Keith Anderson’s

Late Homework

7/13/14

Part Two:

1. What is the difference between Peaking and Shelving EQ (filter) responses?

Peaking means when you boost or cut, a peak or a valley is created.

Shelving means when you boost or cut, a shelf is created at the chosen frequency.

2.  What does “Parametric” mean, and what three things must a parametric EQ be able to do in order to warrant the name?

You must be able to choose the frequency

You must be able to boost or cut the frequency

You must be able to adjust the shape of the Q

3. What do you call the loudest frequency in a band pass filter?

The center frequency

4. Describe in detail how you create an Auxiliary Track in Pro Tools, and how you could send signal INTO it via “Bus 7”.

Create new track, choose “aux” track. Once it is created, change the input to “bus 7”.

On a track you would like to send to the aux track, elect any of the sends, and change it to “bus 7”, and bring up the send volume.

5. How could the Aux Track you just described be used to add reverb to various tracks of the mix (how would you set that up)?

Create an aux track as described above, and then on the tracks you would like to send through to add reverb, select the appropriate bus( we’ll say bus 7 again), and send it to the aux track. On the aux track, under inserts, select a reverb plugin, and have fun.

6. Describe in the detail process of “Bouncing to Disk” in Pro Tools, then how to burn that bounced file as an Audio CD in “Toast”.

Under file, select bounce to disk. when the bounce window comes up, select 44.1K, AAIF, stereo interleaved, .WAV, and anything else correct that I missed. Click ‘Bounce’. Not sure about toast, but I think I could do it If it was in front of me.

7. What is the function of a Direct Box (DI) and how do you hook it up?

A direct box allows you to take an instrument signal and turn it into a mic signal. It allows you to get the exact signal coming off the instrument without going through an amp and a mic. Using a DI box, you can go direct in and through an amp at the same time, and then blend the signal to get a sound you love.

8. What was the greatest challenge you faced when creating your “Drop-In Mix” for week 8?

Matching styles. On the bowie track, we used a very distant mic in the recital hall to try and hit that orchestral sound that ‘Life on Mars’ has.

I wouldn’t say this was very difficult, but just the most important challenge to meet.

9. What do you feel you understand the least and want to brush up on?

Compression

Keith Anderson

MULTITRACK QUESTIONS FOR WEEK 6

Part One:

1. What does binary mean?

Binary is a counting system consisting of 1’s and 0’s.

2. What is the advantage of using binary coding instead of the decimal system?

In a binary system, a processor reads 1 and 0 as “on” or “off”. it reads the digit spaces as switches. In a decimal system, each digit space would have to represent a switch with 10 possible positions. This  would ‘a’; take up more computing space, though it would take less space to visually represent, and ‘b’; quantum computers with switches that have the ability to reliably hold more than 2 positions aren’t really for sale yet.

3.  What does Signal-to-Noise Ratio mean?

It is the ratio of desired signal (a singers voice coming through from a microphone all the way to the monitors) to the undesired noise that is created in the amplification process along way.

4. What is Dynamic Range?

Dynamic range is the ratio of the loudest possible sound to the most quiet possible sound( this was the day I missed I’m pretty sure, definitely throw an “ask” on this one)

5. What are the 4 basic controls on a compressor (not all are always present)?

Ratio, Threshold, Attack, Release.

What are some other controls that MIGHT be on a compressor?

Knee shape, input and output gain.

6. What is unity gain?

Unity gain is when the input and output gain between however many devices has been established to be the same.

7.  What does Gain Reduction mean?

Gain reduction is the amount of dB a compressor is not allowing through.

8.  Why do meters on Compressors start at “0” and move backwards?

Because the meter is showing you the gain reduction.

9. A gain of “minus 4” is equal to what “ratio” on a compressor?

4:1

10.  What is a good Compression Ratio to use for vocals or bass guitar?

4:1

11.  What is a good amount of Gain Reduction to set on a vocal or bass guitar?

Depends on the sound you want? I really need a compression brush up.

