Hello from a f-f-f-f-freezing cold York. It got down to -15 degrees Celsius near here the other night. OK, I know that's tame compared some parts of this planet but I like things to be above freezing at least. Had you been making a recording in York Minster at that temperature the reverberation time would be 0.5 seconds longer than it would be at usual room temperature (20 degrees C) because of the lower speed of sound in cold air!
The fellowship is still speeding along nicely, despite the arctic temperatures: Dave Fisher, emeritus professor of Sound Recording for the Tonmeister course, gave me a fascinating hour-long interview last month and more industry luminaries have said they'd like to contribute their thoughts: multiple award winning classical recording engineer Tony Faulkner, Tony Platt (who's worked with artists including Bob Marley and Led Zeppelin) and John Emmit (a supervisor at Thames Television and Oscar-winning broadcast designer).
Sound on Sound magazine are publishing a piece I've written about the project in April, I'm currently putting something together for Physics Review and I'm giving a public lecture in York on Sound Recording and Reproduction at the end of this month. Hopefully by then temperatures and reverberation times will be back to something approaching normal!
(P.S. The Royal Academy of Engineering have started up a blog about engagement and engineering. Take a look here.)
Thursday, 9 February 2012
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
New Year Update
Happy New Year!
A lot has been happening on the project over the last few weeks. The first public consultation event that was held here at the Audio Lab in York on 7th December and was a great success - the venue was full to capacity and we had professionals, university students and year 12/13 in attendance, with some travelling over from the north-west of the country to be at the event. There was a lively debate, with all sorts of opinions expressed and Leslie Gaston gave a fascinating presentation about employment in the audio industry in the States.
Yesterday (10th January) I visited Glyndŵr University in Wrexham, Wales and ran two sessions with students there, as well as giving a presentation about some of the other research I do into audio separation and processing. Again, there were some fascinating contributions - some of which corresponded with opinions expressed in York, others which gave new insights. There is a focus on live sound, as well as recording, technology at Glyndŵr which was evident in some of the responses and it's interesting to have views on sound recording from people working in this related area too.
Tomorrow I'm interviewing Dave Fisher, emeritus professor of sound recording for the University of Surrey's Tonmeister course. It will be interesting to hear from him about where he thinks the skills and identity of the modern sound recordist are aligned and I look forward to sharing his insights in due course.
A lot has been happening on the project over the last few weeks. The first public consultation event that was held here at the Audio Lab in York on 7th December and was a great success - the venue was full to capacity and we had professionals, university students and year 12/13 in attendance, with some travelling over from the north-west of the country to be at the event. There was a lively debate, with all sorts of opinions expressed and Leslie Gaston gave a fascinating presentation about employment in the audio industry in the States.
Yesterday (10th January) I visited Glyndŵr University in Wrexham, Wales and ran two sessions with students there, as well as giving a presentation about some of the other research I do into audio separation and processing. Again, there were some fascinating contributions - some of which corresponded with opinions expressed in York, others which gave new insights. There is a focus on live sound, as well as recording, technology at Glyndŵr which was evident in some of the responses and it's interesting to have views on sound recording from people working in this related area too.
Tomorrow I'm interviewing Dave Fisher, emeritus professor of sound recording for the University of Surrey's Tonmeister course. It will be interesting to hear from him about where he thinks the skills and identity of the modern sound recordist are aligned and I look forward to sharing his insights in due course.
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Project update
I've been busy getting everything sorted for the first consultation event which takes place next week, here at the Audio Lab research and teaching facility in York. The event is now fully booked and there is a waiting list for places (although it's not too long so it's still worth letting me know if you're interested in attending). I'm really pleased at the level of interest and this bodes really well for the rest of the project.
Meanwhile I've had the opportunity to interview a dubbing mixer with over thirty years experience in television and film sound. Neil Hillman is managing director of The Audio Suite and his skills are widely recognised, not least by the Royal Television Society who gave him their Best Production Craft Skills Award in 2010. This interview, along with others that are planned, will form part of the publicly available project archive and, with material from the transcripts of events such as the one in York next week, will inform the research outputs from this project. It was a fascinating discussion and I'm looking forward to sharing it with everyone.
I'll be back soon to report on how the first event goes.
