Welcome to the August issue of the Audiominds Newsletter. July was a very busy month for us here at Audiominds. The community continues to thrive and grow. This month has seen several changes to accommodate that growth.
The biggest event in July was the first Monthly Demo Song Contest. We thank the nine brave contestants who put their songs up for public scrutiny, and all who were able to take the time to download the songs, listen to them and cast their votes in the preliminary. Forty votes were cast. Because two songs were tied, four songs made it to the Grand Finale instead of three. Determining a winner wasn't easy with all those excellent productions to choose from. The winner of The Hat is Bubbagump, with “Dream”. Congratulations!
Several changes in personnel occurred this past month. A Promotion Team was formed, in an effort to better expose what we do here to recording enthusiasts everywhere.
The newsletter team was expanded, with the addition of Pete Celano to the writing staff. Mr. Celano is a successful Mechanical Engineering entrepeneur located in the Detroit area of the United States and is also a consummate part time musician and recordist. Some of you may be already familiar with Pete's fine writing style. Pete is also proving to be indispensible in the editing and creation of the entire newsletter. Welcome aboard, Pete!
Also, TJ has left his position as moderator and site administrator for personal reasons. It was not an easy decision, and he will be missed. Thankfully, he continues to be an active and valuable part of our community, so this isn't goodbye. We extend our sincere thanks to TJ for all the effort and creative energy he brought to the table as Audiominds.com was established and developed.
You may have noticed that Audiominds was offline the morning of July 27. The reason was that the server got bogged down by the incredible amount of traffic caused by our members. This event indicates how popular AudioMinds really is and how fast it is growing, and encourages us to continue working towards improving everything about the site. It is you, dear member, whom we have to thank for this success. Thank you for being a member and being a part of our community!
1. The physics of oscillations and waves - Part 2 (Placement, placement, placement)
- by Elwood; Editing by Mac
In the last installment of our physics series we got our feet wet on a wide topic - Oscillations and waves. Though it may have appeared to be heavy stuff let’s try to put our newly acquired knowledge to good use. Don't worry if you didn't read or understand the last article completely because last time we missed one of the most important facets which will be of great help for us this time. And I promise it'll be easier to understand (I hope) as we delve into what is perhaps the one physical parameter that affects all things acoustic: The speed of sound
At first glance it may sound a bit complicated if I say that the speed of sound is not dependent upon the amplitude (volume), frequency (pitch) or wavelength (lambda), but by the medium the sound is propagating through and that medium’s temperature. But really it's easy enough: Last time we learned that sound travels through the air by moving the little molecules of air one by one in progressive fashion. By moving maybe up and down one molecule affects its neighbor molecule and transfers it’s energy to the other with a slight time shift. One has to know that the molecules of a gas are always in random movement. Of course we don't feel or even hear that movement because it is happening on a very very tiny area. Much smaller than the area of the movement caused by sound. If temperature is high the molecules move very fast. The higher the temperature the faster the movement and vice versa. At low temperature the molecules move slower. This can reach up to no movement at all which would be 0 °K (read: Kelvin) or -273.15 °C (Celsius). From this information we know that sound travels faster through air at warmer temperatures simply because the molecules can move more easily.
Of course there's also a formula which makes it simple for us to calculate the actual speed of sound:
v = 331.4+ 0.6T [m/sec]
Let's translate those numbers into human language:
velocity in meters per second is almost equal to 331.4 plus 0.6 times the temperature in Celsius.
Now several problems arise. This formula is great for 90% of the whole world but not for most of the US citizen. While in Europe temperature and distance are measured in Celsius and meters there are other conventions still being used in the US. (The “MKS” – Meters, Kilograms, Seconds and “cgs” – Centimeters, Grams and Seconds metric system is indeed used in the US today by nearly all scientists and engineers, the older “fps” or feet per second system is simply more cumbersome. –Ed.)
