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Hey! Are you working now?

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Hello... are you working now?

Please re-write the following text as bulletpoints for a presentation ::

Prolongation

In recognizing the importance that harmonic impatience plays in film music, we should not dismiss the constructive power of its seeming antithesis: tonal pro- longation. The idea of prolongation comes from the work of German theorist Heinrich Schenker, for whom simple contrapuntal procedures came together to generate the fundamental tonal structure of a piece.52 However, modern usage is considerably looser toward the term, frequently admitting the use of both of linear procedures and abstract diatonic functions like “dominant” to establish a tonal center. Prolongation allows a tonic to govern spans of arbitrary duration, directing pitch materials toward a goal, effective even when that goal is not lit- erally sounding.53 Because it is often associated with structure rather than ex- pression or rhetoric, prolongation would seem an odd category to impose on film music analysis. But in fact there is a great deal of expressive potential in subtly playing with prolongational implications.

To see how a fairly “well-behaved” case of tonal prolongation can shape the flow of a scene, consider “The Picnic” from Miklós Rózsa’s score to Spellbound (1945, 21:30, ). Occurring near the beginning of the film, Rózsa’s pastorale ac- companies an outdoor stroll between the clinical Dr. Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) and the romantic Dr. Edwardes (Gregory Peck). Most of the sequence is dedicated to light philosophical banter on matters of love, poetry, and psychiatry. A slight obstacle in the couple’s way brings about a momentary change of topic and tonic. The discussion shifts to the beauty of the landscape (though one can tell Edwardes is thinking of something else), and the cue ends with a cut to another location. Mostly written in an “overall” style, Rózsa’s music has few overt audiovisual synch points. Compared to the febrile music of Steiner, the cue is more reliant on a leisurely melody—the main love theme—and a single, diatonically sustained key. This construction makes conventional linear analysis a suitable interpretive lens.54 A Schenkerian middle-ground sketch is provided in Figure 1.6, illustrating the essential arc of the two-minute cue.55

In most respects, Rózsa’s cue adheres nicely to Schenkerian structural con- ventions. “The Picnic” falls into a ternary form that prolongs D major. The first section encompasses the antecedent phrase of the love theme, charting out a ‸3-line based on F♯4. This melodic edifice is interrupted, in standard fashion for

‸

a parallel period, on 2 at a half-cadence, which is elegantly synchronized with

the moment the two doctors briefly pause their walk. The contrasting middle

section is more tonally digressive, as befits the more active and playful tone of

the scene once Edwardes has cracked a joke and Petersen has tumbled through

a fence. Ultimately, however, it can comfortably be read as a contrapuntal ex-

pansion of the underlying tonic through its tonicized subdominant. Rózsa con-

tinues hinting at new keys as soon as the barrier of the cow fence is standing in

the pair’s way, reaching a harmonic far-out point of B major for when Petersen

trips. This key area can be understood as a tonicized upper third of the sub-

dominant G major, and the whole section as a symmetrically prolonged me-

♯♯♮♯♯

lodic neighbor motion, from F 4⇨G4⇨G 4⇨G 4⇨F 4. Once Petersen is back on her feet, Rózsa begins to wend his way back to D, liquidating the chromatic G ,

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and securing the original key and 3 Kopfton with an elided imperfect authentic cadence.

A few spots in “The Picnic” challenge Schenkerian priorities, albeit only slightly.

For example, there is the effect of the prolonged seventh and added sixth chords in

the middle section, and the parallel octaves from E to D at the cue’s introduction

(not to mention Rózsa’s idiolectical fondness for parallel intervals in surface voice

leading). However, it is only at the end of cue where the Schenkerian analytical

machinery begins to show signs of malfunctioning. Rózsa does not provide the

‸

cue with a definitive PAC that captures 1 in the main structural register via a dom-

inant-to-tonic motion. Rather, the truncated statement of the love theme’s conse-

quent phrase that begins when Petersen exclaims “isn’t it beautiful” concludes with

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a stretched-out, modally mixed plagal cadence (PC). This cadence produces only 1

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in an implied inner voice, while the actual concluding pitch is A5 (5). Despite being resolutely monotonal and diatonically functional throughout, “The Picnic” lacks a completely coherent Urlinie. The effect at the cue’s conclusion—highly charac- teristic of Hollywood underscore—is of simultaneous tonal closure and melodic open-endedness. Indeed, in many soundtracks, true structural PACs are absent in non-diegetic music until the very concluding measures of the finale or end credits.

