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On Tue, 2010-01-19 at 14:52 +0100, Lorenzo wrote:

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> Hi Simon,

>

> > My sister is a specialist teacher for hearing-impaired primary school

> > children. As part of her curriculum she includes music and in

> > particular, nursery rhymes etc for the younger children. She would like

> > them to be able to sing these at home with and/or for their parents. For

> > those children with non-hearing-impaired parents, this is not a problem

> > but many of the children also have hearing-impaired parents. Therefore

> > she would like to produce a CD of her singing for the children to take

> > home and use. I would really appreciate any help members can give me as

> > I am not a professional musician or recording engineer.

> >

> > 1) She will be singing unaccompanied (she is a trained singer and is

> > perfectly competent to do this) in an alto register to avoid any

> > distraction for the children from accompaniments etc. Does anyone have

> > any suggestions about this? (eg effects for recording, effects for the

> > headphone mix etc)

> >

> Do you mean the final CD will only have her voice on but she will be

> having an accompaniment during recording?

The final CD will definitely be only her voice. She is perfectly capable

of recording unaccompanied but we may well play a simple MIDI piano

version of the melody into her phones to ensure accuracy of pitch.
> Or no accompaniment at all at any stage?

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> > 2) This one's a bit more specialist so you may not be able to help -

> > hearing impairment often starts with loss of high frequency response.

> > The obvious thing would seem to be to boost these but I don't know if

> > that would be correct. Does anyone know?

> >

> Not sure about the effect/benefit in case of impairment. Anyhow

> frequency manipulation can be done using various types of equalizer.

> Some suggest 'pushing' 3Khz and around up a little to enhance voice

> clarity.. But it all much depends on the recording and performer's

> quality (in neutral sense) and also the repertoire.

> Also some compression may come in handy in this case if you'd like to

> have a fairly uniform level (I am not sure if impairment would affect

> sensitivity to dynamics?)

>

I'm trying to obtain a copy of :-

Darrow, A. A. (1990). The effect of frequency adjustment on the vocal

reproduction accuracy of hearing impaired children. Journal of Music

Therapy, 27, 24-33.
to see if it will help but the implication of the summaries I've seen

seems to lead us down the route of individually mastered CD's for each

child. That is a little beyond my abilities, the scope of the project

and the available information.
The repertoire will be nursery rhymes and childrens songs - I think

fairly uniform dynamics will be a useful thing to aim for.
> One other, maybe trivial, but often overlooked suggestion especially for

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> such a specific case is to test the final CD on the audience's 'expected

> listening equipment'. What I mean is that it may sound great on

> expensive studio gear but if the children and families are going to play

> it on cheap home stereo it may not sound as good, so testing the CD on

> these and in a non-so-good acoustical environment might be a good idea.

> > Any comments on any other aspects of this project would also be more

> > than welcome.

The end-user equipment is not likely to be of a high standard in many

cases and your point is a good one. There is unlikely to be much in the

way of EQ on the children's playback equipment - this is another reason

for trying to find out what would be appropriate at the

recording/mastering stage.
> It seems very interesting. Keep us updated :)

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>

I'll be happy to although timescales depend on us both being in the same

county at the same time and haven't been arranged yet.

> Kind regards,

quoted text
> Lorenzo

Regards,

Simon

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