Training the ears

T

TheLemonAid

New member
Hello all,

I have a rather vague question, or maybe rather an opening topic for a discussion here, about training the ears for mixing.

What is the best way to train your ears, are there any forms of "exercises" or is it just something that can only be learned with time and experience?

Thanks, and let me know what you guys think!

Cheers!
 
Train your ear for pitch 1st - that'll sharpen them. From there you need to do a lot of listening and there're bound to be programs that'll help somewhere.
 
TheLemonAid said:
What is the best way to train your ears........is it just something that can only be learned with time and experience?
Click to expand...
I think so. Reason being, there are so many different genres of music now and I think there are some differences in the way different genres are mixed. Even within the same genres, there's been a progression in the way songs are mixed so listening to as many different genres as possible helps.
But even training your ears isn't going to get you as far as actually doing it and practicing. Call me a dinosaur if you will {Mr Diplodicus to you, son} but the older I get, the more I find certain old ways the best. Nothing beats teaching a child the basics of reading, writing and counting. In mixing, all the listening skills will be gained as you do it more and more, which is not to say that listening to the way songs are mixed is no use. Far from it.
 
The (pronounce it "thee" and then insert a short, but dramatic pause afterward) absolute most important skill in the audio world, period.

I'd highly suggest recordings like "The Ultimate Demonstration Disc" (I & II) on Chesky Records -- Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals (F. Alton Everest) would be a nice thing to have also. I know several people that have used it that said it helped quite a bit.

Keep in mind the "rules" though --

(1) No matter your drive, no matter your tens or hundreds of thousands invested in gear, no matter your years of tweaking your listening experience (etc., etc.), you will only ever hear as accurately and consistently as your monitoring system allows you to hear.

(2) No matter the tested accuracy and consistency of your monitoring chain, no matter the care in placement, the years in R&D of the crossovers, perfect matching of the drivers, linearity and power handling of the amplifier (etc., etc.), your monitoring chain will only ever be as accurate and consistent as the room they're in allows them to be.
 
Hearing is such a funny thing. I regularly claim to have lousy hearing when it comes to differentiating frequencies and the like......yet when I'm upstairs in the bath I can tell when my wife is coming home just by the clack of her shoes even though the bathroom has no windows and is on the opposite side of the house in a block of 26 apartments !
 
The best way to train your ears is to listen to live music on a very regular basis. This gives your ear and brain a point of reference to how specific instruments are supposed to sound. You are also training them to learn the 3D aspect of music- H x W x D and location of the sounds. The sound and the timbre and placement of each indivual instrument is what we're all trying to capture in the recording process.

If you've listened all your life to audiophile grade equipment the best your ears will be trained is hearing very good equipment re-produce instruments.

Listen to a large variety of instruments. Elec bass, stand up bass (they sound nothing like one another) Saxophones, zylophones, acoustic guitars, a harp. Both kinds...haha. Just to name a few.

The idea is for the live perfromance not to be too loud, and seek variety in instruments. Although I must say a jazz 3 or 4 pc with piano is some of my favorite for ear tuning as is an orchestra.

Stepping on my soap box now, lack of well trained ears has become a huge problem over the recent past. The reasons I attribute are-

Younger people listening to music on earbuds and crap PC speakers. They have never learned a good point honest musical reproduction as a point of reference.
Listening to music recorded in MP3 format which is crap.
Listening to rap and hip hop which typically do not have an actual instrument on the recording, so the ear has no musical point of reference.
Not attending live musical performances on a regular basis.
 
That's a very good point actually... I never thought of using live music for training ears, not in that way anyways. I was already planning to attend more live shows, now I have an extra reason to!

Cheers!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top