STYLISTIC CONDITIONS OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF VIRTUAL SPACE IN SOUND ENGINEERING OF JAZZ MUSIC
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/art/2024.1.12Keywords:
jazz, jazz sound design, virtual sound space, jazz style, sound recording of jazz music, soundAbstract
The peculiarities of jazz art cause significant differences in the sound engineering of jazz music in general and the construction of virtual space in particular. For the analysis of the virtual space in sound engineering, the concept of the sound of music in the primary sound field is differentiated, which is considered as a set of all the nuances of the composer’s and performer’s idea and the sound of music in the secondary sound field, which is understood as the set of nuances of the embodiment of the composition in the virtual sound space. The specificity of jazz determines certain features of the created virtual sound space, among which stand out: “close sound” associated with the traditional space of jazz performance; in general, a narrower dynamic range due to the acoustic imbalance of most jazz compositions. The article substantiates the peculiarities of sound design of the main musical instruments and voices in jazz music: grand piano (accented percussive nature of sound engineering, noises of dampers and hammers); drums (moderate use of dynamic processing, naturalness of the spectral components of the drums, location of the big drum at a small distance according to the plan); double bass (accentuation of performance overtones and noises, location in the foreground); vocals (emphasis on the upper frequency range, close location according to the plan and active use of late reverberation reflections); woodwind instruments (close location according to the plan while preserving the sound of the valves, the performer’s breathing and the sound of air flow); brass instruments (location in the virtual audio space at a significant distance from the listener, which distinguishes brass instruments from other instruments in jazz until the beginning of the 21’st century). It is concluded that the sound engineering of jazz music is stylistically conditioned and determined also by the historical period, the school of sound engineering or sound recording, and the features of the work of an individual sound engineer.
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