But not a useful answer to someone asking the question… they're simply going to respond with "What's timbre?" and if you answer is something like "It's what mak

But not a useful answer to someone asking the question… they're simply going to respond with "What's timbre?" and if you answer is something like "It's what makes an A sound different on different instruments", they're not going to be satisfied. The question is clearly not, "what's the musical term for why instruments sound different when playing the same pitch?" (timbre) it's, "what is the fundamental reason for that?" — and for most people, they have a mental model that an instrument plays a single frequency, so you have to show them that that model is broken, and then it becomes very clear, very fast what is going on.