Unit 14: Listening Skills - Listening Test

Listening Test

Amy Winehouse – Rehab:

In preparation for recording this track, Amy Winehouse gave producer Mark Ronson some old records she wanted this track to sound like, so when recording it, they used techniques to emulate the sound of a 1960’s Motown rhythm and blues songs on the record. An example of this is that they recorded the drums, bass, guitar and piano live in the same room, and only used one microphone to record the drum kit. This created a retro vibe to the recording, and also resulted in spill between the microphones, which would’ve happened during the old recordings they were inspired by. They recorded these at a Manhattan studio with experts in achieving the sound they were looking for, even if it wasn’t in the most modern way. As well as harnessing their retro influences, they knew the track had to work for commercial use like radio play, so mixing engineer Tom Elmhirst was in charge of compressing tracks like the drums, so the dynamic range wasn’t too large, as some parts of the kit would’ve been closer to the microphone than others, EQ’ing them and adding necessary complimentary effects like reverb so the record sounded very professional, and well finished as well as having the unique edge of an imperfect recording like one from the 1960s soul era. He altered some of the sounds using digital software as he said this could more accurately pick out the frequencies he wanted to alter, but also he fed them through vintage hardware compressors, thus maintaining the retro sound and not removing the charm of the original recordings. They used spring reverb on Amy’s vocals, which was the only option before digital recording gave the option to add the sound of many environments, as this reverb sounds very natural, and again works with their stylistic intentions. The vocals (both lead and backing) were recorded separately from the band as they would need more effects applied to them so they couldn’t have spill from other instruments on that recording. In post production they a digital EQ which allowed them to pull out certain harsh frequencies to the vocals on the recording, giving it a warmer tone which sat nicely in the mix with the rest of the instruments. Also the brass and strings used on the song were recorded separately, because they’re often done by an ensemble in a classical recording environment, and those recordings needed to be pristine to then be blended into the mix at the end.  The most important part of the mix according to Tom Elmhirst was creating space across the range of frequencies to allow different instruments to sound nice. For example, a high pass filter would be used on brass as it fits in this frequency band, but on the bass guitar recording any present high frequencies would be digitally pulled out to allow the brass space in the mix, and give it clarity it otherwise wouldn’t have.

Muse – United States of Eurasia:

I believe that this song has a theme of conflict and corruption, as the lyrics often refer to war, politics and running of countries and continents by world leaders and politicians. This is quite a dramatic concept which is supported musically by the very dramatic sounding strings and piano parts which are in parts classical and operatic, and are of a similar sound to pieces you may hear in a film about similar topics to the song. It also uses an eastern sounding melody, which as well as giving it the dramatic, apocalyptic feel may be because lots of the world war and conflict is happening in eastern countries, so this may justify its use. Also there are samples of gunfire and fighter jets flying which strengthen this point. The chords in the introduction played o piano are in a 4/4 time signature, and are often subtle variations like diminished chords and 7ths with added notes changing them to relative chords. They start very quietly, and then the addition of strings like cellos and bass guitar thicken this sound, until coming to a climactic chorus where piano, bass, lead guitar, drums and orchestration are playing, giving this song a broad range of dynamics. Also after the first chorus, the beat picks up the pace of the song which gives an illusion of a tempo change, which keeps the listener interested and gives the song another element. The ending of the song is named collateral damage, a term which refers to the death of innocent civilians during war, and is made up of a Chopin piece played on the piano with a string accompaniment, and samples of children laughing, gunshot sounds and planes which fit in with the war and conflict theme of this song. The songs structure is split into two, but in the first half of this song there are lots of subtle variations to the structure. The introduction leads to a quiet verse, with instruments being added every 8 bars before a dramatic chorus part which leads into a sort of bridge or solo of many instruments, where the eastern sounding scale is used. It uses a very complex structure.  The tempo is around 100 BPM or 200 depending on how you count it, and stays quite constant throughout the first part of the song before the break into the classical piece. Too add depth and interest to the song there are harmony vocals used which further emphasize the dramatic vibe to the song, and may signify people singing together or taking a stand against something.