12.  What is Multiband Compression?

Multi band compression allows you to compress different bands of the frequency spectrum differently. Say the high’s are just pounding through a little too much, you can use multi band compression to really hammer them down if you want, and do more subtle compression on the mid’s and low’s.

Keith Anderson

MULTITRACK AUDIO PRODUCTION

Homework for Week 5

DUE: TUESDAY OF WEEK 6, at 4:00

1.What is an “Overdub”?

An overdub is when live audio is recorded along with prerecorded audio, allowing you to add tracks without having to get it all in one live take.

2. What is a “Punch In”?

A punch in is when you record over prerecorded audio, allowing you to redo a part of a track that has a mistake without having to do the entire take over again.

3.What level(s) is it best to monitor at when mixing?

There isn’t a “best level”. Find a level you are comfortable with. Too loud, you’ll fatigue your ears quicker. Too quiet, and you may miss more subtle things in the mix. You should also consider the volume people will be listening to the music you’re mixing, and try listening to it there. Maybe find a similar piece of music with a sound you like, listen to that at a volume you like, and then mix at that level.

4.What three things determine “depth” in a mix?

Decibel level, reverb content, and high frequency content.

5.What is the advantage of monitoring a mix through headphones?

When mixing on headphones, you eliminate all reflections of the room you’re mixing in. Each ear only hears from its own earpiece, so there is no way for sounds to go anywhere but from the earpiece to the corresponding ear.

6.What is the big disadvantage of mixing through headphones?

Ear fatigue can happen much quicker, and ear damage is much easier to cause. Or the panning field is perceived to be much smaller? (I’m not sure which is right, or if either are)

7.What does “bit depth” mean, and why is it important?

Bit depth is the number of digit spaces used to count in a binary system. In a 3 bit binary system, you can count 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111, or a total of 8 values. The higher the bit depth, the more accurate of a sample when sampling a waveform.

8.What does “A to D” mean?

Analog to digital.

9.What is a “DAC”?

Digital to analog converter.

10.Describe in detail how you might mic an acoustic guitar(in stereo)

In a nice sounding room, I would take two KM84’s and set them up as a near coincident pair. With the diaphragms about 6 inches apart, at a 110º spread. The center of the spread would be pointed at the neck-body joint of the guitar, perpendicular to the neck, and be about 1.5 feet away. This pair would be panned apart.   Then, for the sake of trying it, I’d put up an R-121 at chest-level with the player about 5 feet back, pointed at the player. I’d play with the placement of this mic to see where i can avoid troublesome phase relationships.

The KM84’s would serve as the main source of volume for the guitar’s sound, and the Royer would serve as a center fill room sound, if the KM84’s just sounded a bit too close. I really like making use of real room reverberation to fill out sounds where I can. Using this setup, I could pan the KM84’s hard left and right, and bring up the Royer, panning it to push the reverb of the guitar to be where I want it to be. This would shift the image of the whole guitar slightly to whatever direction I panned the Royer. In a room that didn’t sound too great, I might just not use the room sound of the Royer at all.

Now, if I where just trying to get a mono guitar sound, It’s going to be the C414 every time. It just fails to disappoint. Parallel to the guitar body, just over a foot away. Cardoid. If I’m in a nice warm woody room, omni or bidirectional, we’ll see what sounds good.

11.How might you mic an open-back electric guitar cabinet to get a “big” sound?

Aventone CK40 panned wide open, play with the distance until you  get what you like, but remember any signal coming from the back of the cab is out of phase with the front. If the Aventone is too much, maybe just a single large diaphragm condenser like the TS-2. A ribbon would also do a fine job.

Once these signals were coming through the board, I’d play with the panning relationship of the front mic to the rear mic, and just see what I liked.

