As you start producing music, it's

essential to know some of the basic

properties of sound, so much of what we
do really is manipulating these kind of
general principles or basic properties of
sound.
What we're going to look at today is
going to be propagation, amplitude,
frequency, and timbre.
And we're going to start with
propagation.
And that's the sounds moving through a
medium.
Now, sound can exist in a variety of
mediums.
It can go through air.
It can go through metal.
It can go through water.
And in each one of those mediums, it
actually goes at a different rate.
Or a different speed.
And it does take time for sound to get
from one place to another.
And our brain is amazingly capable at
determining those fine differences in in
arrival time.
In fact, if you have something, co, if
you have sound coming from the right hand
side, hits your right ear before the
left, we can actually detect that.
And that's one of the main ways that we
actually determine if something is coming
from the right instead of the left.
So manipulation of, of a slight delay Is
really a manipulation of our sense of
propagation, or sounds moving through the
air.
Now, there are many properties of air
that can change the rate of sound.
the temperature and humidity.
Your elevation, whether you're at sea
level or up a couple miles like in
Denver.
So if I'm going to be particular about
saying, the speed of sound, I have to say
the speed of sound at sea-level, at the
specific temperature.
But really it only changes the speed of
sound a very slight amount.
So we can say, sound generally travels at
340 meters per second.
That also works out to be around one foot
for millisecond.
One kilometer in three seconds or one
mile in five seconds.
Again, these are not precise, and they
rely on a variety of factors, but it is
useful to know, because a lot of what we
do with sound effects, like delay,

reverb, phasers and flangers, they're

actually all related to this idea of
propagation.
If I'm trying to give the sense of a
space that's all based on manipulating
this idea of propagation.
Because as I talk in a room, the sound of
my voice bounces off all the surfaces.
It takes time for this sound to get from
my mouth, to the surface, and then back
or to someone else.
And then all the different surfaces are
reflecting differently.
So our idea and our, our sense of space
is actually based on this idea of
propagation and reflection.
The sound reflecting off objects and
taking the time to get there in a
different amount of time from all those
different surfaces.
So, so much of what we do in a mix is
based on creating a sense of space and a
depth and a real location.
And all of those parameters are based on
this idea of propagation.