Ask questions to Blu-ray Music insider "Alexander J"

[Alexander J]

Originally Posted by Slec

Alexander,
Do you approach each title based on the physical source material or based on what you hear in your head from a musical perspective? As in, while authoring, do you look at the music and see what would most benefit from multi-channel audio, or do you concentrate on faithful upfront presentation first? I'm not by any means saying that you sacrifice quality for the surround experience. I'm more curious if the particular pieces guide what you choose in terms of the acoustic reality experience vs. full blown audio from surround channels.

Maybe to clarify, what got me thinking about this is some of the pieces by Rzewski where the piano is used as a percussive instrument as well as a musical one. Hearing it live can be quite an experience as the room fills with the different sounds emanating from the piano. It can be rather haunting and it got me thinking as to how that would sound reproduced in multi-channel and to ask how decisions are made to best suit playback. The Vivaldi disc makes great use of the possibilities multi-channel surround with the double orchestra. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Chris

There are several approaches I use then I consider to work on particular music material that I explained in my post No.48 that why my first choice for "Acoustic Reality Experience" titles was the most known orchestral Masterpieces originally recorded specifically for Multichannel Sound Production. In this case my work as a sound engineer was to preserve and underscore the original "stage" performance but to deliver magnificence of natural acoustics completely enveloping a listener with 7.1 surround presentation.

For example like piano piece by Rzewski "The Road" that is notable for the extensive use of the piano's case and the pianists' bodies as percussion instruments and supplied by many of the participants, who also have to vocalize and whistle and manipulate pieces of apparatus I would do new "surround orchestration" of this work to position these effects around the listener however I strongly insists that presentation like this should be done only in collaboration with the performer and prior deep analysis of the composer work.

Great question,

Alexander.