Module 4 of 6: Get That Sound

Summary

If you want to work in music or a music-related area you will need the ability to analyse and assess what you are hearing musically so you can communicate your ideas to others. This module helps you to achieve this by taking you on a musical journey through the components of what makes your favourite tracks sound like they sound. You will be able to recognise the musical and sonic components in a performance or recording as well as identify sonic faults in them. You'll also find out about vocals and instrumental parts and how they work in music.

Content

Building Blocks

Rhythm and melody: variety of rhythms, what is melody?

Harmonic intervals: major and minor triads

Timbre: examples of a variety of instruments, sound colour

Dynamics and accents: of human hearing, of instruments

Tempo and Rhythm

Bars and beats, tempo BPM

Metronome markings, syncopation

Western styles of music

Non-western styles of music

Sonic Components

Acoustics: wave forms, frequency amplitude, pitch

Frequency range of human hearing

Harmonics Resonance Inverse square law dB scale

Reflections: direction of sound, depth of field

Reverberation

What is it? The reflective properties of materials

Sabine coefficient, RT60, frequency masking

Make a one-minute recording using reverb and echo

Effects: reverb, delay, echo, EQ

Stereo Recording Techniques

Placement of sounds in the stereo field, artificial stereo

Mixing and placement of sounds in the stereo field

Frequency masking

Mixing a prepared song template

Identifying Sonic Faults

Signal to noise ratio, distortion, distortion as an effect

Microphone overload, desk overload, recorder overload

Faulty equipment, sibilance, de esser

Popshield, wind noise, Rycote type windshield, EQ editing,

Correcting Notes

Intonation problems, time-keeping, out of tune vocals

Auto tune and pitch adjusting plug ins, recording solutions

Editing audio and MIDI, splitting notes, crossfades

Quantising, balance, timbre, sonic faults

Instruments and Vocal Textures

Sound spectrum, frequency range of human hearing

Instruments and their frequency/note range

Sine, triangle, square wave, harmonics, tone colour 

Real instrument recordings

Acoustic Environments

Recording in a reverberant location

The adverse effect of reverb on bass instruments

Microphone types and polar patterns

Input on convolution reverb, pre-delay, effect of excessive reverb