Keith Anderson

MULTITRACK AUDIO PRODUCTION

Questions for Week 4

Due by 4:00 on Tuesday, Week 5

1. What is coincident micing and what is good about it?

Coincident mixing is when you take two microphones and place the diaphragms as close as you can get them while looking in different directions. It is useful to create more complicated stereo sounds.

2. What is near-coincident micing and what is good about it?

Near coincident is Similar to coincident, but the microphones are father apart. The aspect of a real time delay is introduced with a near coincident setup. ( sounds get to the microphones at different times.)

3. What is a spaced pair and what is good about using it?

A spaced pair setup uses two microphones spaced apart. Whether or not to call a pair coincident, near-coincide, or a spaced pair depend on your distance from the sound source. A pair spaced 2 feet apart could be a spaced pair at 3 feet from the sound source, but from a mile away, may as well be considered near coincident.

4. What is X-Y micing and what is good about it?

An X-Y setup is two cardiod microphones looking 90º apart. It sounds great, and captures a wonderful stereo image of your source.

5. What is ORTF micing and what is good about it?

ORTF mixing is very close to X-Y, however, the ORTF standard is as follows: two cardoid microphones, spread 110º, with the diaphragms spaced 17cm apart.

6. What is the advantage of having a 110 degree angle between cardioid mics when recording to stereo?

At 110º, you lose the 3dB bump in the center of the stereo image.

7. What is the Blumlein system?

the Blumlein is a coincident pair setup with two figure-8 patter microphones.

 8. What is proximity effect?

 The proximity effect is when a a microphone gets closer to the sound source, it has a tendency to accentuate the lower frequencies(sound baser or woofy).

9. What is the key command for “Save” in Pro Tools?

 Command + “S”

10. What are the key commands in Pro Tools for zooming in and out (looking at waveforms)?

Command + “[/]”

Keith Anderson

QUESTIONS From WEEK 2

DUE: Tuesday of Week 3 at 4:OO PM

in Terry’s Mailbox (Com Mailboxes, 3^rd Floor) or give it to him in class.

1.  What is sound?

Sound is vibration that travels through the air and is perceived by our ears.

2.  What causes sound?

Sound is caused something physically vibrating, causing air molecules to vibrate as well.

3.  What is “Phase”?

Phase is the position of a waveform to an identical waveform.

5.  Why is phase important?

If you have a waveform and a duplicate waveform, and they are perfectly 180 degrees out of phase with each other, no sound will be produced because the

6.  What is the relationship between the frequency of a sound wave and its wavelength?

The lower the frequency, the longer the wavelength. The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength.

7. What is Frequency?
Frequency (in wavelengths) refers to the amount of cycles in  a wave over a given period of time. We measure this in Hertz, abbreviated Hz. 440Hz means 440 cycles per second, or ‘A’ above middle ‘C’.

8.  How high and how low (in Hz) can a person with excellent hearing hear?

20hz to 20kHz

9. What is Amplitude?

Amplitude refers to the size of the peaks and valleys in a wave form. In sound, we hear it as volume.

10. What is Timbre?

Timbre is another word for ‘tone’. It is affected by the shape of the waveform.

11. What are Harmonics (also called “Partials”)?

Harmonics are what make up every naturally occurring tone we hear. For example, an open guitar string, when plucked, will appear to be vibrating its full length. In fact, it is vibrating at each point where a partial exists. This can be demonstrated by holding a finger gently on the string at the 12th fret (the middle of the string) and plucking with your other hand. while you aren’t fretting the octave, the octave above your open sting is what you hear, because you aren’t allowing the sting to vibrate at full length.

Class Handout

That is the PDF you can download

Ubrain is the app I talked about

Along with I-doser, Holosync, LifeSync are some program things you can look into.

