Bill Pirkle wrote:

>In black and white drawing, certain lines are drawn darker than others
>and some are extremely lightly drawn.  This seems to give depth to music
>and drawing.  Recording studio engineers can not only place sounds in the
>left/right spectrum but can place the instruments closer or farther from
>the listener using volume and bass/treble equalization giving a distinct 3
>dimensional effect - perspective- especially when heard through headphones.

I have a minor comment to make regarding Bill Pirkle's latest email on the
general topic of comparing music to art. Those creating sound mixes from
numerous tracks generally give different depths to different instruments by
varying the reverberation (or "reverb") electronically. This is a kind of
continuous faint echos which follow behind the main sound. Because further
away sounds have more opportunity to reflect off multiple surfaces en route
to one's ears, a sound with more reverb seems to come from a more distant
source. I believe this is the main way of achieving depth perception in
studio recordings as opposed to hall recordings which produce natural
reverb, though no doubt recording engineers have many other devices such
as the equalisation parameters mentioned by Bill.

Jim Paterson
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