Mixing. EQ

Equalizer (EQ)? You may find it on some mini hi-fi. The most basic one can be "tone" or "bass, treble, mid" adjustments. Hence, an equalizer serves as a device that changes the characteristic of a sound.

There are quite a number of them, from the smallest basic treble-bass that kind, to the 32 bands frequencies wide range graphic EQ, and to the most sophisticated parametric EQ.

Why change the sound characteristic? Isn't that original sound is the most important? The most expensive amplifier gets the most original sound, right?

Actually, in my personal view, original sound is important, but when playing in a band/orchestration, some frequencies can be eliminated to ensures the clarity of every instrument. For example, when u boost 100Hz for the kick drum, you may as well want to decrease the 100Hz of the bass guitar while boosting it at maybe 250Hz (its very own place in the wide frequency spectrum) . This is to ensure that they don't overshadow each other. Ensures clarity!

People usually likes to make a "smile" face on the graphic EQ on their home system, this is due to a psychoacoustic effect on human's brain. Our ear tends to accept and translate sound level in a non-linear scale. Meaning, while you hear the midrange frequency doubled its "loudness", it doesn't mean that your brain takes bass (same power of boost) as doubled loudness. Usually we are weaker at the bass and treble response at low volume, hence we tends to boost them up in everyday consumer hi-fi. But in live music where the SPL raise till a significant loudness, things become different. EQ is then used for the clarity and the feedback control. If used wrongly (if overboost), it may cause distortion. Distortion destroys speakers.

Still, original sound will be the most important thing.

Yet, how come... Perhaps a room having weak acoustic don't meant to be mixed nicely? But, when i play CD on it, it sounds just fine, just a little bit muddy/draggy.. How to mix in a semi mic in room? How to mix if there is some instrument that just doesn't need nor can be mic in? How to compensate? Any idea?

stereo stage sound

I wanna talk about sound stage.

A sound engineer or sound designer does a job we call it "mixing". What is mixing? What is its importance in music industry?

Basically, mixing is a process to achieve two goals: 1. balancing or making multiple instruments coexist each other (clarity is the up most important), 2. Presenting the song in a creative way (climax & resolve).

When the artist has finished with the recordings of multiple tracks by different instruments, he'll send them to the mixing studio, and the engineer will try to fix in every of them, deciding when and where to add or cut or etc...

Few parameters that can be played around with:

1. The pan (a.k.a left or right). It's pretty obvious that modern pop songs have this kind of characteristic. This is way too different from the olden days' mono speaker, whereby the sound came from only one speaker/source. It gives the horizontal parameter so that we can imagine the sound stage in 2D (instead than 1D of mono!) while enjoying the music. Separating out instruments makes them sound more independent, not mixed muddily.

2. The reverberation. Reverberation produces a psycho acoustic effect-depth of stage. When you hear a sound from a far distance and you compare it with the guy talking right in front of you, what's the different? The far one has a more reverberant sound compare to the one talking right in front of you. It's the same concept when you want to shift an instrument front up or back deep into the stage! Again, wider and deeper stage creates an image of 3D, not a bore "paper". Just be careful not to make it too muddy till it becomes too "viscous" and eat up all the space, you don't want your stage to become a cave, clarity! Psychoacoustic wise, reverberation changes a person's feel on vertical dimension of the source-in rise when reverb is added.

Another interesting thing to consider: When one pan the piano to left speaker, and guitar to right speaker, does it means stereo stage setting? No, it's not. It's dual mono. To make the piano a stereo stage instrument, one must add the piano's reverberant signal to the right speaker. Both speakers must be considered as a stage source from the same place . Meaning, the left speaker will act exactly like a piano (plays notes, pure notes) while the right speaker will act as the wall on the stage bouncing off piano notes (while room acoustics are all considered).

That's all for today! It's really fun!

strange instrument. "theremin" and "ondes martenot".

