The Seven System Dwarves

Originally published in Worship Musician magazine, July 2022.

One of the many fun parts of my day job is getting to travel to various trade shows and conferences around the world. I recently had the pleasure of traveling to the InfoComm show in Las Vegas to show off the range of Allen & Heath digital mixers. As part of my usual trade show routine, I set aside some time to check out the other exhibiting companies and get a read of trends and products out in the space. I came across a fun sticker from the audio company Rational Acoustics which I thought was very interesting and hopefully useful to Worship Musician readers.?

The team at Rational Acoustics set up a bit of a translation of audio frequencies into common adjectives that we might use to describe the audio properties of a particular sound or mix. For instance, something that we might describe as ‘tubby’ is likely a bit heavy in the 20-120Hz range. While I might have a philosophical bone to pick around framing this ‘tubbiness’ as being inherently ‘bad’, I think that the concept has its applications for starting to map common communication that we might receive from congregants into something more directly applicable and addressable in our mix.?

Let’s dig in and get a few reference examples of these ‘7 Bad System Dwarves’ in action. I’ve recorded a flat track of an acoustic, electric and bass guitar playing together through a few chords in a common sort of contemporary worship style. You’ll hear the raw track for a few seconds followed by a few seconds of accentuating the ‘bad’ frequency and a few seconds of attenuating the ‘bad’ frequency (from the raw track level) for each of the dwarves. Just to make things more obvious, I’ve added a little beep sound at the point in which the new cut/boost kicks in. I think it is important to note that we should aim to get familiar with both the cut (attenuate) and boost (accentuate) for each range since sometimes we might have a scenario where a source or a mix is lacking the ‘edge’ we want (possibly solved by boosting 2K-4K) whereas other times we have too much ‘edge’ and need to cut 2K-4K as a first option.?

Here is Tubby. He is represented by the squat tuba-playing dwarf and is likely to show up in an overall mix and especially around fundamental bass and bass drum channels. What does Tubby sound like??

Moving up the frequency range a bit, we land on Muddy. Muddy is the hip bearded jazz bassist dwarf and would generally apply to core range of bass instruments and the ‘body’ of an overall mix, around 200-400hZ.?

Our friend Boxy is next, sitting in what is often a range where a baritone pastor’s mic might tend to exhibit a trait of ‘boxiness’ and particularly being a bit annoying if left untouched and running for long periods of time.?

While Honky the dwarf is shown with a trumpet, I think I’d probably have chosen a trombone to best illustrate the ‘honky’ effect. If you think of the honking offbeat of a polka or band march (the ‘pa-pa’ of an ‘oom-pa-pa’), you are likely close to describing this range. Perhaps a bit of the Peanuts teacher trombone with a plunger mute lands in the lower spectrum of Honky’s world, too.?

Barky is the carnival barker and I think that is a fitting occupation for him. This range does tend to really jump out in a mix as being overly abrasive at times and is a particularly tricky range in some spaces to tame adequately. I find that some snare drums will tend to show up as a bit ‘barky’ in their overtones as well, so make sure you aren’t always thinking of these dwarves as strictly applying to vocals.?

As noted, Edgy is often more of an offending frequency range where you might consider cutting more often than boosting. He is also shown sticking a mic into a speaker and causing feedback. This zone (1.2-4K) is certainly a common area for open mics to get out of control and it is important to be able to recognize this range and chop down accordingly to steer clear of feedback trouble.?

Lastly we arrive at Sibilant, the cymbal-toting dwarf. Cymbals and ’S’ and ’T’ vocal sounds as well as acoustic guitar string noises tend to live up in this land. Cutting too much of these frequencies can make an overall mix sound a bit dull and lifeless, so I usually recommend trying to tame individual channels first rather than cutting master outputs. I might suggest that we call this dwarf Hissy instead of Sibilant, since sibilance is a figure of speech in which a hissing sound is created within a group of words through the repetition of ’S' sounds and there may be other related frequency ranges or effects in play (particularly if that ’S’ is around a plosive like a ‘P’ or a ‘D’) and naming him simply ‘Sibilant’ might confuse matters.?

Hopefully these dwarves are useful in mapping ordinary language descriptions of sonic attributes to more physical frequency ranges in your mixes. Thanks to the fine folks at Rational Acoustics for the free sticker!?

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Originally published in?Worship Musician Magazine, July 2022.?

By Jeff Hawley

Jeff Hawley currently heads up the marketing for Allen & Heath USA. Jeff has a diverse background as a musician, engineer and trendsetting industry executive. In addition to performing and producing everything from noise music to disco and Afro-Cuban jazz to avant-garde klezmer, Jeff has designed award-winning music industry products and accessories and directed the branding and marketing functions for a number of top musical instrument and pro audio brands. He enjoys classical mythology, reading Logical Positivist philosophy, listening to birds, and pretending he knows karate.

Connect with him at?www.dhirubhai.net/in/audiohawley