EQ: Reaching Inside a Sound: Module 6

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The same two sounds as the last two episodes, a bird and a jackhammer, playing at the same moment, at the same levels. No fader moves. One change inside the jackhammer, and it slips behind a wall while the bird steps out in front of it. This is the audio lecture for the sixth module, on EQ: the first tool in the course that reaches inside a single sound and changes what it is made of. Almost every sound you hear is many sounds at once, a stack of frequencies from low to high, and an equalizer lets you turn parts of that stack up and parts of it down. The world does this to sound all the time, through walls, glass, distance and canyons. This week you get to do it on purpose. Along the way: plug-ins as descendants of the tape studio's hardware boxes, and why their order matters; the three controls of an EQ band, taught as a hand reaching into the sound; a narrow boost swept through the jackhammer until it rings like a room, by way of Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room and Music on a Long Thin Wire; and EQ's two jobs, clarity and transformation, from cutting before you boost to the telephone voice and the filtering in Hildegard Westerkamp's Kits Beach Soundwalk. Then three artists who use the same kind of tool with very different temperaments: Ryoji Ikeda at the edges of hearing, Éliane Radigue's patient drones, and Marja Ahti's barely-there shaping of field recordings. It closes on the question underneath every EQ move, what gets taken away and who decides, from noise-cancelling headphones to the processed voice to Tanya Tagaq, who carries Inuit throat singing into amplified, electronic and orchestral spaces around the world. Required listening: Éliane Radigue, "Kyema," from Trilogie de la Mort (the first five minutes), and Ryoji Ikeda, dataplex (the opening track, "data.index," at a moderate level). Headphones recommended. Pairs with the Module 6 pages and the EQ screencast. Sound credits "Nightingale song 2" by inchadney, licensed CC BY 4.0. Excerpted and mixed for this episode. https://freesound.org/people/inchadney/sounds/54374/ "jackhammer.wav" by overmedium, released under CC0 (public domain). Excerpted, mixed, low-pass filtered and swept with a narrow EQ boost for this episode. https://freesound.org/people/overmedium/sounds/652837/ Chapters 00:00 A wall that isn't there 03:39 Many sounds at once 06:44 Reaching in, by hand 10:32 Two jobs, one tool 13:19 Same tool, three temperaments 15:16 Who decides what gets taken away