27th Lecture on the Biology of Music
I Medici's Spring Concert-Lecture April 19, 2015



Martha de Francisco
Martha de Francisco is a record producer and recording engineer specializing in
Classical music. She is a professor for Sound Recording at McGill University in
Montreal

Creating an alternative reality – acoustics and music recording in the 21st century

Music recordings fill our world. A multitude of new recordings are released every day. Digital recordings are the primary medium for music transmission and experience today, and they are a major factor in the culture industry. Recordings allow us to translate the ethereal and fleeting phenomenon of music, preserving musical interpretations through time and space.

Since the invention of recording technology at the end of the 19th century, we have tried to copy the way music sounds in the acoustics of a specific space. But how faithful is a recording compared to the actual performance of a musical work in a concert hall or in a church? Can the impression of natural spaciousness be truly matched by recording?

In this talk I will describe the principles of sound perception and some practices currently used to capture and recreate music performances in natural acoustics, while touching on the context of the present and future distribution of recorded music.