Gamelan Melayu Sound Preservation and Archiving through Recording Methods and Production Techniques

Abstract

Sound or audio engineering is a branch of the field of engineering, which involves the process of recording sound and reproducing it by various means, as well as storing in order to be reproduced later. Known as sound or audio engineers, these trained professionals work in a variety of sound production fields and expert in recording methods. They can be instrumental to implement the affordable technologies and technical process to distribute the audio data hence, making it accessible for future generations. The current role of these engineers not only to perform or limited to recording session but they create metadata for archiving and preservation for future needs. Currently, product sleeves of ethnographic recordings represent no technical elements of how traditional music recordings are produced. The product details focus only to some extent on historical elements and musical notation. To an audio archivist, declaring what devices are in a recording is not linked with preservation data. Apart from the format, the sleeved design, technical specification is essential to other social scientists such as audio engineer and field recordist of the future. The aim of the present research is to capture optimum dynamic range of the sound and applying a signal processing that would not alter the tonality, timbre and harmonic of the sound. Further applying a suitable information storage for the metadata to be preserve or archived for future accessing and reproduction.