic
Signatures
Student Tim Prideaux Supervisor Richard Cocks
What's the proposal? This thesis will look at
scientific analysis and the perceptual theory
underlying the timbral qualities of an electric
guitar pickup.
Scooped
Attack

• What's in this thesis?
• A summary of relevant issues in perception and
  analysis of timbre
• Development and evaluation of a simple system
  for measurement and analysis of guitar sounds
• Results of analysis seeking to identify a
  single component of perceived timbre known as
  'attack'
• Discussion on the application of these results

Air
Spank
Quack
Out of the mouths of guitarists...
What is 'timbre'? To a musician, timbre is the
'colour' of the sound. To an engineer, timbre
encompasses the aspects of the sound that remain
when loudness and pitch are disregarded.
What does the future hold? Ideally, further
research in this area would build a dictionary of
sonic signatures a reference system that
describes individual timbral characteristics in
terms that engineers, pickup designers and
musicians can clearly understand. The
development of this future system would also
contribute to the hugely complex fields of timbre
perception and timbral analysis. At this stage,
such a system and the associated understanding
are still far from easy reach.