Can you recognize the difference between a major chord, a minor chord, or a 7th chord? Can you identify a song’s chord progression without seeing the sheet music?
Skills of this type are great for musicians who sing or play an instrument, but can they help a sound mixer?
Mixing live and/or recorded sound requires a different set of critical listening skills - skills that are often acquired from many years of experience, by trial and error, or from being mentored. However, can these skills be learned more formally and effectively?
“Listen… Do you want to know a secret?” A lyric from a classic Beatles song, of course, but for audio professionals, perhaps this musical question is asking if we can hear the secrets of the music just by listening - secrets of proper balance, EQ correction, distortion removal, and others.
Do we understand how to really listen - “to discern, measure, analyze, and express the physical qualities of musical sounds accurately.” (Golden Ears User Guide, Dave Moulton, 1995)
Is Something There?
What secrets are we hearing but can’t identify? Compare this situation to the scene in the movie Charade, when Cary Grant dumps the contents of an airline bag on a bed, telling Audrey Hepburn, “I mean, it’s there. If only we could see it. We’re looking at it right now. Something on that bed is worth a quarter of a million dollars.”
How frustrating for them, and how frustrating for audio professionals to hear audio and know something is there, but lack the skills to discern it with their ears and identify what it is.
So many qualities of music are hiding right there in the open, but can we recognize them and make good mixing decisions based on our critical analysis?
Stephan Jenkins, producer, songwriter and vocalist of the band Third Eye Blind, offers his take. “As sound geeks, we can talk about this (how music is recorded and mixed), and think it doesn’t matter to other people. But it does matter; they just don’t know that it’s bothering them. They don’t know why it is that they don’t listen to that album anymore. I think it’s because there are little burrs and jags in the sound that are bothering (them).” (ArtistPro Magazine, Sept/Oct 2003)
I’ve been performing comedic impressions for most of my life. In order to do these impressions, I’ve had to listen critically to the characters in movies, on TV, to my teachers, professors, and many of my current colleagues and students. I really enjoy recreating these “voices’” for comedic effect to add humor and variety to my engineering lectures.
But how do I do this? How do I make my voice sound like that of another person? What goes on in the brain?
I usually see the person in my mind, performing distinctive actions and mannerisms, and I try to copy what I see in my mind. Then I hear with my mind’s ear what the visual image is saying, and copy that with my voice.
While I perform the vocal impression, I monitor what I’m saying to check if the impression is similar to my mind’s impression, and correct my voice parameters (timbre, pitch, inflection, etc.) to achieve better accuracy. Thus, in overview, I’m trying to create an accurate impression based upon my mind’s sensory observations.
Good From Poor
What hearing skills does an audio engineer need to mix live and/or recorded sound?
It may be that many sound mixers do not possess a “golden ears” level of critical listening skill.
However, does this directly lead to a lack of audio mixing skills? I don’t believe so.
Many (if not most) mixers know what the live or recorded sound “should” sound like.
At least they know “good” sound from “poor” sound, and probably correct many types of problems because of their experience.
This situation is somewhat similar to an electric bass player (like myself) who can read chord charts to a blues song and play a credible bass part, even though I can’t play “by ear” (reproducing anything I hear or think without mistakes and without hesitation).
I can play bass lines of songs and sound decent, and therefore participate as an active viable musician. But if I could play “by ear.” I would have more control over the sound and more freedom to create and improvise music.
In this regard, I firmly believe that a highly developed set of “golden ears”- type critical listening skills would free the sound mixer from many limitations, allowing for greater control over producing high quality sound, as well as fixing many types of audible problems (within the electronic control of the equipment, of course).
So just what is critical listening? A definition found in a glossary at the Foundation For Critical Thinking, “Critical Listening: A mode of monitoring how we are listening so as to maximize our accurate understanding of what another person is saying.”
Perhaps this definition can be modified for sound mixing. “Critical Listening: A mode of monitoring how we’re listening, so as to maximize our accurate discernment and understanding of the physical qualities of the sound we are hearing.”
The sound could be a voice, a musical instrument, acoustical characteristics of a room or space, a musical group, a play, a movie, a worship service, etc.
While “monitoring how we are listening,” we’re not simply listening for enjoyment, but instead we’re focusing our ears and minds to constantly check the physical qualities of the sound. Is the EQ right? Is there distortion? Wait, what’s that instrument behind the lead vocal? And so on.
What Is Right
As we seek to “maximize our accurate discernment and understanding,” we use our ears as a measurement tool - objectively as well as subjectively - to analyze what is right and what is wrong in the sound.
This analysis can direct us to make the proper adjustments.
Personally, I don’t possess “golden ears,” the high-level ability to discern and identify, say, octave bands by center frequency.
As I mentioned earlier, I also can’t play my electric bass “by ear.”
However, one of my long-term goals has been to develop critical listening audio and musical skills.
This quest dates back to 1979 when I first started playing guitar and began mixing live events (worship services and local solo performers), and has continued since 1997 when I switched to playing electric bass.
Similar to a guitar player in search of “ultimate tone,” my ear-training quest has been a long journey involving the study of many books, magazine articles, CDs, computer programs, Internet material, and even completion of two college-level ear-training courses in hopes of being better able to both play “by ear” and hear audio with “golden ears” skill.
My quest has recently become sharply focused, and on parallel paths. First, I’m course for two very motivated students, combining training in critical listening skills, auditory perception concepts, audio mixing skills, engineering science and math, and DSP computer projects in order to blend the art, science and practice of listening to audio.
Second, I’m using two computer programs to develop my electric bass “playing by ear” skills. (For the record, these programs are Guitar and Bass Trainer, and Absolute Fret- board Knowledge.)
I’ll be reporting the results of the course soon in a follow-up article. For those interested a sneak peak, we’re used an EAR Q Reference Hearing Analyzer to establish a baseline reference and the Golden Ears Audio Ear-Training Course for the actual training.
Hopefully through careful study and observation, we’ll all learn something truly useful along the way.
Mauro J. Caputi is an associate professor of electrical engineering at Hofstra University, Long Island, New York and has been involved in live performance and production audio for over 20 years.
Return to article