Unit 11: Music Events Management - Two Events

Unit 11 – Music Events Management

What Makes A Successful Music Event?

Festival Event: Cambridge Folk Festival

The Cambridge Folk Festival is a festival which has been held annually since 1985, but was first showcased in 1965, and has always been held in the grounds of Cherry Heaton Hall in Cambridge, England. The festival runs from a Thursday to a Saturday, and in 2013 is being held from the 25th to the 28th of July. The festivals ethos has always been to create a family friendly and environmentally friendly event to celebrate all music falling under the category of folk music. The Festivals website describes the appeal and genre of music at the festival thusly: "The Festival is renowned for its eclectic mix of music and a wide definition of what might be considered folk. The best traditional folk artists from the UK and Ireland rub shoulders with more contemporary acts, the finest American country, blues and roots artists, acclaimed singer songwriters and even the odd pop star. Bluegrass, gospel, cajun, zydeco, jazz, world, klezmer and a ceilidh are also regular features." This helps to broaden the appeal of the festival to fans of so many genres, and creates a celebratory vibe with the inclusion of all these different genres. Often attendents to the festival and smaller artists perform in spontanious fashion on small stages around the grounds to give audience a unique and more intimate performance. This different approach to a festival works and is reflected in the speed at which the 14,000 capacity festival sells out. The festival aims to create a caring, family vibe and puts on lots of events outside the musical stages for families with young children, and also admits children aged 0 to 4 for free as an insentive to draw in entire families. The festival is also proud of being environmentally friendly and has won the 'Greener Festival Award' for the past four years running. This is one of the festivals unique selling points, and the importance of being environmentally friendly is a view shared by lots of the festival attendents and also the local residents of Cambridge who don't want a mess left after the festival. Local residents are allowed cheaper tickets to the festival as they're often likely to be loyal to the local festival. Many of the acts that play in this festival play traditional acoustic instruments without electrical power supply, so key equipment would be condenser microphones for the acoustic instruments, and dynamic microphones for naturally louder acoustic instruments like drums and percussion and vocalists. These would be fed directly to a live sound engineer, and then to the large PA system which focusses more on creating a clear and concise recreation of these acoustic instruments rather than creating incredible volume as it only has to fill the marquee and larger tent containing the larger stage. The crowd at the festival are of an older generation and are more concerned about a good sound than volume as well, so having a PA system which focusses more on the subtle qualities of sound is more important. Also they have delay towers which aim to synchronise the sound with the image of the perfomers on screens outside the marquee, so those sat outside the marquee get a good recreation of the gig from further away. The artists themselves will have to hear a monitor mix which comes threw speakers angled towards the performers on stage, which helps them play in time and as a cohearent unit, so this equipment is important and also a skilled and experienced sound engineer to give the artists the highest quality of sound balance so they give their best performance.Although many of the acts play in natural light, which in July would run until about 9 o'clock, stage lighting would be neccessary inside the tents both for safety purposes but also to aid the visual aspect of an artists performance. Although the style of music doesn't lend itself to extravigant light shows it does need lighting on the performers so the whole crowd can see them play and see all the details like their instruments and their movements which are important to a crowd at this type of event who are interested in how the performers make sound and perform. Also the stage being illuminated adds to the happy sunny vibe of this festival, so even if the weather isn't brilliant the festival still feels this way inside the tent. Any equipment requiring electricity will be powered by generators near the stage, which are backed up to ensure any faults won't bring a performance to a holt. Other things that need considering in relation to the staging and performance is a crew to build a safe stage, and roadies and technicians to set up equipment safely and a few security staff to man the front of the stage and occasionally protect artists from eager fans. The Capacity of the venue is 14,000 so the ticket venders need to make sure they don't exceed the limit of tickets they can sell, and the security and volunteer staff at the entrance and perimeter of the venue need to ensure people aren't getting into the festival without a ticket, to prevent overflow which is a safety risk. Inside the venue staffing is more relaxed than a conventional venue as the concert demographic is of people who purely want to enjoy the music, and don't want to create trouble, meaning the staffing can be more relaxed. Other features of the festival inside the event are to cater for peoples human needs like catering vans and toilet facilities and also for peoples safety, where St. John's Ambulance crew are hired to deal with health problems.
The organisers of this event also have other things to think about aside from running a successful event. Alongside the promoters they have to make sure they make a profit to pay everyone involved, including the artists, marketing costs, promoters and themselves. They could plan to break even or make a loss for publicity, but this usually applies to promoters starting out, and this festival has been run for a long time so this wouldn't be the case. This festival is slightly different from others as its promotion is taken care of by the Cambridge City Council who are proud of its heritage and the festival is financially imbursed by sponsors and partners to ensure its financial stability. Money also comes from ticket sales, but as the fanbase of this festival is so loyal the festival needs very little announcement or advertising to sell its tickets. Because of the council's backing, the festival doesn't struggle getting a license to put on their event, and they work with the council to ensure the events safety and that it conforms to standards of the disability discrimination act, and that they obey the conditions for their public liability insurance. Other forms of income are from selling advertising space to official partners and food and drink sponsors inside the event. TV and Radio broadcasting of the event on Sky Arts and Radio 2 help to present this festival to a new audience ensuring its boyancy in the future, and the music publication MOJO write about the festival in their magazine and are responsible for the artist signing tent which is an attraction to fans to meet their favourite artists and have their memorabilia and records signed.
Here's the 2011 Festival Poster showing the amount of artists playing across the weekend. It shows the diverse range of acts which get the opportunity to play at this sort of festival, and how they're distributed across stages and days to pad out the event.
 



