Firsthand one has to calculate the Celsius temperature by the Fahrenheit temperature. What's the difference you may ask? The difference is the reference temperatures. When Celsius built his first quicksilver thermometer he took two temperatures as reference: The freezing point and the boiling point of water. He marked the first point, "0 °C" and the latter one was marked as, "100 °C". Fahrenheit didn't use water as his standard, but chose to use the body temperature of a man. It was very important to him to avoid negative numbers so he choose the temperature of the very hard winter 1708/09 in his hometown Danzig as 0 °F. His own body temperature would be 100 °F. Later it was found that the average body temperature of a human being is rather 98,6 °F than 100 °F. He also found that the freezing point of water is approx. 32 °F and the boiling point approx. 212 °F. This also is not very correct and it's unknown whether he measured wrong or changed the numbers in order to get a difference of exactly 180 °F.
Ok, ok, 'nough said. How do we convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius? Look here:
F = (C * 1.8) + 32 [°F]
C = (F - 32) / 1.8 [°C]
Next problem is the conversion between meters and inch:
1" = 2,54cm
1cm = 50/127"
With CM being the distance in centimeters and IN the distance in inch the following formulas apply:
CM = IN / 2,54 [m]
IN = CM * 2,54 [in]
Or
M = FT * 0.3048 [m]
FT = M / 0.3048 [ft]
(Note: The actual conversion requires many more decimal places to be as accurate as possible, using these constants will introduce an error known as “metric creep” in certain circles. For that reason alone it is better to think and work using the MKS metric nomenclature only when “plugging and chugging” any physical equations such as these. –Ed.)
After all that our speed formula would look like this:
v = ((331.4 + (0.6((F-32) / 1.8))) / 0.3048) [in/sec]
Wohoo, that's too complicated for me. Can't we do things easier? We can. And so we do. Actually that formula says that sound travels through the air at 331.4 m/sec when the air temperature is 0°C or 32°F. Most often we work with studio sound within the environment of a comfortable room. Standard room temperature is about 25°C or 77°F. So the most important number we have to remember after all that trouble is that sound travels at about:
346.4m/sec = 1136.48 ft/sec
in an average room. And these numbers are so important that it can't be a bad thing to tape them on the console. ;-)
Of course every room we encounter may be at a different temperature and things can change even worse if we're doing a live act outdoors. But this is where we leave the mathematical correctness alone and try without calculating until our ears say it's right. We would move that mic a few centimeters or play with that delay and it may surprise you how close to the calculations you can come by simply using your ears effectively. If you're doing sound very often outside and are keen enough you could calculate the speed of sound for your area at different seasons.
The headline reads “Placement, placement, placement“ and I promised you that we wouldn’t be completely theoretical this time around so let’s get to the nuts and bolts by thinking about the following: Many pro-consoles and most digital mixers offer built in time delay or phase control for every channel. With our new knowledge the reason is simple. Let's say you mic a drum set or a guitar amp with several mics. Each mic has a different distance to the sound source. The farther each mic is away from the source the longer it takes for the sound waves to reach the mic. The effects are ugly delays which can lead to comb filtering and phase problems in the worst case. Of course we want to avoid this and so we use those included delays. First of all we calculate the time it takes to reach every single mic. Then we attempt to adjust the delay time for each mic so that the sound of every mic reaches the speakers all at the same time. If it takes 2 ms to reach mic A and 7 ms to reach mic B we would delay mic A by 5 ms. Can you use the information already given in this article to calculate the ballpark distances between the single sound source and each of the two mics in both meters and in feet?
So here's the real-world example: John wants to mic his guitar amp using three mics. One 6" behind the amp, one 12" in front of the amp and a room mic 8 ft in the room. Because he carefully read the audiominds.com newsletter he taped a small paper on his console which reads: “346.4 m/sec = 1136.48 ft/sec“. His thermometer says the temperature is about 79 °F so those numbers appear good enough to him. The trouble is that it was nowhere told how to calculate the time the sound needs to travel to each mic. Being an active car driver he can solve that task after some thinking, too. He thinks: "At 60mph I will have driven exactly 60 miles after one hour of driving, and of course it stands to reason that if I drove two hours then I would cover twice the distance. On the other hand it takes 1.5 hours to drive 150 miles at 100mph." (Don’t try this at home, folks… --Ed.) This leads to an easy formula which if you don't know it by heart should also be taped on your console:
d = v * t
distance = speed * time.
Or
t = d / v
time = distance / speed.
