Jeff: Thanks for the post. I was obviously fishing for a reply from BK, but he does seem to be quite properly preoccupied with another, and I'm sure, more interesting thread right now. No matter. I'll take all the help I can get with full gratitude!
As I understand it, the 1 kHz sine wave as a calibration signal has been around for a long time as a method of calibrating tape heads esp.. I'm not clear as to its usefulness in the digital world, so if anyone including you wants to chime in on that I'd be interested to read their responses. Is it one of those magic frequencies? Would something lower, higher or noisier be more appropriate for digital? Just wondering out loud, if you will...
Peter. Oh, Peter: I do especially appreciate those who love language, and realize it must be fed to be sustained. Every time you send one of us off to his dictionary, you do a service to the English-speaking world, and I thank you for it.
When I read "You appear to have grasped the ‘Dynamics’ of my point…… Undoubtedly it arrived as an 'entirely complete Wave'….." I had a chuckle. "Hey, wait a minute", said I. "That was MY point!" But, in reading back, I realize it was something I was thinking while wrting to Bill, but never stated, or hadn't formulated quite properly in this little head of mine. You've helped me immensely in thinking about this analogous relationship between photographic and audio art and Mr. Adams' role in shaping my approach to both.
A little history:
I slipped from music into photography in the late 60's. It seemed a natural thing for me to do at the time, as I enjoyed the science, the optics, and began to finally grasp the completeness of the inter-relationships between everything we do in this physical world. For example, how the harmonic overtone series applies to everything from music, to radio, to light and right down to balancing the wheels on the car. For someone thrown out of school in his mid teens, these things were a revelation.
Still, no matter how one works on the explanations, the technique, and the mechanics, the Art can remain so elusive.
You can imagine my joy when I found myself in a machine shop; a place where the output is tangible and measurable; where junk is junk, and specification relieves you of the nagging doubts about merit. A veritable holiday for someone struggling with art. Anyway...
"I’m sure Mr. Adams, was excruciatingly sensitive to this issue, precisely as you have stated....
But whether Mr. Adams would agree with it, or not……
The words….. Remain objectively true…..
And effervesce with verisimilitude…"
I recant my position, (having run off to my dictionary). You nailed it. It's the struggle with a medium that appears, on the surface, to give you a free ride.
When I differed with you, I was thinking about his methods and not following through to his objectives. Yours was a more holistic analysis.
If I might dare to summarize Mr. Adams photographic mission, I'll try with this: To deliver the emotional impact of the original scene to a remote visual experience, despite the necessary reduction of scale (in size, colour, tone, contrast, and dimensionality) that the new medium imposes. If you'll accept this in principle, then just substitute audio for visual and it still holds.
In order to do this (for the benefit of those with less exposure to Adams than we), he started with calibration. He looked at input vs output, and considered the variables in the process. These consisted primarily of exposure levels, development, chemistry, and the reflectances of the various print materials at his disposal. He devised a system of setting out the entire process so that even before he 'pushed the button' he knew with absolute clarity, what would be necessary to deliver his vision of the scene before him to a piece of paper as a finished and compelling work of art.
So in short;
Exposure levels = recording level: So, where on the audio characteristic curve shall we place this sound, such that every detail is faithfully recorded and falls on a part of the CURVE, where the contrast between adjacent levels suits our purpose. In photography this relates to placement of the shadows, ensuring that the darker details are not lost in the opacities of the filmbase plus fog (noise floor).
Development = Playback fader levels/compression settings: Here he controls the density (level) of the highlights such that the brightest highlights fall on the maximum reflectance of the paper and there are no large areas of blank white which are devoid of any detail or texture. (No lack of dynamics even in the loudest passages.)
Choice of paper = selecting an overall dynamic range: I suppose this as being akin to mastering, but certainly not unaffected by mixing.
Choice of Chemistry: This would be related to limiting and compression, carefully used to preserve or augment the most subtle dynamics. and EQ, of course!
Burning and dodging = heavier use of EQ and multiband compression: Definitely coarser mix techniques
This is fine as far as it goes (and please do embelish where you see fit, i.e. preamp selection, tape or digital, etc.) in a mechanistic way, but the crucial thing is still the previsualized image.
It seems to me the real task is to (sometimes very quickly) assess the sonic situation and make some very critical decisions at the beginning about what the end product needs to sound like, assuiming one has learned the skills to manipulate it all in a sensible and predictable way (hmm, that's a big one!).
Mr Adams did have the luxury of living in a time when technological developments in his medium were occuring at a much slower pace than they are in audio today. For any project, he had 2 characteristic curves (negative and print) which he learned to manipulate with chemistry, time and temperature.
How we would aggregate the huge variety of I/O curves from the gear available to even the most humble studio today is quite beyond me. But somehow, I feel that in this analogy must lie some simple premises that would help folks like me 'tame the science' and get back to finding the Art.
wwittman: Walt, well said. Kubrick was a very good lateral thinker as evidenced....
Thom: Thanks for your very thoughtful reply. It has been good to observe the bog from afar. This takes us back to where we started, in a way.
I was really struggling with whether it's better to beat your head against the wall for 18 hours a day, or just stop and listen to someone else's work. And of the 18 hours, how much time is spent farting about, vs the time in which a lesson is really learned. I am frequently guilty of 'trying to hard' and 'working hard -not smart'.
I observed (but, it seems, failed to learn from) how different musicians experienced and dealt with 'plateau's' through their early years of development. I was always a bulldozer and just plowed through them relentlessly, yet I saw others who would practice a bit less, and emerge a month or two later, none the worse for having taken a break. Maybe I can learn that now -but I am a bit of an old dog.
Thanks for the heads-up!
Ciao,
Keith