The prolongational idiosyncrasies of Rózsa’s cue have to do with the way that tonality is earned—that is, whether or not it is a product of what Neumeyer (1998: 103) characterizes as “an overarching, teleological, hierarchical” plan.56 It is in this regard that film music is often most unlike its precedents in Romantic con- cert music, as well as other twentieth-century styles like Debussyian impressionism in which key is a more nebulous entity. In film, dramatic effect determines what is earned and what is not. As we have already seen in Now Voyager, musical impa- tience can have a large impact on the way keys are established and sustained. While tonal centers are very often unambiguously prolonged—sometimes with improb- able tenacity, as in rock and minimalist-inspired scores—monotonality is not a re- quirement in film music. Crucially, its abeyance does not automatically represent an inherent structural problem or tension as it might in late Romantic repertoires.

Last-minute key changes potentially outrageous in any other genre routinely take place with the minimum of fanfare in Hollywood. Figure 1.7 gives one such example, the final ten measures of Max Steiner’s score to the pulpy supernatural adventure film She (1935, 1:41:30, ). The movie ends with an astonishingly ab- rupt modulation, totally unmotivated by prolongational logic, earned only in the sense that it produces a jolt of surprise for the movie’s last few frames. This con- cluding passage is preceded by almost a half hour’s worth of wall-to-wall scoring in the protean style we have already encountered from Steiner. It is in that con- text that we arrive at the long-anticipated final cadence.

The climactic statement of the film’s love theme (mm. 1–4), accompanying the heroine’s parting words about love and domesticity, provides the first area of clearly functional harmony heard in a very long time. A dominant-pedal chord in D♭ major resolves exactly as one might wish for a movie with a big, happy, con- servative ending: with a totally unambiguous PAC, ‸5⇨‸1 in the bass dutifully supporting ‸3⇨(♭‸3)⇨‸2⇨‸1 in the melody. The screen fades to black, and at m. 5, Steiner begins to set up one of those key-reinforcing codettas one often finds in Romantic finales. Yet this post-cadential affirmation of D♭ major turns out to be a ruse: the ascending melodic line in m. 6 rapidly turns chromatic, and with whiplash speed, Steiner modulates to the distantly related key of E major, effecting an overall transposition of the tonic by a minor third. This unanticipated—in fact, unanticipatable—new key is confirmed with a brassy (and stereotypically “old Hollywood”) modally mixed PC [iv⇨iiø7⇨I], synchronized with the arrival of the words “The End” on screen. E major then garners its own post-cadential codetta, with the film’s danger theme given the final word in the bass. Arriving as it does at the formal moment one would expect greatest closure and tonal security, there is essentially no narratival or visual motivation for Steiner’s modulation away from D♭. Its justification is instead expressive and temporal, born out of a desire to capture a sense of weirdness and impetuous adventure, one last thrill for the au- dience who came to the theater in expectation of impossible sights and sounds.

Steiner’s big finish in She is a radical example of the undermining of monotonality. But it also illustrates a more generally loose attitude toward single- key prolongation in film music. Composers from the Classical Hollywood Era on- ward have never felt an obligation to end a cue in the same key as it began, or a duty to project a tonic on a middle-ground level, as we have already seen in several cases. Rather than a universal trait of Hollywood film music, prolonged monotonality, or the omission thereof, is an effect available to the composer for associative pur- poses, and secondarily if at all for its coherence-generating potential.

