Let’s talk about “musical dynamics” and “musical sonority”
Where does the music we listen to come from?
Before we talk about it, it is necessary to quickly talk about the disc creation process. In principle, it can be divided into three parts: the initial stage, the intermediate stage and the later stage.
First stage: compose, arrange
Middle term: recording, mixing
Post: post mastering, distribution, marketing
Whether a piece of music is good or not can be determined at the initial stage of the arrangement. Then there is the recording. The recording process can be finding real musicians to record the sound of real instruments, or completing the melody required by the arrangement through software instruments. Then find a singer or singers to sing… and so on. This process is called recording.
The “balance” of a song is not only achieving the balance of the melody in the arrangement, on the other hand, it is leaning on the mix to make the recorded elements a harmony in listening and frequency, it is also usually necessary to coordinate It depends on where the track goes, or what the producer wants. After all, the purpose of a song or album is to become a commercial release, and the post-production and embellishment processes that need to be done are necessary.
Usually the post-mastering process will be done last. After the entire album’s timbre direction, volume adjustment and minor flaws etc. are fixed, the final mastering will be uploaded according to the loudness specifications required by each streaming platform. .
Quantify the volume and intensity of what we hear
Sometimes people equate loudness with loudness. Actually the two are different. They are different and at the same time influence each other.
Loudness can be quantified, in simple terms, it is our most used “decibel dB”. Volume, on the other hand, tends to be subjectively perceived by people. how to say? Different 75-decibel musical signals are sent out at a time, and everyone has different feelings about its loudness and volume.
Because loudness is related to three things: frequency content, duration, and sound pressure.
We played a 1000 Hz test signal for three minutes at a sound pressure of 80 decibels. Your perception of the volume of this signal will be very different from playing it for 10 seconds or 30 seconds.
Let us take two singers as an example, one of them has a more evident timbre in the mid-high frequency band, and the other has a more evident mid-low frequency band, they sing the same song, and they sing with the same key and similar sound pressure, generally in the mid-high frequency band. The sound of the sound will feel stronger.
