With the foundational concepts of the framework established, the practice-led examples conducted within this research project will now be introduced. Over a period of 10 months, a total of 688 hours of practice were conducted and documented. These hours include all stages of production, and are broken down into their respective sub-domains below:

• 334 live music project hours.
• 206 studio project hours.
• 100 location project hours.
• 48 livestream project hours.

From the various projects contributing to these hours, a variety of materials were documented, such as photographs, miking lists, stage plans, rehearsal videos, livestream tests, and of course the project outputs (or at least up-to-date working drafts). All materials documented can be viewed from the Chapter Materials button at the top right of this window as desired.

As this project aims to explore how potential value hierarchies influence the techniques and practices chosen, three projects have been selected as exemplars of this framework. These projects have been selected due to having a sufficient number of documented materials and outputs, and also were conducted over a period of weeks – allowing for changes in the HoPs associated with each project. Changes in the example project’s HoP provides a unique opportunity above other projects to showcase how objectives can influence chosen practices.

The documented materials and outputs are paired with recollections and evaluations from each project to derive how chosen practices are related to properties, and in turn HoPs. The three projects discussed will include a studio project, a location project, and a livestream project.

Studio: Austin Miller - Lifeline

The first project example is a studio project conducted with Austin Miller, with the aim of recording a track entitled Lifeline. The track featured several string and flute parts, paired with vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and grand piano. The piano, acoustic guitar, strings and most of the electric guitar parts were recorded by myself, with the remaining elements being recorded by Austin in various home studios.

Figure 15 shows a potential interpretation of the HoP present of this project, with emulates the sound of a real string ensemble being most prioritised at the top of the hierarchy, followed respectively by rich/warm sound, realistic stereo representation, and spaciousness.

As my involvement in this project (and thus the above HoP) started after an initial draft recording, my influence in this project can be traced by comparing the initial demo that Austin and Chris (cellist) recorded, and the final Decca tree recording. The purpose of this comparison is not to compare recording quality or judge which sounds subjectively ‘better’, but to show how potentially different aims may influence the recording techniques applied. Additionally, it should be noted that both excerpts are derived from unprocessed and raw audio recordings.

Demo string excerpt:

While the strings in the demo excerpt have been performed well, it was revealed that only one microphone was used when multitracking this demo. As such, there is no recorded stereo separation between each cello part has. This means that when listening to this demo on headphones, it can feel isolated and lacking in perceived depth due to simply having been panned during export (volume related). Additionally, due to the cello being close miked in this recording, the breaths of Chris are significantly louder than miking from a further distance.

Final string excerpt:

For the final recording, Chris was asked to move from seat to seat, performing a single part in each allotted seat (Figure 16 & 17). This technique clearly attempts to instantiate emulates the sound of real string ensembles (per Figure 15), as this technique would allow for unique frequency, timing and cross-microphone volume differences to be captured in each take by all of the three Decca tree microphones - as is typical in string ensemble recordings. Critically, this technique can help to achieve a realistic stereo representation of a string ensemble, as each recorded part can be layering as if they were being performed simultaneously.

Figure 17 – Illustration of seat placement for each take during Lifeline Decca tree recording.

In comparing these two excerpts, a demonstrable example of how a known set of set engineering goals can influence the techniques applied may be evident in the varying approaches to recording three cello parts.

Location: Edinburgh Napier Orchestral Society

For the second project example, a location recording project with the Edinburgh Napier Orchestral Society (ENOS) will be examined. This project was recorded over two sessions a week apart and featured a chamber orchestra (Figure 18a & 18b).

For this project, two main aims were in place; firstly, due to space used for the recording, tempering the room into a suitable recording environment was desired; secondly, ensuring that the recording sounded balanced and had an appropriate stereo representation was also prioritised. These two aims represent most of the HoP shown in Figure 19.

To temper the room to achieve appropriate colouration, the wall behind the conductor was coated in drapes (Figure 20) – helping to manage modal resonance (Everest & Pohlmann 2022, p247).

When miking the soloist during both weeks minimal space was available to place microphones. Thus, attaining an intelligible recording (each note played can be discerned) which also blended well with the other miking techniques applied throughout the ensemble’s instrumentation was desired. To achieve this, a ribbon microphone (Coles 4038) was placed within a metre of the soloists (Figure 21a for week one, Figure 21b for week two) and was particularly useful for close miking the soloists, as it somewhat pacifies HF content (Haigh et al 2020, p55). This is critical as close miking in general often results in undesirable bowing sound, harmonic frequencies or key noises coming through – pairing these sounds with a general bump in HF can cause issues when blending harsh solo microphones with smoother Decca tree miking techniques.

