Hi!
I was thinking about the concept of relative frequency and psychoacoustic techniques as they apply to the recording and mastering of an album such as vh1. My thoughts are hard to relate but I will take a shot.... just scratching the surface
Recording a song is very much like taking a photograph.
Composition is everything, the subject of the photo must be lit and set in the photograph to draw the eye to that subject. The surrounding field must in some way support and modify the subject to an end.
Recording is no different, the subject of the recording must be placed in context of its surroundings. Brighter sounds tend to be more up front, and the darker sounds tend to exist on the periphery. What we want to emphasize is bright and what we want in support is darker.
Now the periphery of an audio composition contains the harmonics relative to the subject that fill out the sound. For instance a keyboard or bass guitar or a vocal can be placed in the mix to complement the subject of the recording, and to the ear they all seen to smear together to create a wall of sound. Separate they may not hold up.
With Van Halen 1 EVH is definitively the subject of that album. He is bright and upfront. The rest of the band occupies the remaining frequencies, adding harmonic support to that Bright guitar sound. There is some overlap, but that just adds more to the sauce.
During mastering the eq of all the different tracks are moved around in real time to change where the emphasis is located. Evh may fade back a little in a track to make room for roths vocal... Conflict between DLR and EVH????Nahh Now your chasing a moving target... EVHs guitar gets brighter and darker depending on what was needed... it still sounds like eddie though... WHY????
The photography analogy is again useful. Like using the exposure tool in photoshop to just darken an image, the image is still recognizable as the original after the adjustment. Why??? Because the relative difference between the light and dark pixels still form the image. All those pixels are scaled equally, so they can still form that original image.
EVHs trademark VH1 guitar sound comes from its relationships between the frequencies within its bandwidth. These are unique, and were the result of the waveform his rig created when mic'd a certain way.
This waveform can be moved up and down the audio spectrum, like an analogue code and remain the same; and like how the light bounced off a subjects face and entered a lens, the shape of his sound , the waveform was locked in at the console when the track was recorded, just like with a photo. Fundamentally altering it would be difficult at best.
Is his sound bright or is it dark???? Both!!! just depends.....
Something only appears bright when there is something dark to compare it to.
If you were to take V1 and play it on your stereo with the treble rolled off guess what?? It still sounds like VH1!! Why???? The relationship between all the waveforms remains the same, that never really changes, so it still sounds recognizable as that album... it has the right fingerprints.. as they were locked in at the console.
When mastering an album for particular media (say AM radio????? like in the 70's) You may want to move the whole kit to the right and up the frequency pole to make it sound better to the end listener in his pontiac firebird. Now the track still sounds right due to the fact that relationship between the frequencies that comprise the sound (like pixels ) remain more or less the same. It just is brighter.
Compounding that is psychoacoustics, the fact that the brain interprets the impulses it gets from the ear, and modifies them to suit its needs.
The brain is constantly struggling to make sense of the world and it tries to modify things to help it complete its tasks.
Try wearing ear plugs for an extended uninterrupted period and see what happens, your brain compensates. When you take them off look out!! Its lIke taking off your sunglasses at the beach!!! The good part is that soon the brain compensates and brings the light level back into a range it can interpret. Sound is no different.
Just a thought,
TheTeddy
... fresh strings too unfortunately 
so it might be a tad bright.... not sure.... I think that the 1300 might help with the last of the nasal mid issue and im willing to sacrifice a great sounding set of old strings for the experiment. Ive been using a t-top with a mag from a Super D up to this point.
, this time to freeze at a particular point. Its now very unique boost pedal.
