Research

As part of my research I viewed "Back and Forth", a documentary about the Foo Fighters, released around the same time as "Wasting Light" the fore-mentioned album released around the same time. I had hoped the documentary would reveal information about the bands recording process on this album, however, his proved relatively fruitless as any references to the recording process were brief and over simplified to make them accessible to general viewers.

I also read through "The Science of Musical Sound: Revised Edition" (S.R. Pierce 2000). As the title suggests, this book gives basic information on sound, which acted as something of a refresher course for a lot of what I had covered in college but was helpful none the less. Also, within this book I came across this quote "Sound quality isn't everything. We can enjoy conventional works that we have heard before even when they are poorly reproduced - as long as they are well played" (Page 168). Whilst I would contest the authors claim about the quality of production, the belief that the initial performance is more important does tie in nicely with the recording process of my recording.

I also looked at "http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/sel-sync/snyder_sel-sync.pdf" which is an article entitled   "Sel-Sync and The 'Octopus': How Came to be the First Recorder to Minimize Successive Copying in Overdubs" In short this article discusses how legendary guitarist, Les Paul, commissioned the Ampex Corporation to build an 8 track recorder capable of recording to different tracks at different times, essentially the first step towards modern conventional multitrack.

I looked at "Basic Mixing Techniques' by Paul White, another book which acted as some what of a refresher course for me and will prove more useful to the practical part of my project rather than my written work. However, it is made clear from the way the author writes that views the style of music in which I intend to work with some contempt, which made me sceptical of his writings in the field.

I also viewed "Microphone Techniques: Live Sound Reinforcement" a Shure Education Publication. This publication gives in depth information on microphone types and techniques and how these can be applied to different instruments. it also provides useful information such as frequency response and dB levels which will once again be of useful to me for the practical aspects of my project, although perhaps not the written elements.

In addition, I found through Summon "Live Sound Fundementals" by Bill Evans. This gives an in depth overview of the equipment and performance (or "Gear" and "Gig", to use the terminology of the book) aspects of live musical sound. I feel in particular, the second part of this book "Gig" may have some information which I may be able to employ during the recording of my project, as this will be run in a similar manner to a live show.

Also, as part of my research I read an article entitled "MICHAEL JACKSON 'Black Or White' | Classic Tracks" by Richard Buskin in Sound production based periodical "Sound on Sound". The article was published in the August 2004 edition of "Sound on Sound" and is based upon an interview with one of the engineers of Michael Jacksons "Bad" album, Bill Bottrell. The article discusses the writing and recording process of the album, and although this was carried out in a completely different manner to the method I intend to employ, however it may provide useful context when trying to give my own project context.