What? Why? How?
Have you ever wondered what exactly sound is? Why it exists? Or how it works? We listen to music every day whether it’s through our headphones or a hi-fi system, we hear dogs bark in the park on a warm Sunday afternoon or a cluster of crashing waves, people talking and barbecues sizzling at our favourite beach. We are even listening to silence when we’re at home and there’s not a thing moving. Sound is literally everywhere!
Did you know that studies have proven that music can help plants grow faster? Did you know that there are over 1200 genres of music? The evolution of music is incredible. We’ve had music pioneers like Mozart and Beethoven carve a century of classical music and daredevils like Kanye West change music for everyone today.
Music has become a staple diet for everybody. I have over a thousand songs on my iPod that plays 300 hours of music. I remember during the birth of mp3 music it was a social obligation to listen to less well-known artists. I carefully stored their music but barely listened to half of them, granted it made me ‘cool’ and it opened my ears to more genres, but a lot of it was not in my taste.
My folks were in the generation of pure sound — the timeless vinyl record, cassettes and eventually CDs. As an audio professional, I have to say these guys were in the golden age of music. Those were the days of music art. Those were the days of audio engineering greats like George Martin (The Beatles, Jeff Beck), Quincy Jones (Michael Jackson) and Brian Wilson (Beach Boys), who paved the way for the creative recording techniques we use today. In present planet Earth, times have completely changed. Technology is moving at warped speed, and it’s getting harder to keep up. There are streaming kings like Spotify and Rdio, and there are burgeoning artist owned ones like Tidal. No matter how much I complain about these services, I have fallen prey to them. We’re living in the age of convenience, and there’s nothing more convenient than Spotify. It’s easy to use, lets you discover thousands of artists you’ve never heard of, and they’re even starting video streaming now. However (there’s always a however with good things — cheeseburgers are heavenly, however, they will kill you) although these services are amazing and super convenient, they’re unjust to the creators. Musicians and audio engineers spend hours and hours perfecting their sound for their listeners only to be ripped off by the record labels and streaming services.
The recording and production of a record is a highly creative and exhausting process. Hours are consumed with the microphone set up, track selection and order, refining the EQ and balance, Mixing and finally Mastering.
When was the last time you listened to an entire album from start to finish? When was the last time you bought a record? Our attention span keeps crumbling as the days go by; Spotify and iTunes let you listen to snippets and previews of tracks, and we then decide if we should download the track or not. The days of discovering entire albums are gone; the time and effort put in to make that record is simply wasted. When was the last time you were on Netflix and watched only a snippet of Mad Men?
Our world is full of sounds, and yet barely anyone pays attention to it. In school, we’re taught that sound is produced by vibrations. The movement of an object creates sound waves that reach our ears, and our brains manipulate the sound it makes. Unlike vision, Sound can travel a long way. It will propagate through anything — the ground or water but not in space.
Believe it or not hearing loss is increasing. “Nearly 1 in 5 American adolescents have some level of hearing loss.” You can only guess the reason for this. Personal music players, loudspeakers at gigs and festivals. Our ears need to be taken care of. There’s no going back once our hearing is damaged. The creation of sound and our perception of it is one of the most captivating things in the world.
There also needs to be an awareness for otolaryngology. Like our minds, we should try to use our hearing to the maximum. It only brings more enjoyment.
After completing my degree in Audio Engineering, I was left baffled. I didn’t know if I wanted to pursue my career in the field or switch altogether. This was mainly because the whole music industry, believe it or not, is dying. As we move into a different phase in the generation with music and technology, we’re leaving behind important parts of music history. The art is no longer art. Schools barely pay any attention or bother with teaching the art of sound and recording and no one wants to read long boring books in the vast field of audio. The objective of my project is to share my knowledge with you and to simplify it as much as I can. In this project, I am putting together a guide for you to understand better the field of audio.
In the next few weeks, this project will explain the ABC’s of sound. From the fundamentals of what sound is to the future trends in audio.. It will answer the Golden questions of what, why and how, and I hope you gain an understanding of this art form so that you can help with its revival.