When miking the French horn, a unique method was chosen to achieve an intelligible sound which also blended well with the main Decca tree array. This involved a Royer 122 active-ribbon microphone, placed above the French horn player, allowing for a captured blend of (i) the dry and articulated sound found when pointing a microphone down the French horn’s bell, and (ii) the warm and traditionally room-coloured sound found when miking the French horn from the front (with the bell pointing away from the microphone). Additionally, the use of a ribbon microphone resulted in the bidirectional polar pattern discriminating against the room reflections – aiding to reduce the room colouration captured by the French horn microphone (Figure 22a & 22b). This miking technique allowed two properties from the HoP to be instantiated.

Livestream: Samson Adeife

The third and final project example is a livestream project conducted with Samson Adeife and his afrobeats band. Two separate livestreams were broadcasted, allowing for a comparison between the practices used during both livestreams.

The first livestream was focused on achieving the technical requirements, and upon reflection, perhaps incorrectly treating the livestream as if it were a studio recording session. This resulted in a prioritisation of using ‘high-quality’ (effectively just renowned) equipment to achieve a ‘studio quality sound’. Per Figure 23a, the property has a high channel count resulted in 32 total input channels being available in the equipment chosen, the lack of prioritisation of can be navigated quickly however resulted in a lack of physical channel strips. As the Neve desk only has 16 input channels, channels 17 onwards could only be EQ’d, panned or mixed via Pro Tools, creating an inability to quickly adjust these channels during the livestream.

For the second livestream, the engineering aims were reordered with reference to my experiences within live sound engineering. As a result of this, the properties in the Figure 23a HoP from the 1st livestream were reordered, with pre-amp quality being deprioritised, and easy of navigation becoming increasingly prioritised. As such, an Allen & Heath SQ-5, a digital sound desk which is typically used in live sound environments was used in lieu of the Neve/DigiPre combination from the 1st livestream. This change of equipment allowed for all inputs to have a dedicated channel strip & fader operation. Figure 24a represents the adjusted HoP for the 2nd livestream.

While both HoPs shown above do not relate directly to sound itself, the audio desks and their instantiated properties are naturally highly relevant to audio engineering practices – and as such create SoAs which have final extrinsic value.

Findings and Comparisons

While the HoPs shown in the above examples are fundamentally linked to exterior aims and goals, each HoP delineates aims/goals into desirable ontological properties – which in turn possess either instrumental or final extrinsic value. The function of HoPs provides a method to disambiguating our goals into actionable, and compartmentalised steps. For instance, in the studio project example – a holistic recording goal or vision (e.g. recording multiple cello parts a particular circumstance) can be broken down into multiple properties. Within this project, Austin and Chris were asked to name three characteristics that they wanted the track to possess. This could potentially be paraphrased as having asked them to name three properties that they wanted the recording to instantiate. With their answer, a verbal hierarchy of characteristics was established and helped to identify the techniques desired to record the piano and acoustic guitar (the characteristics desired were ‘spacious’, ‘warm’ and ‘authentic’). While these characteristics required some interpretation at the time, they are largely moved the project towards utilising a proto-HoP, and in turn shaped the techniques applied. This proved to be a powerful method for unifying Austin and Chris’s expectations and vision for the recording, with my artistic and technical knowledge of audio engineering.

To be clear, using the proto-HoP (as described above) as a prospective tool (to identify properties before the recording has started) allowed for the many methods of completing tasks to be filtered down to a finite and manageable number which were discussed and elaborated upon. In the end, for the piano and acoustic guitar recording – two simultaneous recording methods were used on both instruments: a close miking technique, and a mid-range technique. This allowed for the properties instantiated by the recording to be approached and shaped within post-production.

This provision of clarity from HoPs also works retrospectively, helping to identify how a particular goal or vision was implemented; which properties contributed towards the completion of a goal, etc. For the final livestream project example, the main contributing factors in choosing the SQ-5 over the Neve studio desk can be illustrated and communicated through a HoP to those that were not present at the time of the project. For the location recording project, practices such as draping the rear wall can be justified through discussion of their instantiated properties. This allows the SoA ‘the rear wall is draped’ to immediately be tied to appropriately tempering the room colouration (i.e. ambience). With the model produced from this paper’s framework having been related to wider philosophical literature and concepts, its utility as a communicative pillar both in interpersonal and intrapersonal applications is hopefully exemplified. With these concepts in mind, perhaps when conducting seemingly insignificant practices in the future – I may be reminded that the objects related to any task are going to instantiate properties that are (arguably) always being evaluated in some degree.