Theodor Adorno and Hanns Eisler came to essentially the same conclusion while observing an ironic (and to them unfavorable) similarity to the modernist dissolution of tonality in film music. In a passage from Composing for the Films, they state the following:

[Film] tonality remains one of single sounds and their most primitive sequences. The necessity of following cues, and of producing harmonic effects without regard for the requirement of harmonic development, obviously does not permit of really balanced modulation, broad, well- planned harmonic canvases; in brief, real tonality in the sense of the dis- position of functional harmony over long stretches . . . according to the prevailing practice, while the separate chords are banal and over-familiar, their interrelation is quite anarchistic and for the most part completely meaningless (2007 [1947] : 123n2)

The reasoning here is needlessly dismissive of the possibility of harmonic design in film cues and scores. Tonal planning on the level of the cue is clearly extremely common (c.f. Spellbound’s “Picnic”), particularly with monotonally minded com- posers like John Barry or Ennio Morricone.57 Planning on the level of the film, on the other hand, is “rare and precious, representing the exception to the rule, rather than a widespread trend,” as Motazedian notes (2016: 194).

Whats the character limmit of the prompt / text I can send you?

nostr:npub13wfgha67mdxall3gqp2hlln7tc4s03w4zqhe05v4t7fptpvnsgqs0z4fun

Are you working now?

Please explain what does a "step function" means in the context of the conversation we just had

is that sound used during the test phase of the development of the compressor? Or is that happening all the time as I compress?

I still dont understand, Please explain as if im 10 years old

please elaborate further.

nostr:npub1tsgw6pncspg4d5u778hk63s3pls70evs4czfsmx0fzap9xwt203qtkhtk4

Please re-write this stence so a person who knows nothing about mathematics can understand it. This sentence is about audio compressors in the context of understanding how compressors affect sound. The sentence is provided below:

To observe the effect of a compressor on an audio signal, a step function is used as the input signal.

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Please re-write this stence so a person who knows nothing about mathematics can understand it. This sentence is about audio compressors in the context of understanding how compressors affect sound. The sentence is provided below:

To observe the effect of a compressor on an audio signal, a step function is used as the input signal.

nostr:npub1tsgw6pncspg4d5u778hk63s3pls70evs4czfsmx0fzap9xwt203qtkhtk4

Whats the difference between an Active DI box and a Passive DI Box?

Please provide 10 creative uses of reamping (including guitars, but not exclusively only guitars)

what happens if you connect the output of a sound card to a guitar amplifier whithout using a reamp box?

Can you explain what is happening in a reamp box?

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Please explain the process of reamping in the context of sound engineering / studio work. Present the generated text in bulletpoints for a presentation

nostr:npub1tsgw6pncspg4d5u778hk63s3pls70evs4czfsmx0fzap9xwt203qtkhtk4

Please rewrite the following text as bulletpoints for a presentation for audio engineering bachelor students

Altered Subjective Perception of Sound

Let’s explore now how auditory masking affects our perception of sound in the context of loudspeaker and subwoofer setups. From the examples and graphs above, we can anticipate that if reproduction levels are set too high in the low to low-mid frequencies, auditory masking will take place and mainly compromise our hearing abilities in the spectrum above the masking tones.

In any PA system, being in a room or outdoor, if a subwoofer is reproducing an excessive level of low frequencies, subjectively the low-mid spectrum will appear muddy, undefined, lacking in clarity and dynamic. The whole musical content over say, a low-mid octave, seems blurred and out-of-focus. Certain instruments’ level are seemingly too low, the audio mix is no longer balanced. Auditory masking will occur, irrespective of the design and quality of the loudspeaker or subwoofer. Your ear/brain loose some part of the information in the low-mid spectrum.

Similarly, the same phenomena can occur with a single loudspeaker if it is placed, for example, in a corner of a room, close to two solid hard walls, without any attenuation of its low frequencies. These room boundaries will change the acoustic radiation space for the loudspeaker and a bass boost of up to 12 dB will occur below 200 Hz in the loudspeaker’s response. That’s quite a bit of extra level, and this will induce compromised sound perception in the low-mid spectrum, again.

Minimizing Auditory Masking

There are multitude of scenarios where excessive bass levels are reproduced, leading to altered subjective perception of sound and musical content and now you may wonder: what could I do to avoid this? The answer is fairly simple.

Reducing excessive amount of low frequency level either in the mix or directly in the PA system may seem frustrating, at first, as bass levels are effectively no longer as prominent. However, the benefits in doing so are immediate on the sound definition and clarity you restore in the mid to low-mid spectrum. The aim is to find the right balance, as with everything.

