At 06:31 3/7/2013, Robert Greene wrote:
Variations from reality ought surely to be based on knowing how to reproduce the reality first and then introducing the variations. One does not bend pitches for artistic effect until one is able to play in tune, so to speak.
Yes, indeed; but such question begging exposes the problem per analogiam. What does one define as "in tune"? What you are asking for is the ability to reproduce a complete soundfield with 100% accuracy, and then to introduce variations. We have not yet progressed to this level.
If people want to treat recording as a pure art form where one simply judges the results on aesthetic grounds. it would be hard to say that was wrong. But it surely takes recording out of the realm of science.
I am not sure that many of its practitioners (even Blumlein) regarded recording as a science: it is rather an exercise in engineering combined with aesthetics and as such intrinsically hard to theorize about.
To my mind, offensive or no, it remains startling to me that there is no recorded demo of how various stereo mike techniques reproduce the sound of a pink noise source at various spots around the recording stage, for example.
I cannot imagine that anyone would want to listen to a CD of pink nose or that anyone can believe that objective determinations can be made by doing so for longer than a few minutes. The ear adjusts to what it is hearing, as the eye does to colours under different lighting conditions and there is no equivalent to "grey cards" for white balance. Even doing A/B comparisons with the flick of a switch is fraught with self-deception, unless the levels are controlled and enough time is allowed to accustom oneself to A before assessing B.
Surely people might want to know whether the mike technique was changing the perceived frequency response of sources depending on where the sources were? How can people NOT want to know this?
There is a book by Jürgen Meyer (Acoustics and the Performance of Music). The blurb on Amazon says: "This classic reference on musical acoustics and performance practice begins with a brief introduction to the fundamentals of acoustics and the generation of musical sounds. It then discusses the particulars of the sounds made by all the standard instruments in a modern orchestra as well as the human voice, the way in which the sounds made by these instruments are dispersed and how the room into which they are projected affects the sounds."
I have had this book for over 30 years. It contains polar diagrams of most orchestral instruments plotted for different frequencies. Nobody that I know has ever found much use for the data in making a recording, beyond those generalizations that are obvious to the ear.
I agree with EC that a complete analysis of the relationship between recording and musical sound would be a tremendous task, perhaps one that is not even well defined.
I think that is a conceit: there are far too many independent variables and the exercise would probably become what Glen Gould would describe as "centipedal".
This is how science works. One works out simple cases first. The fact that no one knows if there are infinitely many primes pairs with difference 2(eg 17 and 19) does not make it irrelevant to know that there are infinitely many primes. One answers simple questions first.
Again: recording is not a science. If anything it is a craft with elements of engineering. I have been teaching it for over 30 years at university level and the number of textbooks that are of any use whatsoever, and those with caveats, can be counted on one hand. Take, for instance, the excellent book on Stereo by Streicher: most of the information is either theoretical (e.g. the combination of unrealizable polar diagrams) or else cannot be used without extensive empirical experimentation.
Personally, I would just like to know which mike technique does what to the tonal character of sources at different locations around the recording stage. If you don't care, you don't care. But I wish I had a disc where I could listen and find out. I find it hard to believe that other people are not interested in this.
As I am sure you know, active listening is a very tiring process that most people are not trained to participate in. If one cannot identify differences within seconds it is best to take a long rest and try again much later. Few have the patience for this and professionals cannot afford the time when musicians are waiting to perform.
Years ago I decided to learn the piano(I am a violinist!) just to see how it would go, by learning the Rachmaninoff 3rd piano concerto --a measure at a time. As you can imagine I did not get very far! (the first statement of the theme went ok but soon, no soap). Of course this was a joke! I knew from experience of learning to play the violin that one learns the basics step by step and builds up to the complex pieces over a long time.
It is, of course, possible to learn to play the notes of the whole concerto if one wants to waste time doing so. There was a young man at my high school who had learned to play several complicated pieces. He could not read music and had learned them by rote. Of course, though he had "mastered" the last movement of the Moonlight Sonata, this did not help him to learn the first prelude of the 48 at a faster rate!
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