The number on his console uses feet so he converts the inches to feet:
6" = 6" / 12 = 0.5 ft
12" = 1 ft
Now he's almost done. Using that t = d / v formula he knows that it takes 0.0004 sec (0.4mS) to reach the back mic, 0.0008 sec (0.8mS) the reach the front mic and 0.007 sec (7mS) to reach the room mic. The front and the back mic are too close together (under 1 mS difference) to be corrected by the console's delay. The room mic instead is 7 mS behind. So he delays the close mics by 6 ms. Voilà.
And how does his song sound now? I don't know but I think he may have undid the delay because he didn't like the sound of it either. ;-) But I'm sure he used it on the drums.
Ok, folks. This article turned out longer than I expected. Next time we will look at setting up speakers for an open-air concert and volunteer to tune the guitars. Unfortunately we will also then find out that our assistant forgot to pack the guitar tuner and why that won’t deter us much if at all. After the gig is over we’ll kick back and finish the physics series with a look at the tuning of our recording rooms for good sound.
See you then, and don’t forget to spend a bit of time now and then “plugging and chugging” on these numbers. Do it often enough and one day you will discover an understanding of the whole process.
In the north, the stars around Polaris are visible year round. One night last week, I went outside around midnight with a pair of binoculars. It was the first clear night all week up there, and the moon had not yet risen. To the north-west, over the dark, misty valley, were the glimmering gems of the Big Dipper, part of Ursa Major. The outside two stars in the bowl point right at Polaris. A little clockwise twist from there, east and down, and the big “W” of Cassiopeia can be found. My quarry lies below that. It has been eluding me for some time.
There is a glow closer to the horizon. The glow obscures the stars of the Andromeda constellation, which would lead right to what I'm looking for. Its lair lies above that one, so there is yet hope. It is darker higher up.
After fifteen minutes of letting my eyes adjust, I see a hint of white dust from the corner of my eye. It is distinct when my eyes are diverted, but gone when looked at directly. I raise the binoculars and gasp, as the recognition yanks me clean out of the sure knowledge that the ground beneath my feet is stationary.
I'm looking across 2,900,000 light years at the Andromeda Galaxy. There it is, and I can see it. My head swims as the sheer size of it becomes apparent. It is so BIG that I've been missing it! Two million, nine hundred thousand light years. The photons hitting my retina started their journey from over there almost three million years ago. That's 2,900,000 times 5,900,000,000,000 miles. The zeros blind you, and each is another factor of ten. There aren't enough connections in my brain to understand those numbers, or grasp how very very small I am in comparison. I suddenly feel my place, in time and in space. As small as my place is, and as short as my time is, it is what I have. And this time and place is utterly engulfed in magic, waiting for me to choose to see it. For a few minutes I bathe in that magic. I want to feel it, remember it and convey it. I want to be able to return here again, and show others the way.
While walking the dog a while ago and gazing up at the few stars that can be seen through the light pollution here in the city, I was thinking about what an amazing thing music really is. It is like a magical tinker-toy set with lots of ways to put the pieces together. How is it that, after ages of musical composition and thought, there are still new melodic and harmonic combinations to be created and discovered?
Being an engineer, I broke out the calculator when I got home. If I were limited to just a single octave in the western 12 tone scale, and only wrote quarter-note 4/4 motifs that were two bars long, there would be almost 430 million combinations available. To put this in perspective, it would take 613 people writing one two-bar quarter-note motif an hour 80 years to hit all the possible combinations. That's just one octave. My most used guitar covers four octaves in standard tuning. We aren't limited to quarter notes. Add harmony to it, and the number of possible combinations grows beyond comprehension.
Now multiply all of that by instrument voicings and dynamics. Now multiply that by all the ways instruments may be combined. If you are writing songs, multiply that by all the possible lyric combinations, subjects and topics, and that by all of the different languages, dialects, voices and accents. Step beyond western music, and raise that whole thing to the nth power.
The possibilities are infinite. Sure there are rules, but they are only suggestions which are broken all the time by composers. Composing is the exercising of our God given ability to roam freely in the infinite, mind-blowingly beautiful sonic universe, combined with the ability to both share the experience and map it out so others may follow. That sonic universe encompasses the entire range of human emotion and experience.
