SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
Man, I love you guys!
Not only do I agree with it all, but you guys are unwittingly dovetailing right into what I was going to continue with. I had not thought about it in this way until now, but I think you guys are right, another form of bias is the bias of music itself. Discriminating parts and focusing on the right parts can be difficult because humans tend to have a bias going in for their initial perspective of the song or genre going in, rather than taking an open and non-prejudged perspective as to the sound of the production in general.Which is why I usually recommend as a next step that practice critical listening not only away from the studio, but away from music itself. I get a lot of rolling eye in response to this, I'm used to that; but it's a method I strongly believe in (I'm not saying it's the only method, just one that I find to be very effective): Get outside and listen to Mom Nature with a critical ear. Not only are the great outdoors as perfect as we'll get to a perfect room as far as our ears our concerned (we've had 4 billion years of evolution refining our ears to expect and work best with our natural surroundings), but you'll be extremely hard pressed to find a better source of sounds that really take advantage of and cover the entire frequency range, dynamic range and physical sound stage the way that nature itself does.
Next time a thunderstorm blows through, take the time to listen closely and intently to the mix that nature puts together. It can send chills down your back in it's sonic beauty and do so in a way that's impossible to reproduce through human technology. Listen to the way the sound of the thunderclap varies based upon the distance of the lightning strike, how it changes as it moves arouss our field of sound from left to right, teaching us much about the directionality, reflectivity and persistence of differing frequencies, and how frequency can be an indicator of distance and depth, Listen to the incredibe range between the initial attack of the lightening strike and the low, low rumble of the same strike reflecting back from hills or building several miles away. The high frequency, almost white noise of the light rain that slowly expands down into the upper mid and then the midrange frequencies as the intensity of the downpour increases. And so on.
This is not only an excellent canvas to work from because of it's extremes and complexity (not to mention lack of clipping, electronic noise floor or other artificial distortions
), but because there is no bias of interest that can get into play with music. The guitarist is not worried about the tone of anything being right, the drummer not worried about what genre the storm is, etc. It is what it is, and everybody is going in listening without much in the way of pre-conceived biases.Step one was overcoming basic biases. Step two here is practicing discrimination and unbiased listening on natural sources of audio outside of music.
Step three in my own program would be to take these skills we develop listening to natural sound to listening to natural - meaning live - music. I;m not talking live music with balls-out amplification or large stadium concerts. I'm talking more intimate settings like small clubs or even home jams with music that is more acoustic or, if electric, kept to reasonable sound levels. After all, one mixes in the studio at 85dBSPL or below, not at earbleed concert levels. And mixing skills are what this topic is ultimately all about.
Using the way you listened to the thunderstorm or the crickets and birds in the summer field or the way crowd sounds develop and propagate at the baseball stadium, or whatever non-music listening exercises you performed, listen anew to the live sound of that ride cymbal or the resonances of that saxophone or the amount of breath that vocalists voice, and start hearing a richness and thickness that you may not have appreciated before.
And while you're at it, get outside your comfort zone when it comes to music styles. Normally listen to country? Just for one night hit that piano bar down the street from the riding bull bar where you usually go. There will be a seat for you because the jazz man is getting outside his zone that night by checking out the midget Kiss tribute band down at the biker bar that night in order to expand his palate as well. And so on.
I'll save steps 4, 5 and 6 for later as the thread develops.
I personally find these days that the critical ear and the music appreciation ear are pretty much simultaneous, but (luckily) still I am a lover of music more than I am a lover of audio engineering. The song and the performance are always at the forefront for me. Like Tom said, you can grab an old Houd Dog Taylor bootleg that engineering-wise sounds like crap, but the first thing I'll notice is, man that ol' boy is really beltin, and it's making my skin crawl in a good way.steve.h said:
A great production, OTOH, rarely will move me *on it's own*. If the musicality is there, then a great production can send everything over the top, for sure, but no matter how much studio lipstick you put on a drunk playing "Chopsticks", it just won't do it for me.
Shure, when it's my own mixing, I'll tend to be more critical on the critical listening side, and that will be harder to turn off, but it still wins up in my head being measured against the question, "Am I enjoying listening to this, or can I make it more enjoyable?"I try not to get too bogged down in the details of a tone or song, just whether it's adding to or taking away from the desire to listen to the song.
If the song or performance is just not that enjoyable of an experience, unless the recording or mixing are just plain totally f___ed up, no amount of tweaking is going to make it enjoyable.
G.
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