View Points: A Life At The Improv
Does too much reliance on data affect the ability to deliver a musical mix?
By
Doug Jones
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Good job, Jack. I enjoyed your nostalgic trip down memory lane.
I, too, discovered music through listening. I didn’t have the benefit
of listening to early U.S. broadcasting, but instead listened to
old records on a wind-up record player in the shade of a cashew
grove. (But that’s another story.) |
I’m sure many, if not most, also discovered music at an early age through
listening. Some of the most amazing musicians I have seen were studio
guys who could sight-read a chart cold and nail it in a few takes, with
feeling, thank you very much.
Talk to any classical conductor and you’ll find that they can read the
score and actually hear the music. It’s a good thing we have a scoring/symbolic
system. Imagine how much music would have been lost before the advent
of recording if we didn’t have some way of writing it down. I wonder if
you would make the same argument for verbal history versus written accounts?
MISSING THE POINT?
But this is not about who the better musician is or whether one can create
art when “constrained” by some regimented symbolic system. Once again,
I think you miss the point. It seems that the underlying thesis of our
ongoing “discussions” is the role of measurement in live sound. I don’t
recall ever suggesting that “measurement,” as you call it, has any place
in the mix. Where did you get the idea that anyone is suggesting that
a machine or measurement can fix the problem of “spittle”?
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Machines don’t nor can they ever mix. Your predictions notwithstanding, we are a long way from the sort of artificial intelligence required to mix a live show. In your own prediction of the future there is some machine that remembers a mix done by a human. It does not do the mix; it simply replicates it. We do this in the studio all the time because we are going over the same mix, fine-tweaking it to get it right. I wonder if musicians will ever be good enough to play a performance consistently enough to automate a live mix? |
If they are that “good”, would we want to listen to them? Would there
be any emotion left in the performance?
I’ve said it before a number of times on these pages and elsewhere: measurement
yields data. When you measure something, you get a piece of information.
You don’t get a mix, you don’t get art, you don’t get emotion. If you
know how to use these bits of information, that’s great. You might even
measure something that will show you the actual result of “spittle”, and,
with proper analysis (much more difficult than measurement), might come
up with a solution. If you don’t know how to use the information, don’t
measure.
DEVELOP THE LINKS
In my opinion, it’s a bit silly to close your eyes to information that
might help. But if you can get the job done without it, more power to
you. In my experience, TEF (my analysis method of choice) has done as
much for my listening ability as has listening to music. When one makes
thousands of measurements of loudspeakers and rooms, combined with listening
to these devices and facilities, one begins to develop links between the
objective and subjective. These links are difficult and often non-intuitive,
but it doesn’t mean that they should be ignored.
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Doing a measurement is fundamentally different from reading a score. Measuring a system is gathering data that might inform some decision you might make. It’s really learning something new about the system. In fact, measuring the system is actually analogous to listening to it. Reading a score is looking at a set of instructions that, if followed, will produce the desired music. Measurement is never a set of instructions. It is simply data.
When the data are analyzed, there might be a number of things that
can be done to effect change. |
It is up to the human to make these choices. They come from within,
from the experience and background and dare I say creativity of the
analyst. Sounds a lot like a jazz musician taking in data during a jam.
The tempo, the meter, the key, the mode, the context, the groove all
are things that the jazz player measures and takes in, and then makes
decisions based on these data (analysis), and then acts on the decision
by playing a riff. If you want to make comparisons, I agree that the live
“mixer” (lets drop the “e” word) is a lot like the jazz musician. They
both have to quickly react to what is going on.
And, in a purely live context, what is created is ephemeral. It is gone
as soon as it is created. The mix is never heard again nor is that exact
riff that made chills run up your spine. The classical musician reading
the score is not like the maligned measuring maven, but rather like a
recording mixer who, having captured a performance, is now playing an
automated mix.
NOBLE CALLINGS
Jack might argue that there is no creativity in the studio (and he would
be wrong), but maybe that is why he seem to have no respect for the classical
musician. They are not measurement types, rather, they are playback units,
not really creating but instead re-creating. That is a noble calling not
to be dissed.
If there is a true difference of perspective, maybe it is between live
mixing and studio recording. But this has nothing to do with measurement.
People who “have seen the light” and use measurement indeed move to a
higher plane. They are using more of their brains, gathering more data
about their world and responding in a creative manner.
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Of course there are some, I’m afraid, who simply measure and never
listen. These types have never worked on making the links between
subjective and objective that are necessary if there is to be a
creative result. Maybe they’re the ones Jack is going after. |
Is the art served when the gain structure is so badly botched that the
system runs out of, er, “stuff”? Or maybe even worse, power amplifiers
in clip producing 125 dB at the FOH position, trashing the hearing of
most of the patrons in the venue?
Measurement is not the enemy. Stupidity is.
Doug Jones is the Chair of the Sound Department at Columbia College in Chicago. Reach him at djones@livesoundint.com
May 2003 Live Sound International