I am a musician. I am a practitioner of the magical art which can indeed convey that moment when I stood looking up from this relatively small, whirling blue ball, feeling myself blasting through the universe toward a destination and fate unknown.
(A newly discovered and translated by Steven G. Hashimoto fragment from The Book of Jobbing.)
And so the great Leader Nebulon did embark upon a search for suitable Sidemen for his orchestra, and he could find none; For in those days there were not many, and those that he could find were already working; Some worked the Ark with the House of Noah, and some had the house gig at The Walls of Jericho.
And many played behind the scat-singing team of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednago. So Nebulon did return to the Lord and saith, Lord, there are many musicians, but no Sidemen!, and he rent his clothing. And the Lord did say, Shmuck! Have you looked everywhere? Did you call the Union? And Nebulon did say, Lord, I have looked high and low, especially low, and only one or two could I find. What shall I do?0 And the Lord did afflict Nebulon with boils, saying Leave me to think on this!0 And just to buy some time he did also visit a plague of locusts on Egypt.
And the Lord did summon a league of Angels, and sent them forth over the land, commanding them to find him some Sidemen. And the Angels did go to the four corners of the earth, but the only unemployed Sideman they could find was one holy man in India who did play the horn with the slide. So with great fear the Angels did return to the Lord with the bad news, and filled with wrath he was. How can this be? At one time the world did teem with Sidemen, as a dead oxen does with maggots! And the Angels did say, Lord, many left the business, many have become idiots, and some have even become Leaders, and no Leader will work for another Leader.
So the Lord did cause drought for 40 days while he thought, and the answer came to him. He did recall that there was a factory, part of his Beasts Of The Field, Inc., division, that was in disuse. For it had been used to create golems, for which there had been no great demand, and so He had closed down the operation. And He thought, We can retool, and start turning out Sidemen.
And so it was done, and the Sidemen started rolling off the assembly line. But somehow a remnant of the golem program remained, and the Sidemen did come out acting unpredictably. Some stammered and stuttered, some talked to themselves under their breath, and some would not bathe. Some refused to shave their beards or to have their hair shorn, and some refused to wear the Jobbing Toga. And some wore the Toga, but left them crumpled in their chariots in between Gigs, or slept in them, or wore Togas from eons past, with ruffles. And some did not believe in maps, and wandered the land aimlessly looking for the Gig, and some did not believe in the use of the hourglass, and arrived at the Gig whenever they chose. And some loved the wine of dates, and some loved the burning of hemp. And some were created without ears, and some with knuckles where their eyebrows should be.
And some did worship the gods Trane, Jaco, Mahavishnu and Ornette, and mocked their Leaders. And some did steal food from the buffet line, yea, even before the Guests had dined. And some did try to lay with the Chick Singers, and some with the Guests. And some did not Read, and some could only Read, and not Blow. And some had no social skills, and some had no musical skills. And many of them were Dark, not in pigmentation of the skin, but in the Outlook on Life.
But every once in a while the line did produce a Perfect Sideman; One who followed orders without question; One who showed up on time; One who wore the Toga; One whose chariot always ran; One who Knew Tunes; But these Perfect Sidemen were few and far between, and besides their eyes were glazed, and they were shunned, for they were Boring, and knew not how to Hang. And soon the land teemed with Sidemen milling about, looking for Gigs, complaining and whining and arguing and occasionally stabbing each other in the back. And the Lord looked down upon his work, and said, It will do.
And so it was that a decree was issued by The Office of Noah to the leader Nebulon, and Nebulon gathered his minions together. "Rejoice!" he said, "for we have a Job! "And it is during the afternoon of a weekday, and it is the slow season!" And the men of the House of Nebulon did rejoice. "Is it a wedding?" one asked. "Is it a mitzvah?" cried another. "Is it a war?" tremulously asked another. "No. my children, it is a Corporate Gig. The client is the Pharaoh Ramesses, and it is the Dedication of his new Pyramid Complex!" And the men did dance for joy. "Gather your finest raiment and marshall the chariots, for we leave immediately!"cried Nebulon, "for we must cross the desert in order to make the hit on time!" And the musicians of Nebulon did scurry to their hovels and gather their finest clothing, and their instruments, and their water-bags and cheese-wheels, and all set off across the Great Desert, and their number was great. Presently they arrived at The Pyramid Complex, whereupon they were stopped by a Warrior. "What business have you here?" he asked, eyeing the horde with suspicion. "We have no need of more slaves, as the Pyramids are completed." "We have come to provide music for the Pharaoh," Nebulon told the guard. "I am the Great Leader Nebulon, of the House of Noah the Contractor." "Wait here," the guard said, and rode off to get clearance.