Practically, how to reduce excessive bass levels? Adjusting the balance of the audio mix (from the main mixer output) is one possibility. If the content is pre-recorded and replayed, you will not be able to do this and you basically need to adjust your PA system. QSC K.2 Series™ loudspeakers and KS Series subwoofers all have on-board EQ, which allow you to easily setup a shelving-filter below 200 Hz, for example. These flexible and easy-to-use EQ can be setup and saved in the loudspeaker’s internal memory as user ‘Scene´, which can be recalled any time for your typical use cases.

Additionally, QSC TouchMix mixers provide all needed functionalities to adjust their main or Aux outputs precisely using typical EQ parameters.

Conclusion

When excessive low frequency content is reproduced via your PA system, the so-called auditory masking phenomena will occur, compromising your perception of sound. In order to retrieve definition, clarity and balance of the audio content, the reduction of some low frequency level is necessary. Doing so, all elements in the mix will be balanced again, recreating a proper three-dimensional sound stage. Remember that what we are listening to is the complex combination and interaction between the sound source, the environment we are in and the way our ears and brain decode sounds. It is useful, therefore, to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each element in the chain. Happy listening!

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Please explain masking curves (in the context of audio engineering)

Please convert the following text to bulletpoints for a presentation for audio engineering bachelors students ->

Simultaneous Masking of Similar Frequencies

Simultaneous masking occurs when a sound is made inaudible by a noise, or masker, of the same duration as the original sound. How effective the masker is at raising the threshold of the original sound depends on the frequency of this sound and the frequency of the masker.

The greatest masking is when the masker and the sound are at the same frequency and this effect decreases as the sound frequency moves away from the masker frequency. This phenomenon is called ‘on-frequency masking’ and occurs because the masker and the original sound are within the same auditory filter, meaning that the listener cannot distinguish between them, as they are perceived as one signal.

Figure 1 below illustrates the phenomena of simultaneous masking using a masking tone centered at 410 Hz. You will notice that the masking patterns change depending on the masker intensity. At low levels, with masker sounds around 20 to 40 dB, the masking patterns are not affecting much our listening abilities. As the masker intensity increases (50 to 80 dB) the masking curves widen, especially for sounds at frequencies higher than the masker. This is called ‘upward-spread of masking’ and is why an interfering sound masks higher frequency signals much more than lower ones.

Please convert the following text to bulletpoints for a presentation for audio engineering bachelors students ->

What we hear is the complex combination of sound sources and their inherent audio characteristics interacting with the surrounding environment (in a room or outdoor), being decoded by our ears and brain. A number of loudspeakers and room-related topics have already been discussed in previous blogs (‘How to Best Setup Your Loudspeakers in Your Home Studio’, and ‘How to Correctly Place a Subwoofer in a Room’). This article will explore one specific aspect of human hearing and how it affects our perception of sound.

What is Auditory Masking?

Our ears work together with our brain to create the sounds we hear in our heads. If certain phenomena are directly related to our hearing devices (tympani, bones, cochlea, etc), separate aspects occur in our brain as it decodes the information received via the auditory nerves. One of them is called Auditory Masking, which is of particular interest as it can alter our perception of sound.

Auditory masking occurs when the perception of one sound is affected and compromised by the presence of another sound. Auditory masking in the frequency domain is known as simultaneous masking, frequency masking or spectral masking. Auditory masking in the time domain is called temporal or non-simultaneous masking. For this discussion, we will focus on simultaneous masking which occurs when a signal, the sound we want to hear, is compromised by a masking sound that is present at the same time.

Masked Threshold

Let’s move further and see what ‘masked threshold’ means. First, the unmasked threshold defines the quietest level of a signal we can perceive without a masking signal present. The masked threshold is the quietest level of the signal perceived when combined with a specific masking sound.

The amount of masking is the difference between these masked and unmasked thresholds. As an example, if the unmasked threshold is 20 dB and the masked threshold is 36 dB, the amount of masking would be 16 dB.

The basic auditory masking test involves unmasked thresholds measured on a subject. Then the masking noise is introduced at a fixed sound pressure level and the initial signal is presented at the same time. The level of the initial signal is varied until the new threshold is measured, defining this masked threshold.