AUDIO
THE SEVEN SYSTEM DWARVES | Jeff Hawley
One of the many fun parts of my day job is getting to travel to various trade shows and conferences around the world . I recently had the pleasure of traveling to the InfoComm show in Las Vegas to show off the range of Allen & Heath digital mixers . As part of my usual trade show routine , I set aside some time to check out the other exhibiting companies and get a read of trends and products out in the space . I came across a fun sticker from the audio company Rational Acoustics which I thought was very interesting and hopefully useful to Worship Musician readers .
The team at Rational Acoustics set up a bit of a translation of audio frequencies into common adjectives that we might use to describe the audio properties of a particular sound or mix . For instance , something that we might describe as ‘ tubby ’ is likely a bit heavy in the 20-120Hz range . While I might have a philosophical bone to pick around framing this ‘ tubbiness ’ as being inherently ‘ bad ’, I think that the concept has its applications for starting to map common communication that we might receive from congregants into something more directly applicable and addressable in our mix .
Let ’ s dig in and get a few reference examples of these ‘ 7 Bad System Dwarves ’ in action . I ’ ve recorded a flat track of an acoustic , electric and bass guitar playing together through a few chords in a common sort of contemporary worship style . You ’ ll hear the raw track for a few seconds followed by a few seconds of accentuating the ‘ bad ’ frequency and a few seconds of attenuating the ‘ bad ’ frequency ( from the raw track level ) for each of the dwarves . Just to make things more obvious , I ’ ve added a little beep sound at the point in which the new cut / boost kicks in . I think it is important to note that we should aim to get familiar with both the cut ( attenuate ) and boost ( accentuate ) for each range since sometimes we might have a scenario where a source or
a mix is lacking the ‘ edge ’ we want ( possibly solved by boosting 2K-4K ) whereas other times we have too much ‘ edge ’ and need to cut 2K- 4K as a first option .
Here is Tubby . He is represented by the squat tuba-playing dwarf and is likely to show up in an overall mix and especially around fundamental bass and bass drum channels . What does Tubby sound like ?
Moving up the frequency range a bit , we land on Muddy . Muddy is the hip bearded jazz bassist dwarf and would generally apply to core range of bass instruments and the ‘ body ’ of an overall mix , around 200-400hZ .
Our friend Boxy is next , sitting in what is often a range where a baritone pastor ’ s mic might tend to exhibit a trait of ‘ boxiness ’ and particularly being a bit annoying if left untouched and running for long periods of time .
While Honky the dwarf is shown with a trumpet , I think I ’ d probably have chosen a trombone to best illustrate the ‘ honky ’ effect . If you think of the honking offbeat of a polka or band march ( the ‘ pa-pa ’ of an ‘ oom-pa-pa ’), you are likely close to describing this range . Perhaps a bit of the Peanuts teacher trombone with a plunger mute lands in the lower spectrum of Honky ’ s world , too .
118 July 2022
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