Venue Based Event: The Stuffing

The Stuffing is an annual event held at 3 conjoined venues in Atlanta, Georgia called Vinyl, The Loft and The Centre Stage. It's set up by the band Manchester Orchestra and features themselves, their side projects, bands they're friends with and acts signed to their label called "Favorite Gentlemen". The event is usually held in November, and is a novelty event as its the only opportunity for loyal fans to see Manchester Orchestra and their side projects in one night, and in an intimate venue. The three seperate venues differ in capacity ranging from 300 standing at Vinyl to 1050 seated and standing at the Centre Stage. The event starts at 5.15pm in the smallest venue and finishes with Manchester Orchestra at largest venue playing and hour and a half set from 10.25 to 11.55. The venue/ venues are unique as they each provide a completely different mood and intimacy to the performance depending on which one is used, for example the experience maybe completely different seeing Manchester Orchestra play in the 300 capacity Vinyl than it would in 1050 capacity semi-seated Centre Stage. The building is large, and each different stage has its own bar, lobby and seperated entrance from the other venues, so the venue would provide their own staff to provide security and work on the bar for the event. This is because they wouldn't want to risk a below par security set up organised by the artists arrangement to cause damage to their venue and their reputation. This security is included when the venue is rented, along with access to the loading bays behind the venue which allow the bands to load their equipment into the venue safely, without causing any disruption at the front if the venue, and they also have rooms at the back of the venue sealed off from the venue itself so the bands can relax there away from the fans before and after a show. The bands would have to use their own team of staff to operate the lighting rigs, and their own road crew for live sound engineering and instrument technicians, but as many of them are touring acts and are often stopping off to play this event mid tour they wouldn't have a problem organising this for the three venues and the individual acts playing. Each venue has its own house PA system which the acts would use so they don't have to pay to hire their own. The system for each venue is specifically tailored for each space to ensure the best sound, and the following link shows a page of their website with documents listing each venues equipment in great detail. Each document lists all the equipment in each venue, and shows that each venue contains all the necessary equipment to do their performance like a PA system, microphones, monitoring speakers such as wedges, side-fills and drum subs, a mixing desk and equalization equipment . These should provide all the necessary information for bands to book the venue in the confidence that their needs will be catered for and the sound they produce will be a good standard, so all they will need to be concerned about is bringing their instruments and amplifiers.
  http://www.centerstage-atlanta.com/about/
As the venues have bars this will cover any food and drink necessary for the fans, but the venue will provide food for the bands in the backstage area. Parking for fans is available all around the venue, and streets near by, but the vans containing equipment and buses for the bands would be able to park in the loading bay behind the venue. As this event is contained unlike a festival, the safety of the fans is a responsibilty of the venues security staff, so their conduct inside the venue must ensure everyone is safe. Also its the responsibilty of the venue to clearly sign post things like toilets and fire exits, so in the event of an emergency people know how to evacuate safely. This event is promoted by the label which the headlining band runs, and is also promoted by the venue itself, as its in their best interest for the event to sell out. Their aren't too many concerns about selling out this event, as fans of the band and the label would definately go to the event, and given that the act with the largest following is organising it, they will be able to do things on their terms and their fans terms and easily break even and probably make money from the event. Tickets for the event were sold online or at a box office at the venue, and Manchester Orchestra used social media to publicise the event themselves and also spread around the link to buy tickets, insuring people bought tickets and attended.
 