Meanwhile I've had the opportunity to interview a dubbing mixer with over thirty years experience in television and film sound. Neil Hillman is managing director of The Audio Suite and his skills are widely recognised, not least by the Royal Television Society who gave him their Best Production Craft Skills Award in 2010. This interview, along with others that are planned, will form part of the publicly available project archive and, with material from the transcripts of events such as the one in York next week, will inform the research outputs from this project. It was a fascinating discussion and I'm looking forward to sharing it with everyone.
I'll be back soon to report on how the first event goes.
Friday, 11 November 2011
Simon and Garfunkel - The Harmony Game
This was the title of an episode of Imagine, the BBC HD arts program edited by Alan Yentob, which was aired this week (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0171r6x). It was a feature-length look at the making of their final album Bridge Over Troubled Water which was released in January 1970. I grew up with this album but had not heard it for many years when I watched this documentary which featured extensive interviews Simon and Garfunkel but also the engineer and producer Roy Halee. Clearly S&G both felt that his input had a huge influence on the sound of the album but what also struck me was the extent to which they kept referring to him as an engineer, often with superlatives such as 'genius' appearing in close proximity.
Embarking on this project has made me super-sensitive to word 'engineer' when I come across it in any context relating to audio technology and the act of the recording sound in particular; and it kept cropping up in this piece. Because Halee is also credited, along with S&G, as producer on this record there wasn't always a clear distinction between what he was doing in this role, and when he was acting as engineer but there were some examples of when others present during the recording felt he was doing what they considered to be 'engineering' things well. An example of those was moving around a room clapping his hands and identifying positions for instruments and the microphones with which to record them. So as I'm watching this, I'm thinking 'is that engineering?'.
A hand clap is an impulse-like sound and impulses are useful in audio testing and evaluation because they are short-lived and contain all frequencies of sound. The latter means that we can test something (the response of a room in a particular position in this case) at all those frequencies and the former means that the original sound dies away fast enough for us to actually be able to hear the room's response to that sound. But atucally a clap isn't a perfect impulse - it isn't as brief as we'd really like and it doesn't contain equal amounts of energy at all frequencies. When I go out and measure the impulse responses of buildings for use with convolution reverbs (which can be found here) I take a load of expensive kit, record a swept sine-wave in the room, and then do some processing on that recording to give me a very-nearly perfect impulse response. Even if that technology had existed back in the very late sixties, it wouldn't have been practical for Halee to go to these lengths to evaluate the room response at candidate spots for placing the drum kit would it? I'm not aware of anyone who would do this even now (I certainly don't when I'm recording - only when I'm doing the specialist job of measurements for convolution reverbs); the 'clap and listen' test suffices, right? Thinking of some current definitions of engineering in general (i.e. outside of audio recording) which seem to be along the lines of 'the use of quantitative and analytical methods, along with scientific knowledge, to solve problems', does the 'clap test' measure up? Does it matter or not if it measures up? Do we wish to limit our definition of engineering to the one I've just given? Given the sheer quality of the human auditory system (astonishing dynamic range capability for starters) and the fact that this is the 'target receiver' for any audio recording, isn't the ear, rather than a measurement microphone the best thing to use in such a situation? Is it ever right to abandon the sense of hearing and defer to the measurement of machines when recording? But is hearing a way of actually quantifying an audio signal or is it impossible to separate sense from perception? Do engineers only measure rather than sensing and perceiving?
I don't think there are simple, straightforward, catch-all answers to any of these questions; that's why I'm doing this project! But when I watch a documentary like this which takes the time to explore the writing, performing and then recording of an album, these are the questions that rattle around in my mind.
Simon and Garfunkel - The Harmony Game will still be available to view on BBC iPlayer for a few days. If you're interested in these questions I'd recommend taking a look (having a read of this interview too: http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_roy_halee/) and asking yourself whether you think what Roy Halee does is engineering.
Embarking on this project has made me super-sensitive to word 'engineer' when I come across it in any context relating to audio technology and the act of the recording sound in particular; and it kept cropping up in this piece. Because Halee is also credited, along with S&G, as producer on this record there wasn't always a clear distinction between what he was doing in this role, and when he was acting as engineer but there were some examples of when others present during the recording felt he was doing what they considered to be 'engineering' things well. An example of those was moving around a room clapping his hands and identifying positions for instruments and the microphones with which to record them. So as I'm watching this, I'm thinking 'is that engineering?'.
