Patterns

To the right is an illustration of a microphone's
pickup pattern. This particular microphone has what is known as a directional cardioid pattern -
(the term 'cardioid', aptly enough, derives from the heart-shaped response curve illustrated by the blue bands)
-in the simplest of terms, what it means is that the mic "hears" sounds that are directly in front of it
much better , i.e., louder and with more accuracy,
than it does sounds from peripheral sources...and it almost entirely rejects whatever noise is behind it.

But I'm not here to teach you about microphones. Not today, anyway.

Today, we are students and the microphone is the teacher- not the actual mic, really, but a visual representation of it's function- the graph to the right speaks to us:

Imagine, if you will, that the Front (0 degrees), is the 'Now'- that always happening moment where past, present and future meet- the Now is as close to the future as one can ever get.

Now is where the music is.
That is where you point your microphone.
That is where you aim your heart.

To the side and to the rear ( 'off-axis' in geekspeek) are sounds that you may or may not want- these might be noise or they might be musical- but what they really are, in the Now- is distraction and clutter.
Think of them as the Past and the Future. They are both friend and foe, so be careful when dealing with them.

If too many of these off-axis distractions leak into your Now, the Now becomes lost in a brownsound mudpool and you can't really hear what you are trying to listen to.
Important information vanishes into a discordant roar- think of the Beatle's Live at the Hollywood Bowl album:

What is the loudest sound on that record? Screaming.
You can barely decipher what song the Moptops are playing, but you sure as hell can hear the screaming.

That is the sound of the Past. Like any life ( life, not live- no typo) recording , it is going to include some screaming. It's part of the package. But that particular recording is all screaming and if you listen to the screaming Past too long you will be driven into madness. Ignoring it entirely presents the same risks.
We need those screams to remind us that the Past is still there, but care must be taken that it does not drown out the Now.

That's the simple part and it took me forty years to learn it.

Here's where it gets complicated and just a bit anti-intuitive:

The Future is the sound that is behind the microphone- a good directional mic will barely hear the Future- most of the sounds of the future are just the echoes of the Past and the Now reverberating off the walls of perception - and yes, Mr. Huxley, if perception has Doors, it most certainly has walls- it can be interesting to listen to, but it's never very clear what exactly it is that we are hearing.

That is because we cannot be entirely certain what the Future sounds like. We can look behind us, around us and even look forward, but the best we can do is make a guess based on what we know about the Now and the Past.

For example, let us say that we have learned from the Past that if a freight train is passing through our backyard, the sound of that train is going to bleed into and probably ruin everything we try to record while the locomotive is roaring by.

Pause. Turn off the tape deck and take a break until the train passes. It may take longer than we'd like, but it will pass. It always does.

So now we know not to attempt to record during times of heavy local railways traffic; even if the sound of a passing train does fit nicely with certain Blues, we are not looking for the Blues.
We are not looking for anything definable, really- that's part of the mysterious Future- we just don't want any more Blues Trains ruining our otherwise sparkling recording. That is one reason why we must remember the past- it helps us avoid inbound trains and their potential sonic wrecks.

That doesn't mean that we need to ignore the tracks, or worse, sit immobilized on the rails, paralyzed with fright from merely thinking about all the trains that have rolled through here. That would be surrendering to the Past and that is not a good idea, because it means we forfeit the Future.

Do you ever have thoughts like this?:

"Oh my God, I can't sing right now- what if a train comes by? My song will be ruined!"

I have. These sort of thoughts are the enemy of Art. Godzilla only knows how many masterpieces have never been recorded because of this fearful thinking- but that's the Past.

There is no train Now.

But if one does come rolling through the middle of a song in the Future, we should sing louder and in harmony with its steel-wheeled thunder, because that train might just sound really good in the mix, even if we are not singing the Blues.

It's not somethingthat can be planned- you just have to do it, take a listen and see what you have.
Either it is good or it is not, but you gotta sing first and ask questions later, because we can't know where that train is heading, but we do know it is not going to be here forever.