Timbre. Character of sound denotes that difference of effect produced upon the ear by sounds otherwise alike in pitch and loudness.  This characteristic is called timbre.  It is extraordinarily useful in human affairs, human voices being distinguished from each other by it, and a great part of the joy of music lying in it.

A bell, a stretched string, a reed, or other sound-producing body, emits a certain lowest possible tone when vibrated.  This is called its fundamental tone.  The pitch, loudness, and timbre of this tone depend upon various controlling causes.  Usually this fundamental tone is accompanied by a number of others of higher pitch, blending with it to form the general tone of that object.  These higher tones are called harmonics.  The Germans call them overtones.  They are always of a frequency which is some multiple of the fundamental frequency.  That is, the rate of vibration of a harmonic is 2, 3, 4, 5, or some other integral number, times as great as the fundamental itself.  A tone having no harmonics is rare in nature and is not an attractive one.  The tones of the human voice are rich in harmonics.

In any tone having a fundamental and harmonics (multiples), the wave-train consists of a complex series of condensations and rarefactions of the air or other transmitting medium.  In the case of mere noises the train of vibrations is irregular and follows no definite order.  This is the difference between vowel sounds and other musical tones on the one hand and all unmusical sounds (or noises) on the other.

Human Voice.  Human beings communicate with each other in various ways.  The chief method is by speech.  Voice is sound vibration produced by the vocal cords, these being two ligaments in the larynx.  The vocal cords in man are actuated by the air from the lungs.  The size and tension of the vocal cords and the volume and the velocity of the air from the lungs control the tones of the voice.  The more tightly the vocal cords be drawn, other things being equal, the higher will be the pitch of the sound; that is, the higher the frequency of vibration produced by the voice.  The pitches of the human voice lie, in general, between the frequencies of 87 and 768 per second.  These are the extremes of pitch, and it is not to be understood that any such range of pitch is utilized in ordinary speech.  An average man speaks mostly between the fundamental frequencies of 85 and 160 per second.  Many female speaking voices use fundamental frequencies between 150 and 320 vibrations per second.  It is obvious from what has been said that in all cases these speaking fundamentals are accompanied by their multiples, giving complexity to the resulting wave-trains and character to the speaking voice.

Speech-sounds result from shocks given to the air by the organs of speech; these organs are principally the mouth cavity, the tongue, and the teeth.  The vocal cords are voice-organs; that is, man only truly speaks, yet the lower animals have voice.  Speech may be whispered, using no voice.  Note the distinction between speech and voice, and the organs of both.