Unit 1: Acoustics For Musicians - The Mechanism of Human Hearing

Unit 1 – Acoustics For Musicians

The Mechanism of Human Hearing

Structure of our ear:

The Outer ear consists of outer ear itself, the pinna at the entrance to the ear canal, and the ear canal leading to the ear drum which is sometimes called the auditory canal. The outer ear picks up sound waves or vibrations, which are passed down the ear canal to the ear drum. The outer ear is larger than the ear canal so it can pick up more sounds than an ear with a smaller surface area would, and funnel them into the ear canal. As the ears are designed to hear sounds in the same frequency range as the human voice, these are amplified by the pinna as they travel towards the ear canal, and less audible ones like very high frequency sounds are filtered out as we cannot hear above a frequency of 20KHz anyway. The ear canal is the next place the sounds travel to, which has two main functions. The first is to create ear wax which contains chemicals that helps to prevent ear infections and catch dirt, and the other is to allow sound waves to pass to the ear drum at the end of the canal and the start of the middle ear. The middle ear is made of many small components, responsible for things like balance and the passing of vibrations to nerves connected to the brain to interpret the sound. Three small bones in the middle ear called the stirrup, anvil and hammer (collectively called ossicles) are responsible for converting and filtering the vibrations travelling down the ear canal to the cochlea in the inner ear. The cochlea contains fluid, so for it to interpret the sound it needs to be converted into amplified pressure waves, so this is what the ossicles do. Thy are linked to muscles which in turn are connected to nerves which contract and extend depending on the frequency of the sound so it can be safely amplified and not damage the inner ear. Once sounds have been converted and entered the cochlea they need to travel to the brain via the auditory nerve. Signals sent down nerves are electrical impulses or neural impulses, so the signals sent from the cochlea have to be able to travel down these nerves.
The Levels of human hearing applies to the range of frequencies we can hear and the sound pressure levels we can withstand. It's understood that a young human being can hear sounds between 20Hz and 20KHz, and as people age their ability to hear the higher frequencies lessens. Sounds below the human frequency range are called infra sounds and those above it are called ultra sounds, and although humans cannot hear these, other animals do use them to communicate. Sound pressure is the pressure exerted on air particles when a sound wave is produced. Changes in pressure are indicated by deviations away from the average pressure exerted in the air when a wave is produced. The average level is an ambient atmospheric pressure, and if a sound is made in a space without lots of space and particles the velocity of the sound passing between particles will be greater, so the stillness of the particles will be disrupted and the sound pressure will go up. This applies to the ear as there's a limit to how much pressure the components of the ear like the ear drum and cochlea can withstand without damage being caused to them. One way the ear helps prevent damage from loud sounds or high pressure sounds is for the muscles controlling the ossicles and ear drum to retract, both tightening the ear drum and pulling the ossicles away from the oval arch opening in the cochlea. This prevents loud sounds from damaging the sensitive hearing apparatus. 