A hand clap is an impulse-like sound and impulses are useful in audio testing and evaluation because they are short-lived and contain all frequencies of sound. The latter means that we can test something (the response of a room in a particular position in this case) at all those frequencies and the former means that the original sound dies away fast enough for us to actually be able to hear the room's response to that sound. But atucally a clap isn't a perfect impulse - it isn't as brief as we'd really like and it doesn't contain equal amounts of energy at all frequencies. When I go out and measure the impulse responses of buildings for use with convolution reverbs (which can be found here) I take a load of expensive kit, record a swept sine-wave in the room, and then do some processing on that recording to give me a very-nearly perfect impulse response. Even if that technology had existed back in the very late sixties, it wouldn't have been practical for Halee to go to these lengths to evaluate the room response at candidate spots for placing the drum kit would it? I'm not aware of anyone who would do this even now (I certainly don't when I'm recording - only when I'm doing the specialist job of measurements for convolution reverbs); the 'clap and listen' test suffices, right? Thinking of some current definitions of engineering in general (i.e. outside of audio recording) which seem to be along the lines of 'the use of quantitative and analytical methods, along with scientific knowledge, to solve problems', does the 'clap test' measure up? Does it matter or not if it measures up? Do we wish to limit our definition of engineering to the one I've just given? Given the sheer quality of the human auditory system (astonishing dynamic range capability for starters) and the fact that this is the 'target receiver' for any audio recording, isn't the ear, rather than a measurement microphone the best thing to use in such a situation? Is it ever right to abandon the sense of hearing and defer to the measurement of machines when recording? But is hearing a way of actually quantifying an audio signal or is it impossible to separate sense from perception? Do engineers only measure rather than sensing and perceiving?
I don't think there are simple, straightforward, catch-all answers to any of these questions; that's why I'm doing this project! But when I watch a documentary like this which takes the time to explore the writing, performing and then recording of an album, these are the questions that rattle around in my mind.
Simon and Garfunkel - The Harmony Game will still be available to view on BBC iPlayer for a few days. If you're interested in these questions I'd recommend taking a look (having a read of this interview too: http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_roy_halee/) and asking yourself whether you think what Roy Halee does is engineering.
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Have Your Say!
The date for the first public event is now set: Wednesday 7th December at 2pm. The event will be held at the Audio Lab's new facilities at Genesis 6 on the Science Park at the University of York. The main business is a discussion amongst professionals and students about what recording is: the skills, knowledge and experience that are needed and the identity of the 'recording engineer'. There will also be a talk by Russ Hepworth-Sawyer, co-author of 'What is Music Production?' and with considerable experience in the pop music industry. In addition there will be the chance to have a look around the Audio Lab's facilities, not forgetting the all important break for tea, coffee and biscuits. These discussion groups form a core part of this research - it really is your chance to have your say about what the recording profession is and what you think it should be.
IMPORTANT: The discussion group will be recorded and transcribed but contributions will be anonymous and will be run in line with the University's ethical policy on this kind of research.
If York is a long way away from you then don't worry: other similar events are planned in different parts of the country, the next being at Glyndwr University in Wales. If you'd be interested in having such an event at your college or university then please let me know via email.
Places are limited so if you'd like to attend then please send me an email (jez [dot] wells [at] york [dot] ac [dot] uk).
IMPORTANT: The discussion group will be recorded and transcribed but contributions will be anonymous and will be run in line with the University's ethical policy on this kind of research.
If York is a long way away from you then don't worry: other similar events are planned in different parts of the country, the next being at Glyndwr University in Wales. If you'd be interested in having such an event at your college or university then please let me know via email.
Places are limited so if you'd like to attend then please send me an email (jez [dot] wells [at] york [dot] ac [dot] uk).
A trip to the Royal Society
I spent yesterday at the Royal Society in London, honing my science communication skills at a workshop run by none other than Judith Hann (a household name amongst those old enough to remember Tomorrow's World) and John Exelby (co-founder of BBC World News). It was a fascinating day spent working with other scientists and technologists on effectively communicating issues in these areas and what I learned will be of great use in letting the world know about the outcomes of this project and about what engineers and sound recordists actually do in their day to day work.
Friday, 21 October 2011
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