Do you "forget" how things sound?

[Mark Hammer]

Here's a Friday kind of question...assuming it's Friday where you live right now.

I've built, tried out, and owned a buncha stuff over my playing life.  You can't fit it ALL on a pedalboard, so there is a dresser with 3-1/2 drawer of stuff in my office/workshop, not to mentionsome plastic storage bins, and bins of unboxed boards that I built, tried out and wasn't in any hurry to box up afterwards.  As a result, one has a segment of all the sounds available at any one time.

I have a tendency to forget what things sound like if it has been a while since I plugged them in.  Distortions that I remembered as sounding one way actually sound another (and quite frankly don't sound at ALL different from something built recently).  Modulated devices sweep wider or more narrowly, or more asymmetrically than I remember.  Last night I finished up an EA tremolo with some mods, and wondered if it had as much depth as the other 2 I'd made and sold.  No idea.***

I'm headed out of town tomorrow to a larger city, and was interested to see if any stores there carried the Source Audio Soundblox pedals.  Nobody near me carries them, and I've been curious as heck about them.  But would I be able to remember if they sound similar or different from my existing pedals (extremely bizarre patches aside)?  No idea.

Sometimes, one is able to produce a fascinating sound via some unusual combination of pedals and their settings.  Will you remember them, and will it sound the way you remember if you are able to reconstitute it?  Maybe it won't live up to your recollection because it was so surprising the first time that you thought it sounded better than it really did.

Memory is a funny thing, and sometimes I wonder if ourcapacity to be distracted or beguiled by all these various pedals is simply because we've forgotten about how all the others sound.


***  A little tip.  The unit can be modded to have an LED that shows tremolo rate.  Most people would cancel the LED during bypass.  I decided to stick another resistor in series with the recommended 10k value to greatly lower brightness when in bypass mode.  The stompswitch can be used to shunt that additional current-limiting resistor when you engage the effect and bring the brightness back up.  This way you can see the rate when in bypass, and make any adjustments, but use the shift in brightness as your in/out status indicator.

[sgmezei]

I definetly know the feeling of being amazed or confused when digging up older gear. Stuff that I used to LOVE when I first got it, I cant stand now. Case in point, my $500 Digitech RP250 with expression pedal. I got it when it first came out and loved the thing. I was 15 of course. It sure sounds alot different now.....

Guitars are neat ones to dig up too. I have a couple old harmonies that I only play once in awhile and they always amaze me with their unique sound.

Great thread. I want to go searching in road cases now!

[oliphaunt]

In my experience we have extremely limited ability to remember sound.  The only truly useful comparison is with both pieces of gear are present and you can switch between them instantly.

[R.G.]

Yep. Memory for sounds is not often highly accurate. This is in fact the core of the need for double blind testing of audio equipment. Both short term and long term memory of sounds tends to be of the "iconic" sort - we remember clear the mental labels or icons for what we heard and often how we felt while hearing it, but the accuracy for the sound itself is highly suspect.

This is especially true with newer research indicating that not all that much of hearing as opposed to sensing sound vibrations happens in the ears. Most of it's in the brain, in the post processing. Like vision - remember the recent findings of the basis for all visual illusions?

i still find my wife's ability to - accurately, as far as I can tell - recall subtle shades of colors for some days as amazing.  I think in fact that it is amazing, in the sense that perfect pitch is amazing. Accurate, literal recall of sounds in toto as opposed to just pitch may be even rarer.

[Mark Hammer]

It's funny, you know.  I think the plethora of fuzzes, distortions and overdrives out there is a reflection of just how poorly we remember sounds.  I have one of those Boss ROD-10 units with 5 different distortions in it.  I could not tell you what they sounded like if you were holding my whole family with a knife to their throat.

And yes, memory depends very much on verbal descriptions and whatever it is they do.  You'll note that the big boundary in memory across the lifespan occurs between the first 3-4 years and everything else that follows.  Not surprisingly our conscious recollection of things before then that we could not verbally describe (because we had no words for it) is extremely poor.