I didn't know this is so weird will i watched this in youtube. They called it "theremin". Saw it in the science center of Singapore. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA00Wug6uyc).

Basically it works as a radio antenna. Hence, when the frequency of the antenna is cut out by one's hand, it sounds with the respective frequency. It's a musical instrument which is having "untouched" operating system.. haha..

Hence, its frequency can hit a very deep bass.. I was shocked when i 1st hear it when no one is beside it. It was way too deep!
See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW0B1sipLBI&feature=related

Anyway, another instrument to be introduced is the ondes martenot. Knew this because i saw Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead genius guitarist) played this before. This instrument is more fascinating. It produces many kind of sounds, the idea was initiated from a engineer (frogot his name) wanted to find the frequency of a radiowave during the early 20th century. There is a string, a keyboard and a control board on this instrument. Connected to a series of speakers, it sounds very special.

A gong speaker for percussion/mallet/halo sound. A stringed one for string harmonics/reverb. A normal one and a lyre-shaped loudspeaker (produce sympathetic resonances). Hence, the sound reproduced is very "real" compared to the organ or electronic keyboard..
Try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy9UBjrUjwo

Erm, just my newly discoveries.. Perhaps it's already very outdated for some of you, just take me as a "suaku" human being! Cheers!

Another thought on worship band.

That day i talked with a friend, and we get something like this:

Worship leader's job is to get the congregations to be attentive towards God, and ultimately to bring them into a worship. Church worship session have songs with a similar theme, and that should be what the worship leader trying to get the congregation to think about. Hence, preferably, the worship tunes should be synchronized with what the pastor wanted to preach.

Also, worship leader shall have the anointing to affect the congregations, spiritually (holy spirit and stuff like that). But, i was thinking, should worship be done together just like in group prayer (same thought, same spirit and everybody says "amen"!) or just different people different touch/thoughts?

Personally, i think that if it's not done in "togetherness", it'll be messy. Everyone will be having their own stuff and there is no unity. Even in the normal "world" bands, they play with same philosophy (you can see how badly a man can be changed once he's affected by the culture of the band he joined). Similarly, in church worship team, we all play different instruments, but our spirit should be aligned. The team have to follow what the worship LEADER leads, and not to lead individually.

But, how a pianist worship with a piano? Perhaps you can imagine the piano as a voice, just another kind of voice. Take 5 people sing together in harmonics, and we change all the 4 voices to string, left one human voice. It's the same isn't it? And you can also notice how a person usually free-worship in spirit- don't know what is he singing at all, only God knows via spirit... Haha, but for pianist, can't just free flow, only if you have the skill or talent. Else, tough.. very tough..

Now, i have another problem: if we just follow what the worship leader wants, and play it very harmonically, is it enough? This may be true for a thought: "good worship is not occurred naturally, but we have to "do" it out. This is very true.

Still, i do think that there is an element missing.

Perhaps this is not too important as christian shouldn't worship only at church, but it's an everyday "thingy"!

Psychoacoustic versus worship.

I'm not sure about this, really!

Music was 1st invented for spiritual worship purposes. It means it's having the ability to bring human's mind into another level of realm. (Christians believe that 1st musician was Lucifer, who became fallen angel when he started to worship himself instead of God with music). The history tells that music was developed only for spiritual purposes before it became an "art" for the society. After that, music was developed even more rapidly by the "world musician", its purpose was shifted from spiritual to entertainment.

So, we bring back this question: does music really affects one's mind? Can it bring a person to another realm and affect the emotion etc? Reality tells us that it does, e.g. Mozart effects causes the spatial intelligence to increase temporarily, Death metal music may bring people to think about despair, depress or emo.

Can we play or arrange something to bring christians to worship more deeply (mentally)? Will the way the singer sing-whether have emotion or not- bring the worshiper to different "place"?

