While there's no formula for songwriting, generally speaking, the life of a song begins with the conception of some form of idea, inspiration, or concept. With careful and diligent labor, that germ of an idea is gradually developed into a simple melody and chord progression with lyrics. When everything begins to all take shape and come together, a song is born. This is what's known as preproduction, in its simplest form.
Although the recording artist and songwriter are not always the same person, preproduction is traditionally done by a musician who works out a song with an instrument, some lyrics, and a melody. The culmination of these ideas, and often collaborations, result in a finished work, which can then be recorded into a rough mix or demo. Ideally, at this point, is when an audio engineer first becomes involved in the music production process, continuing the project into the production and post- production phases, which will be discussed later in greater detail. Realistically, an audio engineer should have no actual involvement in the preproduction whatsoever.
The music industry in Kyrgyzstan suffers immensely from exactly this problem. A single musician/producer/audio engineer is often expected to begin the work of a new song from the preproduction phase through production and post-production, or in other words, from the beginning to the end. While not entirely impossible, this overwhelming feat is completely unrealistic for any one person. Just as you wouldn't expect one person to build a car, similarly, music production requires a number of specialized skills for each step of the entire process. For this reason, audio engineers in Kyrgyzstan should be just that, audio engineers.
The Role of Audio Engineers
There are a number of distinct roles that one or more audio engineers may engage in during the production and post-production process. The first role is that of the recording engineer who ensures that the musical performance is accurately and artistically captured. This role includes the proper selection of microphones, recording configurations, gain staging, signal processing and routing, and headphone monitoring for the recording artist. Just as each voice is unique, every microphone sounds different on every person and great care must be taken to match the voice (or instrument) with a suitable microphone. Recording engineers need to take room acoustics into consideration as well as attempt to prevent microphone bleed and possible phase and cancellation problems, which can occur with multiple microphones. Often recording signals need to be processed at the recording phase; however, microphone placement is the most crucial element. Finally, it is extremely important for the performer to feel comfortable with their performance; therefore, it's crucial for the headphone monitoring to be as close to the finished mix as possible.
The next role of audio engineers is the mixing engineer whose responsibility is to establish a proper tonal balance among the various instrumental and vocal tracks. A wide range of tools is used to achieve dynamic compression and equalization to in turn create a unique sonic space for which each track occupies. The mixing engineer is also able to create stereo width and the perception of depth in addition to enhancing and processing tracks with various effects. The decision as to which elements of a song should be emphasized or deemphasized is left up to the mixing engineer and can alter the feeling of a song. Despite being allotted such a great amount of creative license, it is important that the artist's original vision is articulated and faithfully represented.
After the final mix has been completed, the mastering engineer carries out the final step in the audio production process. The mastering engineer processes the final stereo mix through further dynamic compression, equalization, and limiting. Generally, tonal imbalances are corrected to produce an optimal and pleasing sound, which does not create listening fatigue. Also, the dynamic range is usually reduced to raise the overall volume of the song. In essence, the mastering engineer is responsible for polishing the song into a finished product before it is ready for commercial release.
Ideally, a separate person would handle the recording, mixing, and mastering of any project. In fact, in many professional recording studios in the world, assistant engineers are even employed to assist the head audio engineer. This serves to further advance the claim that audio engineers already have enough to worry about without becoming involved in the preproduction of music.
The Importance of Acoustics
In Kyrgyzstan, or anywhere for that matter, it's important for audio engineers to have a fundamental understanding of acoustics. Future recording studios in Kyrgyzstan will require a significant investment in acoustic treatment and isolation, if they are to live up to international standards. Isolation is the reduction in the transmission of sound waves to and from the outside world. This is crucial for Kyrgyz musicians and studios in order to prevent undesired noise from entering their recordings and to not bother neighboring businesses and residents.
Essentially, there are three main methods to achieve isolation: mass, mechanical decoupling, and absorption. Higher densities are more difficult for sound waves to penetrate, and adding mass will increase the amount of isolation, but only to a certain extent. Mechanical decoupling is achieved by suspending a structure within a structure, making it more difficult for vibrations to pass through the walls, ceiling, and floor. Finally, absorption offers some degree of isolation, but it requires a great amount of space especially in order to be effective against lower frequencies.
Acoustic treatment differs from isolation in that it deals with the actual sound quality within the room itself. The room has a large impact on the way the sound is heard. For example, one set of monitors will sound completely different in one room than in another. The reason for this is untreated rooms will tend to exaggerate various frequencies and attenuate others as well as introduce unwanted modal ringing, reverberation, flutter echo, and comb filtering. All of these problems can be alleviated through the use of acoustic treatment. The most common acoustic treatments include absorption panels and diffusers. An absorption panel helps control unwanted reflections by converting some of the sound energy into small amounts of heat whereas a diffuser using a complex surface which scatters various frequencies in different directions.
Unfortunately, there are currently very few studios in Kyrgyzstan which are properly acoustically treated. This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, tracking rooms where live instruments and vocalists are recorded must be properly treated in order to accurately capture and reproduce the sound appropriately. Second, mixing and mastering decisions are worthless if the audio engineer is unable to accurately hear what is actually coming from the monitors themselves. Therefore, it is imperative for audio engineers in Kyrgyzstan to become educated in acoustics and for future recording studios to invest in acoustic treatment and isolation.