I read pedal reviews, and quite frankly, with the exception of the controls and toggles and their various names, it often feels like the background loop in the Flintstones, repeating and repeating and repeating.  I gather the reviewers don't remember either.  That may well be why so many gear reviews are glowing.  People may think it's because the advertiser bought off the reviewer, but it is more likely that the reviewer has poor recollection of the last comparable product they used and so thinks this one is amazing.  I am reminded of an episode of an old PBS/Nova series on the brain in which they were interviewing/profiling a man who had both temporal lobe and frontal lobe damage.  His wife brought him some coffee, and he asked what it was, convinced that he had never had anything like it in his life, and that it was "simply amazing, incredible".

[R.G.]

I do find that the sound of songs I heard when I was forming my musical tastes that I thought were absolutely stupendous at the time are now hears  - perhaps when see through the light of digital clarity - sound worse many times. I'd put this down to the pervasive "digital makes stuff sound bad" if it wasn't for the fact that I also now consider digital recordings of some things that I thought were just so-so to be vastly more clearly heard and more pleasing now.

I think that the highly suspect audio stuff I heard music through as a kid in a small town out in the sticks was burnishing off the rough edges of some of the stuff I thought was great, and hiding the good stuff in parts of it.

Then too, my tastes have changed. I find I like both the classical and heavy metal violin from Rachel Barton a lot. I think what I like is really just how she plays the instrument.

[gritz]

Yeah, it is a fascinating subject. I wish I could get to grips with it properly.

On revisiting old recordings: it's natural that after many years of being involved in any kind of music production a listener will apply a more critical ear to a recording then before. It's also likely that a great song will hide a multitude of little technical sins. I've been to great concerts and little flaws have only been apparent when I've seen / heard footage later. Too busy enjoying myself at the time, I guess!

The human brain does a massive amount of audio processing. For example a fairly high level tone will cause a short term loss of sensitvity to tones around this frequency (this is the basis of mp3 compression). This can manifest itself in home studios where an improperly treated room can have sharp resonances, particularly around bass frequencies. Proper sound treatment can be time consuming, expensive (although you can diy) and obtrusive (many people can't justify dedicating a room solely to music). The upshot is that the ear quickly adapts to these loud tones by "turning them down" and this can obviously adversely affect the final mix. A workround is to regularly compare your mix to a known good commercial recording of a similar style.

When I'm breadboarding stuff I tend to do a lot of back to back recordings so I can compare the results of any changes properly, rather than relying on memory or hoping that I'm not just imagining a change for the better.

[tempus]

Yep. Memory for sounds is not often highly accurate. This is in fact the core of the need for double blind testing of audio equipment. Both short term and long term memory of sounds tends to be of the "iconic" sort - we remember clear the mental labels or icons for what we heard and often how we felt while hearing it, but the accuracy for the sound itself is highly suspect.

This is especially true with newer research indicating that not all that much of hearing as opposed to sensing sound vibrations happens in the ears. Most of it's in the brain, in the post processing. Like vision - remember the recent findings of the basis for all visual illusions?

Indeed. If you ever doubted the psychological/psychoacoustic effect the visual presentation has on our auditory perception, check this vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0

Makes you wonder if the latest super cool looking pedal actually sounds as good as it looks.

[Gordo]

I have the original Multiwave Distortion, the one without presets or EQ.  It is about the only really DIFFERENT distortion pedal I've played.  It can sound familiar at it's "normal" settings but can reach really wild extremes to the point of sounding like a clavinet.  Once you get into "foldback" settings it has a very distinctive CLACK at the beginning of the pick attack and after you've played it you'll start to pick it out of recordings.  Umphree's McGee uses it from time to time and I'd never noticed the sound till I got mine.  I'm not crazy about the plastic case on mine but hasn't given me any problems to date.

