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[masterhse]

bblackwood wrote on Sun, 13 August 2006 17:00

By 'right', I mean when you are happy with the way it sounds, a majority of listeners will think it sounds good as well...

Part of this I suppose is developing critical listening skills and maturation of those skills while another part of this is taste and experience.

For example, I read somewhere that a person's EQ skills tend to go to the extremes of the frequency spectrum and work their way towards the middle. In other words (and I see this in some of my students) in order to increase clarity the first thing that a student might reach for is a shelving EQ at the top end and increasing there. Later they figure out that a reduction in the bottom can have a similar effect, and later still work on increasing clarity in the mids. "Hearing it right" the way tha I read it, assumes that you are already familiar with the results of any adjustment even before you touch the knob.

I think that an experienced engineer can hear past the technical aspects of EQ etc. and interpret what the music is really asking for. The processing (as you often point out) is really secondary. This is where taste is the deciding factor.

Can taste be learned or is this something that we are born with?

[Ben F]

Thomas W. Bethel wrote on Mon, 14 August 2006 01:58

I personally do not like digital clipping distortion and have a real problem mastering music that contains a lot of it. This is a personal issue with me and I don't really know how to get around it. I also do not like over done bass where it sounds more like a thunder sheet and less than a bass drum or guitar and the client is asking for more bass. Again it is a personal hang up with me. I also have a real aversion to people who sing off key or drag the lyrics behind the song when they are singing so that it sounds like they are behind the beat instead of on it. It is hard for me to divorce myself from the complete sound of the song so sometimes mastering is painful for me when I have to deal with bad incoming tracks.

I share your pain. Off key singing is one of the worst.

[chrisj]

I find that when I'm on top of my game I can do a nice job with incredibly brutal, aggressive music. I grew up crazy about King Crimson and stuff like that. "Aqualung" (a popular album that's extremely brutal). Some poppier music is very aggressive as well. When stuff is meant to be mellower, I get a lot less sure of myself.

Probably end up being a death/black metal ME...

[cerberus]

cheer up chris. if you could succeed to lambada with nyquist instead of always doing the bump...you have your reasons for working at what i think is an impossible sample rate...that is cool.

but i heard your guitar playing too..you get "up there". i am like, yeah this must be the airwindows guitar: it's soaring like a bird.  (in case some are not aware: "aqualung"  came from a flutist !)

jeff dinces

[twelfthandvine]

I believe Brad has it right:  Recent studies … which I can’t put my hands on right now … show that when hobby players and professional musicians are given the same piece to play, the brain activity in the professionals occurs in significantly different places.  It’s thought that this is part of the explanation of how some in the music business can ‘hear the whole thing in their heads’ and others play by ear.

Of course, those born with an ability to play music can get better and develop with practice and experience.  In the same way, those born with the gift of ‘hearing things right’ can also develop this over time … again with practice and experience.

Perhaps … in the same way that some become proficient at playing classical music by chart but never develop the ability to improvise … it’s possible to learn how to hear types of music in a way that most people can relate to (even though this may not be an intuitive skill).

Just my 2c

Kind regards,

Paul Blakey
12th & Vine Post

[dcollins]

When I've used that expression with Brad all I mean is taking a tape that is too bright already and brightening it more in mastering.  Or not really "getting" a particular style of music and doing (IMO) inappropriate things.

And yes when they study brain activity, the musician "listens" with both sides of his brain as you are both digging the music and analyzing it at the same time.



DC

[Dave Davis]

I can't really explain my own hearing, but I can say it's very tactile for me, and I tend to hear the whole, rather than parts and pieces, even when the whole does not yet exist.  Good and bad, really.  Sometimes things go different directions and I'm stumped, at the production stage.  Or in mixing, I might have difficulty chasing the performers vision because my own is so tangible to me.  In mastering this has served me much better.  Its usually right on, and gets me where I'm going faster.

