This website holds the sound files and visual images contained in my EdD thesis, A Stone Sings in the Stream: Sounding Timbral Lines in Principaling.
Timbral Lines
My study offers three expansive timbral lines of interpretation that provide a methodological pulse to the work. Timbre derives from the Greek tumpanon, or kettledrum. In musical terms, timbre describes the colour, quality or character of sound, including resonances, releases, utterances, ambient silences, and durational moments.
The three timbral lines include a hermeneutical text contained in the thesis itself, holding stories, pedagogical narratives, sensations and memories; “(topo)graphic” images gathered from fragments of text, photographs and digital textures; and a third timbral line which releases the reader from the page, offering an aural landscape of “soundings.”
The timbral lines vibrate and flow throughout the study, carrying philosophical understandings, ongoing movement and potentialities. The three lines are abundant. They merge, fold and play one another. The timbral lines open space for hermeneutic ontological and epistemological meanings to arise. Each timbral line brings acoustic traces and aesthetic modes of being, which together sound a fuller story.
I would like to gratefully acknowledge all of the musicians who have granted me permission to use fragments of their recorded music, whether professionally released, used in public performances, or practices. Special mention goes to my Sansho Daiko family, whose creative energy and spirit sustain me.1 Thank you.