Although this article will contain some technical terms, we invite you to read it like a child would play with a toy he's fascinated by: just explore it - more or less aware that he may break it in the process. Feel free to play with these words. We did. See what you get about how sound engineering works and listen to your motivation to inquire further. This is to suggest that passion and the pleasure to experiment are key in any professional field. There's passion and experimentation in writing this article as well. For those readers with a more philosophical perspective on reality, we invite you to go through the technical descriptions with a mind set to seek clarity and insight regarding the art of living as a community.
Strolling Through Physics
With all the tiredness acquired along a lengthy summer day involving long distance driving, stage set up, sound check, concert and clean-up, we lingered in a late night talk with our sound engineer, who was asked to explain how he did such a great job at the concert. A free lesson in philosophy and acoustics, with bits of humor and surprising depth – which we will try to share with you. For the complete experience however, join our blog as a founding member, come to rehearsals and keep your ears attuned for the probable physics lessons.
Sound engineers work on adjusting sound levels before and during the performance to ensure a high-quality and balanced audio experience for the audience as well as for the performers themselves. Sound engineers’ understanding of acoustics is the key aspect of their job – it means knowing about how sound propagates and interacts with the physical environment. “Your instruments vibrate and the sound waves they produce travel in all directions, they interact with the surfaces and then echo back. They do so with a certain frequency (which accounts for its pitch), a certain amplitude (which accounts for its volume) and a certain wavelength (accounting for how the sound frequency changes with the speed of its production)”.
Placement, position and play
When sound waves encounter a surface they can behave in different ways. They can be reflected back. When we’re many instruments on stage, all sending sounds in different directions and experiencing it coming back from various sources, some sooner than others, a real clamor can reach people’s ears. Sound waves can also be absorbed by materials or transmitted through them to the next space. So as you can imagine, the more of us are on a stage or in a room that was not designed to facilitate good acoustics, the louder we play, the more our melodic lines change from faster to slower, you can bet we’re giving a really hard time to any sound engineer trying to fulfill our needs to hear what we’re playing and the needs of the audience to receive a balanced presentation of the overall performance. Controlling noise and sound pollution, strategically managing the reflections of the sound waves in the performance venue and achieving the desired acoustical environment – are the main challenges of the sound engineer. Good collaboration with the band members is essential – otherwise it is easy to become upset and frustrated with the too many demands that have to be simultaneously fulfilled, in order to create an optimal balance between sound absorption and sound diffusion during the concert.
We can ease our lives by strategic locating and positioning on stage, so as to reduce undesirable reflections. When microphones and speakers are involved, performers need sound monitors in order to hear themselves and other instruments, so as to be able to regulate their playing. The proper positioning of the monitors should also prevent excessive feedback and sound spillage, otherwise they can add to the sound pollution and just make things more difficult for everyone. We are looking to change the type of sound monitoring and get rid as much as possible of the extra stage gear, in favor of in-ear monitors. They’re quite costly for us, seeing that we do not make income with our performances – we invest what we each have and what we get from friends and families and whoever else is willing to support our project. So your monthly contribution through this blog, as well as your help to reach more contributors, will be of immense help.
Reverberation tricks
The sound in its way from the main speakers to the last auditorium row, sums all the reflections from the acoustic environment. That's why the sound engineer recommends setting up one or more delay towers.
The sound engineer also synthetically creates the acoustic environment in which we play and is able to eliminate unwanted sound reflections through phase cancellation techniques, in order to improve the in-ear monitoring.
Reverberations of sound gradually decay over time, creating a diffuse character of the sound. The sound engineer can control how long the reverberant sound lasts before it fades away. He can add delays between the direct sound and its first reflections. He can control the balance of high and low frequencies in the reverberation, considering how different materials absorb sound in the physical space. He can determine the density of reflections to make them sound more smooth or more grainy.
Sound systems and philosophy
Sound engineering is an art. Laci is versed in it. When he works on the acoustic set up he often spontaneously comments philosophically, to his own surprise as well. One day he said: “That echo requires canceling. You sometimes need to cancel things to balance things” But letting go is often such a difficult endeavour. Laci adds: “You need to work on your renunciation. Renunciation is a creative act”. After a few remarks like that, almost everything Laci says is taken with a philosophical angle. So, Laci, what exactly are you doing now? “I’m connected with the sources and I’m cleaning up the mix by removing impurities” Not a regular cleaning job!