The Japan Section holds meeting every month inviting a guest lecturer. In the August meeting, Martha de Francisco, a professor at McGill University, has kindly accepted the invitation and shared some of the insights in the recording philosophy she has developed over the years. The section is grateful in having such an internationally recognized figure in the field of sound recording and music production of classical music, as well as researcher, educator, and lecturer of world renown.
The talk had roughly two parts. Starting with the brief introduction of a European tradition of classical music recordings, Martha presented her philosophy and aesthetics for an artistic acoustic recording and microphone placements following a motto of "don't fix in the mix, fix in the recording." The second part of the talk was on the large-scale research she is currently involved. Using the same recording of a symphony, researchers from different disciplines worked on to investigate the "blend" in an orchestral sound.
Throughout the session, she elaborated on the importance of careful auditory analysis and accurate microphones positioning at different distances in order to capture a natural and multidimensional image of the sound of the music that enables to capture the subtle details of instrumental timbre, blend, and the expression of the musical performance.
