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
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
so that means my ears is fucked! DAMNNNNN!!