Oxford university came out with a research recently, it says that we can hear shapes and taste colour.. What the heck is this? This is non other than the power of other senses (other than sight) on predicting an object's characteristic. Have you heard someone said "Marshall amplifier have a more rounded sound" or "when playing classical guitar, one should get the round sound and not the oval one". One tends to relate a lower frequency sound (lower tone) to rounded object and higher frequency (high tone) to sharp object. Does this effect mean anything to the music arranger when arranging a complex sequence of notes and harmonics? What will we "see" and where it'll bring us to? Can this be applied to spiritual purposes or was music first invented for this purpose?

Of course, worship leader must have a pure heart in worshipping God and he shall lead the members in the house to worship. But, what is the purpose of music? For a same worship leader, can he leads even better when there is an expert music team behind? Or when there is a team of psychoacoustic experts supporting him..?

psychoacoustic---psycho=mind, acoustic=sound. Is this the relationship?

Wanna buy a guitar..

What guitar should i buy, or should you buy? These are from my experience..

1. Wood of the guitar. Different wood gives you different sound, e.g. spruce top gives a very bright sound while koa top gives a relatively mellow sound. Rosewood back gives a bassy sound and maple back gives a more thin sound. It depends on what sound you like.

What about the quality of the wood? Let's say if you have a normal spruce and grade A spruce, the only difference is the stability of the wood. For the grade A wood, it's already seasoned and the sound quality is assured. But, for a non seasoned wood, chances are, it turns out to be very nice or very bad, some (those that are not completely dry) may even bend, which is very very bad..

Another thing, some say the different wood looked differently, e.g. some has more packed pattern, some loose. The packed one is sold more expensive, because of it's "artistic" look, not the sound quality..

2. The bracing. Even from same wood, different manufacturers have different style of bracing design. It affects the sound quality also. Hence, you'll have to try out few guitars so that you can get the sound that you prefer. Personally, i prefer Martin guitars than Taylor guitars.

3. The action. Even how good the sound is, if the touch is very bad (very hard to play), it's useless. I'd tried some handmade guitars before, although the sound is not bad, the strings are way too high from the fret, hence it's akward to play fast. The neck thickness, the buzzing of strings, etc.. these have to be considered.

4. Then, you have to check check very carefully the accuracy of tone each strings at each bar. make sure that the tone (especially after 12th bar) is still consistently in tune.

5. The value of the guitar. I'd been thinking of this question for some time. Good instrument will have their value increase over time. e.g. you bought a Selmer saxophone at 50's, now the price is almost 30 times the price last time.. But if you buy a kapok guitar, do you think you can even sell the guitar? This is the different, hence buying good guitars is another kind of investment, provided you really know how to take care of it..

These are what i know so far. I heard people say that hand made guitar's sound quality will increased by time, but machine made one won't.. I doubt on this. Also, don't be cheated by the price and think that price higher, sound better.. it's not that case. Some price are meant for the outside look only, not the sound nor feel.. E.g. standard taylor has standard price. Those limited edition one will have the more or less same sound, but the design varies a lot..

Imagination.

Does scientist create a new theory out of math or imagination?

Initially, i thought it's the upmost important for a scientist to good in maths and derivations stuff, such as how to derive a new equations and stuff like that.. But after a further thought, i feel that it's more important to imagine than to derive ike a rationalist, though it doesn't mean that math is not important..

Faraday discovered electromagnetism, found the relationship between electricity and magnetism by imagination, not derived it out of math (although math did help). Einstein discovered relativity theorem when he imagine a situation where speed is close to speed of light. Of course, math did help. Also, John Dalton, J.J. Thomson, Ernest Rutherford and James Chadwick's contribution in atomic models is out of imagination as well. Etc..

So, it's like... driven out of imagination, using math as a tool, a new theory can be formed. Imagination>Theory>New stuff. Maybe music works in this way also...

What about pure math?? Since what we observed is kind of... uncertain, as what we see in quantum physics. Hence some scientist try to derive everything out of pure logic, such as string theory!