In the room where it happens

The unique challenges of folk music and amplification

In the recent episode of Zeitgeist Radio, folk musician and audio engineer Brennish Thomson talks about rooms and acoustics in some interesting ways. In order to understand the specific niche of folk audio, we first have to review what we know about acoustics.

Listen to the episode here

There are a few key concepts that musicians and engineers pay attention to in a room (performance hall, studio, or wherever the heck your gig is):

Reverberation: The persistence of sound in a space after the original sound is produced.
Echo: A reflected sound that arrives at the listener with a delay, causing repetition of the original sound.
Absorption: Materials that absorb sound, reducing reflections and reverberation. Common materials include foam panels, carpets, and curtains.
Diffusion: Scattering of sound waves in different directions to create a more uniform sound field. Diffusers are often used in studios and auditoriums.

What I thought was so interesting in Brennish's perspective (and that of the company he works for, Your Heaven Audio), is thinking of instruments in the same way you think about a room. In the violin, what and where is the reverberation, the diffusion, etc?

Folk instruments are designed to project their sound. For most of human history we have not had electronic amplification; the instruments themselves needed to both generate and project the sound (compare this to an electric guitar, which without amplification is basically inaudible).

Violins project massively for their size. Banjos and accordions are the butt of many jokes because they can overpower other instruments.

However, as a folk performer there are still instances where you may need to amplify. An outdoor gig, maybe; or a duo in a large hall; or a hall with lots of absorption where folks in the back couldn't hear.

This niche is who Brennish and Your Heaven Audio serve.

In the folk music space when it comes to technical audio, you don't usually want any kind of distortion. This is actually really hard to do! Any amplification device (microphone, speaker, monitor...) is part of a complex process turning an audio signal into a digital signal, then back into an audio signal. This often results an a mild change in the sound.

The goal of this acoustic-focused type of amplification/sound engineering is to simply make the natural sound of the instrument, more present elsewhere. If a violin is naturally a high-projecting instrument, if you're going to amplify it you want to make people farther away feel like they're standing nearby, without blowing out folks in the natural projection range of the violin.

Also, folk musicians often take pride in the way they style their playing. They've often worked on a unique sound, and if they've been playing long enough they might have an instrument they really care about sounding a particular way.

As Brennish says, "If you have a $5000 guitar it's going to sound like a $5000 guitar. If you have a $10 guitar you got at a flea market somewhere, it's going to sound like a $5 guitar you got at a flea market" (I think he likely misspoke the numbers there, but I think it's hilarious and illustrates his point).

What these folks don't want is the transition from audio-digital-audio to suppress or change the small things that showcase their instrument's unique sound.

This is surprisingly hard to do. Most amplification systems sound amplified. You can usually tell when someone is singing into a microphone, or playing an electric guitar vs acoustic. In fact, the first highlighted testimonial on the Your Heaven Audio webpage starts "Sounds like my instrument!"

Also, because most musicians are not playing in the folk space, and most folk musicians would likely avoid amplification when possible, it's not a market that is being actively served by that many companies.

After speaking with Brennish, I reached out to a few folk musician friends. Every interaction was the same:

"Hey, I just had someone on my podcast talking about technical audio in the folk music space."

"OMG I NEED TO LISTEN NOW!! HOW DO I CONTACT THEM?! IT'S SO HARD TO MAKE AUDIO WORK RIGHT!"

I guess Your Heaven Audio knows what's up with their demographic!