The Viennese Sound Style

What are the main differences between the Viennese model with goat skin and the internationally used model with a plastic (“Mylar”) membrane?

1. The sound spectrum of the Viennese instrument contains more "tonal components", the international instrument sounds more "noisy".

The following figure shows a 3-dimensional soundanalysis of a drumbeat. Horizontal axis: frequency, vertical axis: amplitude, the time runs from behind to the front. A partial of the sound (connected with a mode) can be identified in this figure as a "ridge of a mountain" with a decreasing height (=amplitude) from back to the front.

The fundamental (mode 11) is marked black, the Fifth (mode 21) is marked blue and the oktave (mode 31) is marked red.

It can be seen that the sound of the Viennese instrument is dominated by the radial harmonic modes, whereas the sound spectrum of the international timpany contains a lot of inharmonic partials (circular modes), partly superposed and producing beats wich increases the noisy character.

		Table left: Comparison of the amplitude of the fundamental (mode 11) measured with the Laser System and an artificial excitation signal (loudspeaker). Red: Viennese, blue: international. In general the sound of the Viennese Timpany is more multifaceted compared with that of the mylar equipped instrument. The reason is the higher sensibility of the goat scin on different types of drumsticks and head materials.
Download: Wiener Klangstil.pdf (1 MB)		© 2000 Matthias Bertsch

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