About Sound

Main >

Concept



1. Foreword 2.About music 3. About rock 4. About sound 5. About mixing 6. About guitarists 7. About tubes 8. About pedals
9. About digital 10. Ab. compression 11. About saturation 12. About filters 13. About delays 14. About chorus 15. About switching 16. Synthesis


Sound is of course a question of taste, but it has also some basic rules.

Mixing excellent individual instrument sounds will probably give bad results, just like mixing several fruit-juices will probably give just a thick, sweet drink without any precise taste: the individual qualities of each fruit-juice will be lost in the mix.

Take a lettuce, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. None of them tastes really good one by one: would you drink a glass of vinegar, or eat salt with a spoon?

Mix them carefully, and keep the balance between each of their characteristics: you will have a tasty salad, and will enjoy eating it.

Fruit-juices are very similar in terms of taste: they are all sweet. Mixing them will just kill their individual qualities, cause the individual tastes "overlap".

Lettuce, salt, pepper, oil and vinegar are all different.

Their tastes will not overlap, and if their individual qualities are not obvious, mixing them will give something complete and balanced: acid and sweet, soft and fresh.

Conclusion:

  • A correct band sound is not made of excellent sounds stuffed into a mix.
  • The individual sounds of a correct mix usually sound weird, taken one by one.
  • A correct mix is made of individual sounds designed to sound good within a mix, not to sound good individually.
  • Mixing individual sounds that sound good, one by one, requires severe cut-offs before getting something correct in the end.

Rockman gear was designed with one thing in mind: since the final objective is to make records, or to get a correct global band sound on stage, let’s directly design guitar gear that will sound good in a mix. Focusing on a good individual sound is not the best way to design gear.



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