More of my research sites:

http://meridiansoundtherapy.com/history-of-sound-healing/

http://www.biowaves.com/Info/HistoryOfSound.php

http://www.brainwavecollege.com/brainwave-entrainment-history.html

Huang-PsychologicalEffectsBrainwaveEntrainment Another PDF

My presentation in paper form:

At this moment you are listening to my voice.  Whether this is a pleasant experience or not is up for interpretation but technically you are brain is attempting to comprehend what I am saying.  As this is happening the electrical impulses from each neuron are firing at different amplitudes between each cell and giving off a frequency in electromagnetic waves measured in Hertz.  At this moment your brain is exhibiting beta activity measured between 12 to 29.75 Hz.  Beta is a state what we experience in normal waking consciousness as we rush around, go to class, fear about what we will make for dinner, feel excited about when this presentation will end and you get to see who commented on your facebook post, and again fear how your project may compare to the others shown and so on and so forth for most of your waking hours.  You brain is exudes beta waves and it is a normal state of beginning.  As you begin to focus more on my voice and what I am saying, maybe blocking those things from your mind you begin to move into alpha which is between 7.5 to 11.75 Hz.  The Alpha state is associated with hyper learning and focus.  When other thought begin to clear out of your mind and you are not concerned as much with the opinions of life, just the task at hand.  Within the realm of meditation this is the beginning of introspection, getting lost in good music, and as far as most people get when they sit down and try to meditate.  There is a feeling of peace and happiness. Tonight when you go to sleep you will experience these sensations whether you are conscious of them or not.  As you nod off you move from beta, your high alert self to high alpha between 10 to 11.75 hz you may notice your thoughts begin to subside and the bed, or floor depending on your situation, feels softer as your body begins to melt deeper your brain state changes to low alpha 7.5 to 9.25Hz and you experience the sensation of deep relaxation.  Once you are completely relaxed Theta most noted for rapid eye movement sleep and luicid dreaming, unfolds physiologically from your brain which is between 3.5 to 6.75 Hz and then lastly you fall into Delta which is mostly associated with dreamless deep sleep and goes as low as .5 hz and as high at 3hz.  When you wake up your brain moves through those states until you are again in beta, and as we know some individuals move into this faster than others.

As I said delta is mainly known for being part of deep dreamless sleep, but scientists have shown that as a whole we are in beta and delta silmultaniously all day throughout our waking consciousness.  Now you may be thinking but delta is dreamless sleep how can I be exstremey alert and exstremely sound asleep?  The autonomic nervous system works out of delta brain wave patterns.  The meirical of how your heart pumps blood, your mouth salivates so you don’t walk around with cotton mouth, your lung breath and process oxygen, your cells communicated and neurons firing are all run by delta while we attempt to manage our lives in Beta.

This is where sound technology comes in.  When a person lives in Beta and Delta they are easily bothered.  Lights, sounds, partners, relationships, work, school, their own mind.  EEG scans have shown that those who meditate and have high IQs operate not mainly from beta and delta but from alpha, theta, and delta.  With alpha comes intuitive knowing, deep alpha has almost dreamlike states, focus without stress, they see the outcome rather than getting caught up in the drama of the details.  Most people who are visionaries and inventors are working out of high theta, which is conscious while in theta.  Hallucinations are also a part of this state.  And for centuries humans have been inducing these trances by use of sound.

Back in the good old days when everything was organic and it was a human belief that if you did not do a dance in the morning the sun would not rise steady drum beats were used to create a binaural and mononaural tone effect.  Binaural tones are when two tones, come into each ear separately and your mind finds the difference mathematically between those two frequencies through what some refer to as tunneling or the entrain effect.  For example if you have 400Hz going into one ear and 420Hz going into the other ear your brain will interpret the frequency as 20Hz which is high beta and follow that.  Monaural tones are the volume of the combined binaural tones.  Now adays this principle is used with sin waves without the harmonic series you would get from a drum.  This allows for pinpointed effects on one’s state of consciousness.  You may have heard of Isochronic tones which can be the same or different tones which are just turned on and off at different intervals.  So you can have a binaural beat but it only is used once every minute for 2 seconds.  Which was done in a study in China.

