Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
her life's adventure, or she just misuses the word
ever
. Given the spectacularly com-
mon Internet usage of the word
ever
in the titles of videos, top 10 lists, and other
such fare, I have determined that she is not alone in her overuse of the term.
To make things more complicated, our perceptions can change rapidly depend-
ing on what we are looking for; something that is the “the most� or “the best� can
change from moment to moment. For instance, in a previous life, I worked at a
recording studio as a composer, arranger, keyboard player, and recording engineer.
(I got out of the biz when the kids wanted to eat more regularly than I was paid.)
One of the phenomena that I observed there was what I termed the “climbing fader
syndrome.�
When I would be with a band working on the mix of their low-budget master-
piece, I was often the recipient of a nonstop barrage of requests. Most often, these
took the form of “dude… I can't hear the [insert instrument here].� It doesn't take
much speculation to guess that each of the members specifically focused on their
own part of the project. Therefore, each person would ask to hear more of their
own part. When I acquiesced to each new request by turning up their track, it
caused the other members to hear less of their own respective parts. In short order,
another person would complain that their part was too soft. And another… and
another. I was nudging each instrument higher in the mix, one at a time until,
eventually, the original complainant was, once again, tapping me on the arm and
indicating I should boost him further.
The root problem that caused the climbing fader syndrome was that each per-
son felt (consciously or subconsciously) that his part should be “the loudest�—an
acoustical impossibility, to say the least. However, most of them didn't
really
think
that their part should be “out front in the mix,� but because it wasn't, they didn't
perceive it as being there at all. I could usually prove the point fairly simply. When
I received the comment “I can't hear my [instrument],� I would respond by simply
turning off their track for a moment and then turning it back on. The reaction was
priceless… sometimes involving the person saying, “Oh, there it is! That's a lot bet-
ter!� Nothing had changed in the mix. They simply noticed their instrument again
because they had missed it during the brief absence.
The lesson of the “climbing fader syndrome� is that not everything can be “the
best� or “the most.� And more importantly, even when something isn't at the ex-
treme, it still is important.
So what is “the best�? What is “the most�? In a world where we reduce concepts
to numbers, this is an important concept to hammer out. We could assert that “the
best� selection is whatever happens to have the highest measurement at any one
point. The problem with that approach is that we have no frame of reference for
what “the best�
could
be. This is an important distinction.