I suspect I get this from my grandmother.  When I was a kid she had a piano (which I now own), and she tried hard to teach me to play from sheet music. This was never very successful, but it inspired me to do little BUT play her piano at her house.  Since I couldn't play what was on paper, I played what was in my head, and that's often atonal, and in strange keys and timings.  I love the phasiness of some Hendrix tracks as a sound, even now that I know it's basically mic problems.  So, I'd be playing my oddball crap, and my grandma would be going nuts.  When we talked about it, I learned she found atonal, non-Western tunings to be deeply disturbing.  It literally _hurt_ to hear some sounds she claimed.  Eventually I took this to be a reference to her own inner voice.  She heard things a particular way, and when the sound coming out of speakers or pianos was "wrong" it affected her emotionally, much as out of key vocals, off time beats, and bad mic'ing drives me crazy today.  Its not intolerance, but more like an allergy.  The learned components differ (her preference for conventional tunings and times, my preference for edgy exploration), but at the core, we share a deep, visceral connection with sound that goes beyond pleasure or affinity.

I eventually learned how to "read" music as a studio professional, after playing music for about 20 years!  In high school I played entirely by ear, listening to the player next to me.  In competition I made a joke of the sight reading exercise.  In bands I learned by having bandmates play the part or hum it.  So, it's been a struggle, on one side of the biz.  But on the engineering side it's a real blessing.

-d-

[bblackwood]

Peter Poyser sent me this:

Quote:

when they study brain activity, the musician "listens" with both sides of his brain as you are both digging the music and analyzing it at the same time. DC

This is your brain on music

http://www.cangeo.ca/Magazine/jf06/alacarte.asp

Music on the brain:Researchers explore the biology of music

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/03.22/04-music.html

[nmw]

ive been thinking alot on this general area recently too brad, though perhaps from a somewhat differing angle.

it strikes me that there are more and more people out there who dont/cant seem to hear things properly, and im talking extreme basics here. and this is restricted to people within the industry in some shape who really should be better. ofcourse theres subjectivity to everything but im noticing a total lack of ability to differentiate the glaringly obvious or pick up on the very chronic. it this inability to pick up on sizeable differences between audio takes or track versions that i find the most worrying of all.

i always excuse the general public from my thoughts on casting a less than critical ear over audio, even if some can actaully hear very well but i see, read and hear things daily now both in my facility, at other studios and on/from the web that reinforce this more and more. im talking artists, producers, engineers and even some of the wump work in here im sad to say

what the reasons for this are i cant say. easy access to audio tools, total lack of needing to learn the trade or just simply an increasing tend in disposable approaches as witness globally and independent of markets. perhaps its just a case of good old lowest common denominator settling pulling everything down. this is certainly nothing new and has resulted in slipped standards in almost anything one can care to mention.

i will say that many "oldies" i meet dont have this problem for whatever thats worth.

[Thomas W. Bethel]

nmw wrote on Tue, 15 August 2006 15:01

ive been thinking alot on this general area recently too brad, though perhaps from a somewhat differing angle. it strikes me that there are more and more people out there who dont/cant seem to hear things properly, and im talking extreme basics here. and this is restricted to people within the industry in some shape who really should be better. ofcourse theres subjectivity to everything but im noticing a total lack of ability to differentiate the glaringly obvious or pick up on the very chronic. it this inability to pick up on sizeable differences between audio takes or track versions that i find the most worrying of all. i always excuse the general public from my thoughts on casting a less than critical ear over audio, even if some can actually hear very well but i see, read and hear things daily now both in my facility, at other studios and on/from the web that reinforce this more and more. I'm talking artists, producers, engineers and even some of the wump work in here im sad to say what the reasons for this are i cant say. easy access to audio tools, total lack of needing to learn the trade or just simply an increasing tend in disposable approaches as witness globally and independent of markets. perhaps its just a case of good old lowest common denominator settling pulling everything down. this is certainly nothing new and has resulted in slipped standards in almost anything one can care to mention. i will say that many "oldies" i meet dont have this problem for whatever thats worth.

I also think that a lot of music is listened to in places that are not conducive to real listening. Places like car stereos in cars doing 60 mph down a freeway or on laptop computer speakers or on a pair of headphones while you are exercising. I also see a lot of college students listening to music from their IPOD with one ear and a cell phone in their other ear and they are carrying on a conversation with three or four friends at the same time. I guess the college students need to multitask or so it seems from watching them do their "thing" I also know that a lot of people don't have time to sit and listen to their stereos anymore and a lot of today's music is used for background noise. We go to a local restaurant for lunch that has an FM tuner hooked up to their sound system and so you hear the DJ and the music and the commercials and after a while it all starts sounding the same and it all becomes a noise source.

