THE SOUND BETWEEN THE SOUND

I am writing this months article whilst airborne heading towards the Frankfurt MusikMesse Trade Show. Whilst glancing out the window at the vast amount of air and space between the ground, and myself - I am reminded of the ratio of very little breathable air compared to the somewhat excessive and unusual facial hair that tends to fashion itself at this smoky, busy, industry trade show.

My current spatial position (and thankfully not the MusikMesse facial hair) has inspired me to really consider the concept of moving air in terms of transition of sound and how we think about it.

As you know when an instrument sounds, it sends out soundwaves, frequencies that ripple and resonate through the air. It is our job as an engineer to capture that movement of air using a microphone to reproduce and record its emitting patterns.

Due to the way that we interpret this movement of air into voltages and then often again converted into binary figures, it then tends to focus our mind very much onto a final precise value. We tend to forget about the variants, the subtle movements that weren’t picked up or were lost along the way. We also mask out the frequencies that have less content within the final sound capture. We disregard these things as “unwanted noise” or “interference”, but is that really the case?

As a comparison, if you were monitoring the sky as my plane flew threw your vision, the object that is seen as moving and most important is the actual plane. Your perception of the fact the plane is flying would be that it is not stationary on the one constant of your vision, the ground. However, if you were to just take note of the actual plane (the moving object) and the ground (the constant), you would be disregarding all the information in-between (in this case the air in-between, which is obviously quite important!).

What I am trying to say is that the sounds between the sounds that we noticeably perceive are arguably just as important. The human ear usually picks up frequencies from as low as 20Hz right up to 20kHz with perfect hearing (although in reality and also with age this number decreases). Even with these figures, it has been proven that humans can “feel” frequencies outside the realm of their hearing capabilities. This means we must be very sensitive to different frequencies and even if we cant easily pick them out in our hearing, we may still be aware of their existence and possibly even rely on them to make things sound “natural”.

In Physics and Astronomy, many have discussed “dark matter”, a fascinating topic that really is delving into the furthest reach of our understanding of the universe. Basically with dark matter, it is the “stuff” that isn’t there, the space between the space that must exist - and helps to explain the workings and expansion of our universe. It is said, that just because we cant see something, doesn’t mean it isn’t there and so should respect its existence. I think the same could be said with sound, that just because we cant hear all the sounds, between the sounds we can hear, doesn’t mean they are not there and we should have respect for them in the recording and mixing process.

You could look at the process of creating and capturing sound - right through to the mixing and monitoring of it - as an energy flow process, where the energy is the sound.

So now your whole system (your studio technique) and your task (as engineer) is to help this energy flow freely and passionately (yet controlled accurately by you) through your entire recording, mixing and monitoring process.

This should help you focus on elements that are all vitally important in creating a great record.

The recording space, the microphone, the pre amp, the mix bus, the converters, the processing power, the editing, the effects, the dynamics, and the monitors all play a part in how you can respect this flow of energy. Each element when explained in this way, can help make sense of why these separate considerations and processes are important and what effect they could each have on the sound energy flow process.

So next time you begin to venture into a fresh capture of moving air, or sit down to process your captured energy, be mindful and respectful to allow it to flow with the freedom and passion that nature intended, yet helped along with your inspired and creative hand.