The Art of Listening, pt.1

Today starts a little series i'm doing about Listening. Enjoy!


The Art of Listening

A few days ago I was laying down a couple tracks with a buddy of mine. Nothing intense, just a little acoustic guitar, some easy overdubbing, and some light editing. As I was cleaning up the final track, I kept hearing a little click. I stopped it, turned to my buddy and said, “Do you hear that?” His answer “I don’t know how you guys can hear that!”

It took my by surprise for a second. My buddy is an incredibly talented musician, great jazz background, and when it comes to aural training we all love so dearly, he soundly schools me. And yet, I could hear little imperfections in the recording, clicks, bumps, uneven sounds that he could not. Made me think a bit harder about listening.

In all my years in music programs, the main focus of listening is, first, our aural skills such as dictation, and then our solo listening, intonation, tone of ourselves, and finally ensemble listening, or how we fit into an ensemble. Even later when I was more composer than performer, I listened to those three things the most. It wasn’t until I really started doing more EA music, recording, and most importantly, live sound reinforcement mixing, that my ear shifted.

How is listening different for an audio engineer from a classically trained musician? For me it all comes down to one key term: timbre. It’s not about the pitches, or the rhythms, it’s about the sound as a whole, the collective tone if you will and about learning to listen critically for all those differences in tone. What do you think?

I was freed from pitch, so to speak, when I started doing live mixing. It was not my job to get the band in tune. It was my job to make the band sound the best I could through the PA provided. That meant balancing the vocals and the drum set, finding the niche for the guitar and bass, and somehow decided where the keys fell into this. And, beyond just the mixing component, how do I make these instruments sound the best?

I’m not saying that there is only one way you should listen to music as an engineer. That’s not it at all. Having a good ear for pitch, harmony, and rhythm is incredibly useful, especially for an electro-acoustic composer or recording engineer. Learning critical listening for sound quality and timbre are also incredibly important. And learning to listen “as a listener,” deciding what really sounds the best to you as a total package is also important.

An electro-acoustic composer and audio engineer needs to where many different hats. Leaving out any part of the equation can spell trouble. A nice balance between listening as a musician, critically listening as an engineer, and listening as a consumer is important. What is a good way to approach this problem? For me, it’s just a matter of patience and time. Learning to listen critically for recording mistakes and timbre takes practice and lots of time listening to good and bad recordings. Then the patience and time to listen to a track multiple times, over and over, concentrating on one area. That’s how I approach a session, be it recording or making my own music. How about everyone else? And any good tips for learning critical listening for production mistakes over pitch content?

I do want to say finally, that being a good musician does not make a good engineer, and vice versa. I know many great engineers that are not great musicians. And I know some great musicians that are terrible engineers. It’s a fine balance between all things, especially in listening. Trust the musicians to play the right notes, but know when to tell them “maybe we should do another take.”

~John Chittum~
Freelance Engineer and Composer
DMA Candidate in Composition, UMKC