[sgmezei]

Cool video Tempus. I think I have to make a TS type pedal and call it the McGurk! haha

[WGTP]

I can have the greatest distortion ever on my breadboard before I go to bed, and the next day it sounds like A$$.  Either sound is very subjective or Hoodoo Goblins come in the middle of the night and ...

Witch version I believe even oscillates back and forth...   

[timd]

What I find is helpful is to use my recording software AND a pen and paper. Record everthing (It can be a quick snippet) and try to demonstrate both single string and chords, as some pedals are the "one or the other" type. Then save it under a file name and log this with a pen and paper too.

If I record a fuzz today, I'll put (insert name)fuzz3.17.12 as the file name.

[PRR]

> I like ....  Rachel Barton a lot.

Was that you??

Some years back, she gigged where I worked and I put her publicity photo on the event website. I noticed a _LOT_ of traffic on that server: the page with her photo out-hitting all other pages.

I can't find that photo now. It was similar to this:

-except back then she could not afford buttons to hold her top together, or didn't hold her fiddle so close.

(Actually, I back-tracked where ALL those hits were coming from. An internal proxy at the local med-supply company. Odd.)

> classical and heavy metal violin from Rachel Barton

I had not seen her heavy-metal act. Interesting.

[Mark Hammer]

Some time in the early 70's I went to see a string quartet play a piece by George Crumb.  They were all amped up, so that the assorted scratches and other non-traditional string things Crumb had incuded in the score could be heard, and had a bunch of Fender Showman amps around them.

[chromesphere]

I can have the greatest distortion ever on my breadboard before I go to bed, and the next day it sounds like A$$.    

A friend of mine is a sound engineer and he brought up an interesting theory.  When he was in Perth (australia) he was commenting to his girlfriend how everything sounded different.  He suggested that it could be due to the warmth of the air / humidity and that prehaps when your jamming with friends in a hot room, or after an hour of playing on your guitar (and the room warms up) things sound better.  Maybe it is just the tubes or your fingers warming up? I've come to expect the first 30 mins of playing my guitar dont sound that great.  Some might say none of my guitar playing sounds that great

Anyway, I just thought that was an interesting theory to share.
Paul

[Mark Hammer]

Stuff also sounds different at various times of the day.  I find I always turn the volume on the TV down in the evening, and when I turn the thing on the next morning, my first thought is always "How the hell did I even hear that?".

Keep in mind that we physically apply back-pressure, via our Eustachian tubes to our eardrum, to modify its compliance; not unlike sticking your thumb on a speaker cone to dampen its vibration.  All those equal-loudness curves that affect the perceived prominence of top and bottom, relative to mids, are not independent of whatever we are doing inside our ear-throat canal at the moment.  That can change over the day or in response to recent experience. 

As I understand it, it is common for Olympic-style target shooters to have a loud beep actuated moments before the gun actually fires, so that the reflex to reduce compliance of the eardrum in response to a sudden noise protects the ear against the MUCH louder noise to come a few milliseconds later.

[Paul Marossy]

How stuff sounds to me seems to depend on my mood for that day. Or how well (or bad) I am playing that day.

[amptramp]

I would assume as a first approximation that the proportion of people who hear things the same every time is about the same as those who have perfect pitch.  I have the converse argument to Mark Hammer - ever get into your car, start it up and hear music blasting at ear-shredding levels?  You turn it down and once you get on the road, you turn it back up to where it was.

[Paul Marossy]

I have the converse argument to Mark Hammer - ever get into your car, start it up and hear music blasting at ear-shredding levels?  You turn it down and once you get on the road, you turn it back up to where it was.

Or when your boss interrupts you while you're listening to your iPod so you pause it and then you turn it back on it seems way too loud, so you turn it down. But it eventually gets back up to where it was before the interruption.  

[Mark Hammer]

Yep, to both of you.

It's all part of the inherent inconsistency of human listening, and the hearing that results.  It's a bloody wonder that ANYTHING sounds the same, eh?