Getting into the Science of Music

Everything happens for a reason, and that reason is Physics.

Getting back to some music. No, not the tasty tidbits I occasionally post from Youtube. As part of my Zoom background, I have a second computer, studio monitors, and hanging on the wall, two guitars.

Yes, I am a musician (my dogs might beg to differ…) and for the last 40+ years, I have been turning money into noise that at times can be pleasant to listen to.

And for much of that time, I have spent a shit-ton of money and time trying to sound like my early idols and heroes. And I can get close-ish enough to enjoy it. But, even to my not-so-critical ears, I can tell that I fall short.

Of course, this is all psychoacoustic theory and interplay, and reality is that we are mostly comparing to what we hear on the recording. And the key word there is “recording”.

Here is where science and access to affordable tools to work with. And that means we can science this shit up.

When I was getting started in the 1980’s, the cost to record was ludicrous. You needed at a minimum a four track recording deck. But even if you had one of those (they cost as much as a decent guitar, gee, buy some gear to record, or buy a new git-box. I always bought the effects pedal/guitar, and when I did record myself, I used the crappy Panasonic cassette recorder/player, like this:

Yeah, that sounded like hot garbage. Look at that dinky condenser mic. That is what I recorded with.

Yet, if you have a memory of a killer guitar sound, it is almost assuredly something you heard on an LP, or a Cassette, or even a CD. And now the dominant way to listen to music is via streaming digital files.

You know how that sound got on the recording? Yes, a player plugged their guitar into an amplifier (ok, sure, likely also run their signal through some effects pedals like overdrive, fuzz, chorus, etc) and a microphone (usually a Shure SM57) placed close to the speaker picks up the sound pressure variations, converting that to electrical signals that are then digitized (in the way back they were just analog signals) and laid down on whatever media you have (today, it is digital disk drives, but in the 1930’s it was acetate discs, in the 60’s it was 1” magnetic tape, in the 1990s it became digital) and then it was mixed, equalized, balanced, and then dumped down to two channels (left and right, duh) and your music is ready.

And to understand this, you can actually do experimentation to validate and confirm this.

That is science folks.

There is a Nashville based guitar player, Jim Lill, who has a series of Youtube videos on the source and truth about that magical guitar tone. Watch this, and tell me if it isn’t totally cool:

He does this out of his pocket, and alas I love these vids so much I have opened my wallet to kick him money¹ to keep it up.

1. I booted him $50. I hope he continues this journey!

---