When I got into audio I had to pay my dues and I did a lot of very stupid things and made some really bad recordings early in my career but they never saw the light of day because I had ears and could hear that they were not correct. Today so many people do a recording in their basements or bedrooms and the next thing you know it is on the web or being duplicated and foisted onto the general population. Much of what I hear today sounds like recordings someone in my beginning recording class would do when I was teaching. It is not polished, it is not professional and has a lot of problems that if someone would just sit down and listen with an open mind they would hear how really lousy it was. They seem to think that because they "created it" it has to be GREAT. I guess it is a generational thing. Young people today are the most protected generation so far and they have always been told that they are the best even if it is not true. So maybe they are starting to believe all the hype.

It is so refreshing to hear some really well recorded music  (to bad a much of it was recorded in the 70s and 80s) and it is like an oasis in a desert surrounded by poorly played, poorly recorded, poorly mixed, poorly mastered music that today is what most people are producing.

Oh well I guess that's progress.

[masterhse]

bblackwood wrote on Tue, 15 August 2006 13:40

Peter Poyser sent me this: Quote: when they study brain activity, the musician "listens" with both sides of his brain as you are both digging the music and analyzing it at the same time. DC This is your brain on music...

I wonder if they have done any studies with drummers.

[Gold]

For years I thought I had a bad sense of pitch because things that drove other people crazy didn't bother me. I eventually realized that my sense of pitch is pretty good but for some reason I don't mind things a little out of tune. Like Dave I like dissonance. I find a poke from a sharp stick rather enjoyable.

I do think that it's very important to 'get' the music you are working on and deal with it on it's own terms and within it's own aesthetic. Every once in a while I'll start in on something and try to make it into something it doesn't wan't to be. It never works and I have to start over.

[Ged Leitch]

bblackwood wrote on Sun, 13 August 2006 16:04

I have a buddy I chat with regularly and we commonly refer to folks missing the boat by saying "he's not hearing it right". Sounds simple, and in some ways it is, but I think there are two factors to it, what you're born with and what you develop. IMO, a great engineer is able to push play (err, hit the spacebar) and and immediately hear the issues with a track - they have a seemingly inborn reference point that is 'right'. What I mean by 'right' here is how most people would hear it. Here's my theory: everything in humanity, when charted, seems to follow a bell curve - there are the fewest people at the extremes, and a majority of folks falling in the middle. I believe that is true for how we hear things as well, whether it be what frequency response is most natural, what level of compression feels best, etc - where we fall on that bell curve determines how well what we do sounds to the rest of the world. I think we all naturally fall somewhere on that curve, and that explains why some are 'natural' mastering engineers, they just seem to immediately cut pleasing master, while others struggle for years. So you're basically born to hear things a certain way, say, you've got sensitive ears and hi freqs are particularly bothersome for you. Since only a small portion of the record buying public is going to share in the sensitivity, if you cut records that really sound good to you, most people will likely find them dark. What do you do? You have to develop you're listening and your chain to balance that. That may mean spending time listening to records until they sound right to you. It may mean buying or modifying monitors to be slightly darker in their presentation so that what sounds good to you sounds good to others. Anyway, I can flesh this out more if it makes sense, but that's my theory. I think that if people take the time to learn their room, monitors, and maybe most importantly themselves, the rest is 'easy'...

Really like this thread Brad,

Kept me thinking all last week,

about listening as a "Music Fan" rather than "analyzing" the smallest things in the music, and treating it like some sort of  unessecary excercise in Creativity.

Your points above has helped me get things into perspective.

thanks!

[cerberus]

nmw wrote on Tue, 15 August 2006 15:01

there are more and more people out there who dont/cant seem to hear things properly, and im talking extreme basics here...i will say that many "oldies" i meet dont have this problem for whatever thats worth.

Gold wrote on Tue, 15 August 2006 18:12

For years I thought I had a bad sense of pitch because things that drove other people crazy didn't bother me. I eventually realized that my sense of pitch is pretty good but for some reason I don't mind things a little out of tune. Like Dave I like dissonance. I find a poke from a sharp stick rather enjoyable. I do think that it's very important to 'get' the music you are working on and deal with it on it's own terms and within it's own aesthetic. Every once in a while I'll start in on something and try to make it into something it doesn't wan't to be. It never works and I have to start over.

the punk aesthetic ran head first into the music industry. now those kids grew up and there are two different aesthetics running together. one exaggerates distortion, and the other tries to eliminate it.  

