(herreid) when we talk about timbre in terms of early music, we're talking about this palette of toneas available to the people who played the music of the renaissance or of the middle ages. and those of us involved in the "authentic" performance practice of early music tried to, as a rule, use instruments that reflect these authentic tone colors or timbres. and so when i play the lute, i'm playing an instrument that has a much different sound than say the classical guitar, the modern guitar, even though much of the music is very performable on guitar. but when i play renaissance music on the lute that was intended for the lute, i find that there's just many more ways that i can express the music. [playing high-pitched flute music] (narrator) the human exploration of timbre is a continually evolving process whether the instrument is hundreds of years old or of contemporary origin, whether a voice is acoustically produced or electronically reproduced, musicians and audiences are constantly defining and redefining the sounds which we call music. [deep, throaty singing] [folk singing and