The technology of these tones is used in alternative medicine to treat anxiety, stress, and sleep disorders.  The technology used to treat these conditions are usually just conditionally based, so if you are having a hard time sleeping for a night you listen to .5 to 10 hz on an app and it can aid in sleeping.  There are other companies and doctors out there though which have made long term programs to change the state you live in over time.  Which are usually in the form of meditations.  These meditations use specific frequencies in those states of beta, alpha, theta, and delta which their neuroscientists have done research with to change your state from beta and delta awareness to alpha, theta, delta awareness which comes naturally through years of meditation.

Every individual’s brain is made up of many of the same components but is folded in a different way to store information, called cortical folding.  Studies have found that this creates different electrical emanations of these frequencies for each individual.  But like most things in science there is another story.  A study done in china at the Zhengzhou University with 64 participants male and female found that when people are given the same binaural beats through headphones while in the same room all experience changes the same way reading the same results through EEG scanners.  I have not yet found case study results that don’t show the same things happening in groups.  But when it comes to insidviduals we all respond to different stimulation. So the individual may not respond to the particular frequencies of tones but if they are put in a group the research seems to show that they will have effects of those same tones as everyone else is. There are hundreds of great programs out there for changing your life through auditory therapy.  And though there are many studies that show these work for people and don’t work for people.  There always seems to be a form out there once tried with a combination on the frequency spectrums that ends up changing the way of consciously being for the individual.

Scientists have been studying binaural beats more vigerously since the 1960s and have found that the beats themselves do not change the physiology of the individual but the states the beat put the individual in do.  In 1992 research at Alberta University found that using binaural beats decreased pain in the subjects over a short period of scheduled daily listening.  In a metro – Dade police department study they found decreased stress and negative responses in police officers alsong with decreased heart rate and muscle tension post listening.

The main thing about binaural beats though is that you can’t just listen to them while going about your day and expect your brain to hover in theta and delta while listening to sine waves.  You must be sitting or lay down and relaxed not reading or doing other things, even though you do not have to focus your attention on tones another study in china and the U.S. found that those who are musically inclined or fluently speak tonal languages get faster results from binaural therapy.  And because they are using sine waves you must use sterio headphones this is kind of the set back of not having a harmonic series of a drum.  The thing about drumming and using other instruments though is that it’s more of a free for all with the exact states one can go into.

Many of the most popular binaural “therapies” are for “drug induced” states.  These states are not actually a drug high though many do mimic it.  They are just frequencies that bring you into different states of gamma, beta, alpha, theta, and delta at different times throughout the song in a similar way your brain would if it were trying to get the drug chemical out of your nervous system, which one place where the highs come from.

Now gamma I have not mentioned yet it is 30-45Hz and is a very high frequency tone that the two hemispheres of your brain create.  Many monks and long time mediators have been found to exude this during compassion and love meditations but also many people with extreme anxiety disorders also have been found to be in this state.  Because of the wiring of the mediators from years of training they can have a different experience with the gamma waves then those who are afraid of life.

One of the many binaural meditations out there and one that I use is called holosync made by Bill Harris.  He uses Binaural tones to keep the client in theta or delta which over time brings one’s conscious awareness into a more steady alpha, theta, delta state.  This allows for the patient to permanently not become so bothered with the outside world deeper in every stage of the program.  So there are more moments where instead of frantically looking for my keys I stop, go into alpha, and allow my memory in to find them instead.  They found that the tones work for four months and the people show a lot of growth during that time but then the meditation turns into more of just pleasant sounds.  So by lowering the carrier frequency, which changes the intensity of the signal without changing the amplitude and phase, along with changes along the spectrum one continues to experience growth every four to twelve months on that same change in carrier frequency until they don’t feel changes anymore and change it again.

Sound is pretty cool.  So when you are feelin blue and can’t seem to find your way in the world, think about what a state of beta or even gamma you are in and put on your headphones and find some tones that fit for you.