A review of musical timbre reveals common origin of music and mammalian vocalizations

It has been hypothesized that the origins of language and music are rooted in a common precursor. A common origin is likely if there are shared features, functions, and acoustic correlates, which can be studied by comparing across domains and species. One feature central to music, speech, and animal communication is timbre. Timbre depends on characteristics of the frequency spectrum and is used both to recognize individuals and to convey emotions in speech and mammalian vocal communication. However, to date, no work has been directly comparing timbre usage in music to the other two systems. The central question of this manuscript is therefore, whether similar functions of timbre are present in music relative to speech and mammalian vocal communication, and whether these functions are implemented by similar acoustic correlates. A review was conducted to investigate the functions of timbre and its underlying acoustic features in music. The results show that timbre in music conveys both emotion and identity relying on similar acoustical features as in speech and other mammalian vocal communication. This common function of timbre and the similar implementation across different communication systems suggests a common origin of music and language, likely broadly shared throughout mammalian communication.