Psychoacoustics is related to our perception of sounds, and how our brain interprets them and how we respond to them. Our brain can hear sounds and work out what they're produced by but also it can sometimes be tricked into thinking it's hearing something it isn't. For a sound to be processed by the brain it has to be converted from sound waves into neural signals, because of this the subtle differences between sounds with different frequencies may not be noticed by the brain, so when music is compressed from a lossless format to a smaller one like MP3 to take up less storage space, the frequency changes that are hard for the brain to spot when processing sound are removed, so the files can be smaller but not impact the enjoyment of the listener as the quality of the sound may not be such a noticeable change. This is one example of how we can use psychoacoustics to our advantage. Similarly, when music is being mixed and mastered it can be cleverly manipulated to give an impression of greater quality and inhance the sound we percieve, which is a great advantage during post production as otherwise, to achieve an equally good recording they would have to record the sounds with relentless attention to detail to achieve a similar sound to the one they could create using production techniques, which would be expensive and time consuming, which in a studio would mean extra costs. An example could be perceptual integration. When the same sound is played twice, but so close together that the ear cannot notice that the two sounds are seperate, they merge together and sound like one sound. This is why harmonic properties of notes make the notes differ from each other, as if we heard each small frequency variation that culminated to make one note played on an instrument, we'd not be able to hear the properties of the note like pitch, sustain, decay and timbre as we'd just be hearing the individual elements of that note. Because of this we can add to sounds or change them altogether with EQ and compression and trick our brain into thinking we're hearing something with different properties when really the changes are too close together in one note to spot, instead we just hear a sound that to us sounds enhanced. A technique used to make an instrument sound larger and richer in a stereo mix is to replicate it on another track, and play it one tenth of a second after the other (taking advantage of our ears not beinga able to seperate the two) and then panning one to the left and the other to the right. This short delay gives us the impression that the properties of the sound have been doubled in intensity creating a sound with more power, when infact this technique has just created an illusion if it.
It's very important to prevent damage to our ears if we want to maintain our ability to hear lots of frequencies as we get older. As I mentioned earlier, with age our hearing range lessens from 20KHz and depending on how well we look after our ears it can lessen naturally and safely or dramatically until hearing is impossible without the use of an aid. If a person exposes themselves to very loud sounds daily, their hearing will be far worse than someone who take preacutions protects their hearing and they could in extreme cases end up with a condition like tinnitus which is a ringing in the ears caused by damaged nerve endings, which can be annoying and painful. The Who guitarist Pete Townshend suffers from this from his exposure to loud noise playing in the band, but people who work in jobs at factories with loud machinery or on runways near airoplane engines can suffer from it. Ways of preventing these problems would be to wear protective ear muffs which prevent a lot of the loud sound waves getting to the ears and causing this damage. Often when musicians play live they where more discreat ear plugs which helps them to maintain good hearing despite their exposure to loud music playing shows almost every night on a tour. There are remedies for hearing loss both herbally and medically, but often they cannot restore the hearing to as good as it should be so the best option is to never allow your hearing to be damaged in the first place. The most common type of hearing damage is noise induced, but sometimes it can be genetic in a condition like tinnitus, and often the only solution provided by the National Health Service is a hearing aid.
Having two ears enables us to hear in stereo and enhances our ability to perceive the origins of sound or where the sound is being produced from 3 dimensionally. So having two ears placed either side of our head would allow us to detect where a predator was, and through evolution help us to survive in those circumstances.