Two days did the host of Nebulon wait until the guard returned, saying, "You are to go to the Pyramid of Cheops for your Security badges." "Our thanks, esteemed guardian," said Nebulon, and they set off for the Pyramid of Cheops. And it was not until the setting of the sun that they arrived at the Pyramid of Cheops.
As a creator of music, do I possess a strength of identity to define my own role? Even if my recording never make it beyond an internet forum for critique or review, can I have purpose? Or, do I need an audience to give me definition?
A lot of questions like this have been bouncing around in my head after recently reading an interview with Sunny Murray. I found the article Sunny Murray: Interview by Dan Warburton, 3rd November 2000.while doing a Google search on another topic. Just reading the tag line “And when I play they know I exist, and it leaves a space when I go.” (Murray) said this was crucial information. It was as if, “Read Me! Read Me!” was trumpeting in the air.
Sunny Murray drummed with both the big names of bop and then the guiding forces of Free Jazz such as Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler. He has continued playing and recording when possible, never stopping, but never getting the recognition his contribution deserves.
"...It makes me a little crazy, because I practise so hard not to die... (Pause) I'm always here practising. I don't know why I can't work. I know I must die, but it's kind of a reverse psychology thing for me – I refuse to die because I don't work. I practise, I stay creative. Maybe people say “He's at the Studio des Islettes all the time...” but I'm here to practise or to do something spiritual with my life as a musician. I'm not here because I'm depressed or I don't have anywhere else to go; I'm here because I'm constantly training, fortifying, feeding my spirit so that the lack of work that society seems to discriminate against me with, the work society deletes where I'm concerned, won't beat me. I'm 64 now, and if it takes me till I'm 94 I'm going to continue to play and try for the new generation to hear me. I feel in some way the system refuses to let the new generation hear me, because I could become a force as a drummer, not as a rich one, but as a real direction for young drummers to follow to be good creative drummers instead of just listening to each other all the time. For me it's like the Mona Lisa painting in the Louvre... there's a million prints but you have to go to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa. That's how I feel about me and all the other drummers. OK, they listen to Max as the father of bebop, to Elvin the father of swing, but when it comes to avant-garde there's no father figure... When I go to New York and see William Parker's thing, and see what they got going on the East Side, and the Knitting Factory, I feel totally excluded. They look at me like I'm an alien from space. The young cats look at me kinda strange, like I don't exist. But I'm there. And when I play they know I exist, and it leaves a space when I go." (Murray)
Here, the creator of music has defined his purpose. He knows that you aren't going to see his newest recording in the jazz section at Barnes & Noble. He knows that he probably won't be invited to play at Lincoln Center by Wynton Marsalis. Even as a seminal figure in free jazz drumming along side Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell, he doesn't get the same chance at work as other mainstream jazz drummers. Yet, his heart beats on, practicing and keeping ready. His identity, self defined, ready to play and create the music.
Can I say that about myself? When my face stares back at me in the mirror, do I see a man who finds his definition in the adoration of an audience, or do I see a man able to create music without the potential for the big audiences? Do I make music because I am a sychopant, secretly craving to be the audience's entertainment lackey? Can I practice the art of music and recording, knowing I may never achieve fame? I don't know.
I do know Sunny Murray's side of the game is the one to be on. Even when the world doesn't see you, the importance of being ready, practicing, getting better, being the better musician has become crucial in my personal definition. My gut tells me, the more ready you are, the more able you become, the more opportunities you'll make for yourself. The more sucker punches of a career in music and recording you'll be able to stand up from. Don't rely on the fickle trends, stake your ground and build yourself as the solid house. Let them say, his was never a question, No, his was always the answer.
Cyprian Alexzander
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