<but listen closely to the rasberries' melodic smash(ed) hit from 1972 "(please) go all the way"... what's up with that?!>

that said, i blame the decay of music education in public schools for lowering the lowest common denominator on music. we haven't just lost our taste for stravinsky, also john cage and brian eno's innovations are found and recycled, but not taught.

Ged Leitch wrote on Mon, 04 September 2006 08:37

listening as a "Music Fan" rather than "analyzing" the smallest things in the music, and treating it like some sort of  unessecary excercise in Creativity.

for navigating this rocky road.. steve albini has an answer i like: let the musicians make their music, don't interfere... but a lot of artists in fact ask us specifically to help out in the "excitement" department.  those are the most fun jobs for me, but if it is a "near perfect mix", then making it sound "more compelling" with mastering wouldn't be possible.

jeff dinces

[UnderTow]

I've always had this personal theory that some things are sonicly right and some things are sonicly wrong. Usualy when I talk to people about this they say that it is a question of taste but I don't really agree.

I am convinced that sounds should have a base in or a link to physical reality. If you listen to live accoustic instruments, they might sound good or bad or whatever but they always sound real because that is exactly what they are: Real vibrating physical objects in space that cause sound waves in air.

When you are recording, doing a mix or are mastering, that link to reality should remain. This isn't a question of taste. It is a question of objective reality. Everyone (with undamaged hearing) can hear this objective reality and is intimately familar with it because they have been hearing it all their lives. If you lose that link, it won't sound convincing.

Now I have to explain what I mean by "link to reality": The sound doesn't have to be exactly true to the source. If you have good skills, hearing and a sense of sonic ojectivity, you can use your knowledge and memory of how things sound naturaly to manipulate the source sound to become something different while keeping that reality link.

You can make it sound bigger or smaller or closer or further. You can completely mangle the sound. You can do many things to it as long as you are doing it in reference to that objective reality. If you don't, the listener has no reference, no context and can't understand the message you are trying to convey. They can't relate.

This applies to all sounds! I make electronic music which in theory should have no bounds but in practise really does (if you want anyone to relate to what you are doing at least). A simple example of this is the electronic kick drum.

Imagine if you are repeatedly hitting the trunk of a tree with a bamboo stick. The stick is quite light so it makes a light "tok" sound and you can hit it quite fast. These aspects go hand in hand because they come from the same physical attribute: The stick is light.

If on the other hand, if you are hitting the tree with a big log, because of its weight and density, it will make a heavier "thud" sound and you can't hit that trunk as fast. Again the same physical properties of the object result in these two sonic characteristics.

Now if you are creating your own electronic kick drum hit, consciously or unconsciously, you have to keep these physical attributes in mind. It doesn't mean you can't go and make a big heavy kick that thumps at an insane speed but to pull it off convincingly, you need to instinctively know the rules to be able to break them. This means that it has to fit in the context of the sonic world you are creating.

If you are doing a mix, you can go from a small space to a big space or whatever but to engage the audience, you have to do it in such a way that it is "realistic".

Back to the original subject.

I think some people just have a better sonic memory of how things sound naturaly. This isn't just a question of hearing, it is a question of not projecting too much onto the material. Some people seem to get lost when they are in the sonic isolation of the studio. They lose track of how things sound naturaly. The longer they are in the studio, the further they drift from that universal base-line which we share: Physical reality. (This applies to many things besides just sound but thats another subject).

Again, I am not advocating that everything should just sound like real life. I am saying that if somehow the sounds convey a cohesive and consistant physical world, real or imagined, the audience can be convinced to believe in that world. A bit like a good Sience Fiction book. All SF books are fiction by definition but some are believable and others just seem silly.

The people that have this sonic memory and feeling of objectivity
will make music/mixes/masters that tend to sound convincing to most people. The audience will relate easier and faster to the ideas. They will be sucked into the virtual sonic world.

Then again I might just be rambling. I havn't slept in about 48 hours ....  

Alistair