Training Your Ears

Hypnotist

Ear Manipulator
ill o.g.
Training your ears is important if you want to really get good at mixing. Then you can say shit like "There's too much 8 kHz in the vocals, and they're too sibilant" and "This guitar track sounds boxy with all that 500 Hz on it."

Has anyone ever heard about Golden Ears? It's a CD that basically tests you for hearing frequencies being boosted and cut. It really works well, and we used to do it in class, when I had this Critical Listening class when I went to school for audio production. The guy who made it actually came in to my school (he's on the panel at Berklee right around the corner). If anyone wants to look it up, his name is Dave Moulton, and his CD is called "Golden Ears" and he has several volumes.

Anyway... I'm not just trying to promote his CD, but I'm letting you know that you can make it yourself and train yourself. Here's how you do it:

In Pro Tools, or whatever software you have, generate sinewaves of 12 octaves, then listen back to them and train your ears to hear them. For the higher frequencies, not all speakers can reproduce these, and not everyone can hear them. But it's a really good exercise to train your ears.

When you have all the frequencies, burn em to CD in random order, but write down which track has which frequency on the CD. If you want to use one CD, then have a friend test you, and play it back while he writes down an order with the answers, then you write down what frequency you think it is when he plays it.

Here are the frequencies:

20 Hz
31 Hz
63 Hz
125 Hz
250 Hz
500 Hz
1 kHz (1,000 Hz)
2 kHz
4 kHz
8 kHz
16 kHz
20 kHz

The human ear has a range from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz (20 kHz), but not everyone can hear this. My ears have a range from say 30 Hz to around 18-19 kHz.

A couple tips:

1 kHz is the tone that they play during "emergency broadcast" and over color bars on TV. This is a highly recognizable frequency.
8-10 kHz is your "sibilance" frequencies. These are where cymbals and rides usually sit in your mix.
16 kHz is the frequency of your TV (you can hear it while it's on mute) This is because TVs have silver in the screen and silver resonates at 16 kHz.


You can just keep burning random CDs with random orders, and label them "CD1", "CD2" etc, with all the answers written down with what track is what, based on how you burned em. Make it confusing by making like 15 CDs, all with like 50 tracks on em, in random order, some frequencies appearing twice, etc., and they all have they're own answer keys. So when you play it back, just say "okay, track 43 sounds like 1 kHz" and write it down. Then, check your answers.

Also... on the Golden Ears CD, he has random songs playing with certain frequencies boosted by 12dB, and then turned back to flat. To do this, find a piece of music (that doesn't get old quick) and drag it into Pro Tools, copying it 12 times in the same track. Put an EQ on the track and automate it, so that while it's playing, a specific frequency (with a narrow bandwidth) gets boosted, then turned down. You can do this on 12 different tracks if you want, or do it once for a specific frequency, then bounce to disk, then do it again, saving them all like "Music - 16 kHz", "Music - 63 Hz", etc. Put these on the same CD as the tones, and do it with different music.

To automate your EQ in Pro Tools, you have to turn on automation for plug-ins first. Hit (apple-4) or (ctrl-4 on PC) to show what's turned on or suspended. Make sure "plug-in" is red.

Now, on your EQ plug-in window, click on "auto" at the top. There will be a list of things that you can add to automate, like "Gain EQ 3", "bypass", etc. So basically any parameter of the EQ you can automate. Add all the gains to all the EQs, as you'll probably use all ranges.

Now on the actual track, where it says "auto read", change it to "auto write". Now play the track with the EQ window open, and turn up and back down a specific frequency gradually.

You can copy this automation to other tracks by selecting it, where it says show: "waveform", "volume", or your automation for a specific EQ setting. Copy and paste this automation for each track, for a different frequency.

Let me know if you have any questions about this part. Good luck finding your golden ears! The first time I did this, I named the session "Gold-Plated Ears" because it wasn't the real thing.

-Hypno
 

Hypnotist

Ear Manipulator
ill o.g.
Oh yea... and I forgot:

When you generate sine waves, check the levels. The higher frequencies are perceived louder than the lower ones. Don't fuck up your ears. Mix it so it sounds pleasing... you don't want to go deaf while trying to better your hearing.
 

Hypnotist

Ear Manipulator
ill o.g.
Precisamente.

The frequencies just out of our reach can be sensed by the body, and the ear strains to hear them. I hear 16kHz just fine, even 18-19kHz, but that's because my story's slightly different from most people...

When I was like 16 I was really serious about recording, and heard that the more clubs you attended, the worse off your ears are. You know that ringing you hear when you leave a club? Yea, that's your ears gettin as fucked up as you were at the bar. I stopped going to as many clubs, and sometimes I'd even wear earplugs. Pain in the ass to do, but worth it in the long run.

First frequencies to go are the high ones. You can tell when someone's already experiencing this when they mix their hi-hats too loud and the songs they mix are really trebbly.
 

Big Tone

You done fucked up
ill o.g.
good fuckin post man
 

Fury

W.W.F.D
ill o.g.
I got stuck in school for months just hearing sound waves from 20 hz -20 khz..when u allign a tape machine all u hear is fuckin sounds from all ranges...its a bitch but it does get ur skills up wit mixing
 
O

open mind

Guest
that was very interesting and yeah its really easy to damage the ears while mixing and sharpening the track eqing can be very painfull sometimes lol.i often need a break after mixing like 4-5 tracks cause iam afraid of damgeing my ears.also when i go to clup i do sum earplugs in my ears to be on the safe side u know.

BEWARE OF EAR DAMAGE U CANT REPAIR !

take care while mixing fam.
 

Hypnotist

Ear Manipulator
ill o.g.
SlickVikNewman said:
Very good post. This is one of those post though that make a muthwunda paranoid as shit!! I was listening for all types of shit after I read it to make sure I was straight! LOL

The thing about a good engineer:

He sits in front of the board and makes sure the kick is tight, the guitars are at a decent level, the vocals are nice and bright, and the overall level of everything is good.

The thing about a GREAT engineer:

He can listen to the same mix over and over and over and over again and pick out specific things that can be changed. Of course... too much of this will bring you on the brink of autism, but if you really get into it in the beginning, then after a while you'll have your methods down pat and you can recognize everything much quicker.
 

buffalony

Member
ill o.g.
Training your ears is important if you want to really get good at mixing. Then you can say shit like "There's too much 8 kHz in the vocals, and they're too sibilant" and "This guitar track sounds boxy with all that 500 Hz on it."


heh heh I just say that stuff anyway.
 
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