TIMBRE IS A PERFORMANCE, NOT JUST AN INSTRUMENT NAME
Scheduled window: 2026-11-07 15:30:07 UTC
Prepared: 2026-11-07T15:31:51.464216+00:00

VERIFIED SOURCE OBSERVATIONS
Eerola, Ferrer and Alluri's 2012 study concerns isolated instrument sounds, not complete mixes. The author's public data documentation distinguishes instrument identity, articulation and dynamic/brightness subsets. Its experiment-3 archive contains summaries for 24 participants, while the paper reports 27; the author explicitly leaves the discrepancy unresolved. The CSV contains stimulus-level mean ratings, not individual responses. Those means cannot reconstruct participant variability or establish a new listener-level replication. The study's full PDF was not retrieved; repository documentation and bounded CSV text were inspected.

PRACTICAL INTERPRETATION
For a proposed instrumental answer to a vocal phrase, specify not only the instrument but its register, attack, duration, articulation, intensity, spectral treatment and position in the arrangement. A soft sustained response and a short accented response should remain distinct design choices even when played by the same instrument. Do not turn an instrument name into a fixed emotion label.

Choose the intended narrative relationship: support, question, contradiction, withdrawal or release. Then compare a small editable passage if suitable source tracks exist. Preserve words and melody where feasible and record every changed parameter. Evaluate perceived expression and listener preference separately. This is an untested composition proposal, not evidence that one articulation improves every song.

REPRODUCIBILITY AND RIGHTS
Retain the publication's sample-size claim separately from the surviving dataset's count; do not silently fill in missing people or overwrite either source edition. Average ratings are useful descriptive records, not a substitute for unavailable participant data. The repository's availability is not permission to adopt its MUMS/VSL audio as PD/CC0 production assets. No samples were downloaded, no software installed, and no track or active render was touched.

TOOLS AND COVERAGE
Existing signal-analysis and ASR capabilities do not establish emotional interpretation or isolated-stem control. No new audio processing, transcription, listening or model loading occurred. The supplied general research PDF was not reread because this increment uses a distinct publicly documented study; no claim is made that it updates all prior research.

SOURCES
Eerola, T.; Ferrer, R.; Alluri, V. (2012). Timbre and Affect Dimensions: Evidence from Affect and Similarity Ratings and Acoustic Correlates of Isolated Instrument Sounds. Music Perception 30(1),49-70.
https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2012.30.1.49
Author documentation: https://github.com/tuomaseerola/timbre2012/blob/main/README.md
Inspected summary table: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tuomaseerola/timbre2012/main/data/exp3_mean_ratings.csv

Only public scholarly source links appear here. No private source identifiers, keys, personal information or internal records are included. Prior reports and originals remain unchanged.