https://theartoflisteningfilm.com/

The Art of Listening is an incredibly enlightening documentary on the detail that goes into capturing the essence of sound. Everything in the production of music, from recording to considering the right guitar crafted out of a specific type of wood in order to produce the perfect, unique and different sound. With fast pacing innovations in modern technology, music consumers have mostly forgotten the unique sounds produced by acoustic surroundings. Whether the sound comes out of a carefully and skillfully crafted instrument, or a finely tuned audio system, the vibrations of sound that actually penetrate your ear holes are very much dependent on the acoustical environment in which the sound is being produced or reproduced.
Much thought and wisdom goes into the skill of recording sound. Everything from the room size and shape, to the material that the instrument is made from. The engineer also makes a careful decision regarding his or her choice of microphone, as well, as the placement of said microphone. The ideas behind the art and science of recording play a vital role in documenting a true and enriching vibration out of any given instrument. The sound of a guitar can be characterized by many aspects of the music. Producer and Engineer Jack Douglas says, “Every sound that I use is one which I try to make an individual character that suits the personality, the lyric, the tempo, the temperament, and the character of the song.” Such specific guitar sounds must be carefully crafted in order to fit the role in which they are designed to fill in regards to the musical composition. Jack Douglas also said, “For me, the air that surrounds the instrument is vibrating, that’s organic, and I look to find the best microphone which can capture that organic sound.” The sounds being produced by a guitar are waveforms in the air; the engineer can obtain exactly what he or she wants from the waveforms by their choice of microphone. However, the engineer also takes into consideration the range of frequency which microphone can capture in the given space. This frequency range is dependent on placement of the instrument, placement of the microphone, and the acoustics of the recording space. Capturing the sound of an instrument must be a very precise process, because it is creating an emotion and an experience for the listener, which is a vitally important aspect to a good song.
The experience of the instrument’s sound would ideally have the listener sitting in the same room with the performance of the instrument and hearing the sound first hand. However, instead this information comes to the listener second hand via a recording rather than first hand from the musician. In a nutshell, the job of a sound engineer is to relay information from the musician to the listener without both of them needing to be in the same proximity, yet still sounding like they are in fact right next to each other having a conversation.Composer Mychael Danna says, “The idea of a recording is to overcome the illusion that the sound is recorded, but instead is something that is actually alive and is coming from all around you.”  Essentially, sound coming from any real time live performance should ideally sound identical to the recorded process being consumed by the listener. Musical performance is a powerful tool and recording the process is not just documenting the performance, but being able to re-create the performance in a real time sense over and over again. Anyone who listens to the recording should be able to feel as though they are at the real performance, in real time.