Listening & judgement skills Warning: TL;DR 

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Imo producing boils down to a three stage process on loop: 

(Do something)
1. Listening
2. Judgement
3. Action
(Go to the top)


Almost all of the discussion on the grid falls under #3. Not so much attention is paid to 1 + 2; this is understandable because by their very nature they are personal and abstract and kind of impossible to verbalise and turn into tips or tutorials. However I do feel they are very important and sometimes I get the impression neglected, so I'm going to stupidly try and write about them anyway. 

Here are some examples of classic grid threads that fall under #3: How do I make my reese twist and snarl? How do I make my beats fatter? 

These questions implicitly reveal the results of stage 2 in the person asking them. i.e.: My reese needs to twist and snarl. My beats need to be fatter. In turn this reveals the results of stage 1: My reese is too boring. My beats are too weak. 

So far, so meh... you're probably thinking wtf is this, state the obvious day. OK, true, but the point is you don't work out how to get somewhere until you know where you want to be and where you are now. 

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Where you are now is what you get from #1, Listening. Again, this seems so obvious and self-explanatory i'm crazy for talking about it like this, but what I'm hoping to get across is that it really isnt obvious and self-explanatory at all. Thing is, the average person listening to music does not hear what is really there, more like they hear what they want to hear. 

To take an analogy, consider proofreading text - how many times have you read and re-read an essay or such, without spotting a typo/spelling error? The human brain doesn't mechanically process each letter by letter so as to reliably notice "t h i e r", it performs fast subconscious pattern matching, such that if the grammar of the sentence expects the word "their", and the blob on the page is pretty much "their" shaped, the switching of a couple of letters can be 'auto-corrected' completely before it reaches your conscious mind. 

Similar stuff happens with audio in my experience. A classic example would be peak/rms amplitude. The ears will be happily oblivious to very short peaks, and tell you that what you're hearing is "a quite quiet sound", when what is really there is "a mostly quite quiet sound but with many extremely rapid peaks of very high volume". 

Hearing can be fallible in the EQ dimension also. When I started out, I aspired to snares like Teebee's. I listened hard to Teebee to find out what I needed to copy, and my brain told me the magic of his snares was their being so crisp, bright, sharp, snappy, metallic, etc etc. So I would pick a snare sample for its nice toppy character, and when that wasn't good enough I would go looking for sword noises and such-like to layer on top of it. And then wonder why my snares were so lame and weak. 

The whole time, the "200hz" thing never occured to me, my brain was intent on identifying the character of snares by their top end, when I finally got into this 200hz meme it was like whoah... when listening back to other people's snares suddenly I could clearly hear there was actually something pretty much like a kick under it. It was there all along but I never heard it, because I didn't expect something like a kick to be part of a snare, I had mentally filtered it out. 

Another example would be tuning. I've been struggling to teach myself sax lately, my tuning is not very reliable but despite this I've been keen to write tunes, so I've recorded sax parts into the sequencer, which are often not well in tune. In one track I keep thinking the guitar is out of tune. But the guitarist tuned up with a tuner immediately before recording, and has frets. He's in - fact! It's the sax that's out, but because the sax is the lead line, my brain processes that as the 'correct' reference point and considers the accompanying instrument to be at fault. (What about the rest of track? It should be tuned up from the bass, no?, well, my brain is also less good at determining fine-pitching with subbass, than it is with things in a more 'human voice' register like the sax and guitar...) 

Anyway these particular examples aren't really important as much as the general concept that when you listen you can't assume what you hear is what is really there. 

And the biggest single way this applies is not so much any specific example remotely like those above, but in the general case of "how good is this"? 

i.e. It's all too common to listen to something you're working on, and instead of hearing the unpleasant reality of its faults, hearing what you want it to be. The classic example is being up late working on shit, stoned/drunk, hyped on your new breakthrough/progess, convinced your track is awesome.... but fire it up in the cold light of the next morning, and it sounds like utter arse. I know we've all been there, because there've been nuf threads about it! But imo it can't be dismissed as only an issue of the drugs or adrenalin clouding your judgement. I think it does go deeper and even at the best of times it can be difficult to simply hear your own material truthfully and objectively. 

It is easy to assume that listening is not a skill you have to worry about learning or practicing, if you are born with a functional sense of hearing then that is that; imo this is no more true than being born with 10 functioning fingers makes you a concert pianist... 

So becoming a seasoned producer, step #1: be able to hear things, what is really there. It's being able to hear "inside" music rather than just hearing the music, and you know you're there when you're tempted to start threads about how you can't enjoy other music anymore because you're too busy hearing inside it. (In my experience you go through that and out the other side... Anyyyyyyyyway... going off on a tangent) 

this highly developed listening skill is so important because it is providing you the 'data' upon which you make your judgements, upon which in turn you base your actions. with faulty data you make faulty judgements, in which case however technically adept your actions are, they will be wrong too... so listening is the foundation. 

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Moving onto step #2. (I did warn you tl;dr!). Judgement. 

This is basically asking the question: "is this good enough (yet)?" Or "Is this right yet?" Or "Is this what I want?" 

(The latter is arguably the best phrasing. Because sometimes you dont want 'right', you want it a bit wonky/detuned, to imply a wonky/detuned state of mind, for example. Also, notably, we're back to the idea that you need to know what you want, before you can judge whether or not you've achieved it. Where do I want to be is just as important in making the judgement as Where am I now?.) 

If the answer is "yes", then there is no step 3. There is no action (except the 'action' of finding the determination NOT to fiddle with it and trust yourself it's fine leave it alone - which can take a while to master lol). Instead you move on, make something else, listen, judge... etc. 

But if the answer is "no" - the first sub question is "why not" and the second is "what do I do about it?" Answering the former requires applying your ultra-cold, critical, objective listening skills from above. Answering the latter.... well there are many choices. 

There's a good reason the original question wasn't "Is this good enough or should I process it further?" Because "processing it further" is not your only choice. Other choices include: it's simply never going to be good enough with any processing, so re-record it (for a recorded part) / find a whole different sample. Or, undo some of the processing you've done already. For example, if the answer is "no (because it is overcompressed)", you're probably better backtracking the compression you just did than applying expansion.... 

But now I'm straying ahead of myself into the realm of #3, taking action, so away from that train of thought and back to the judgement call. To be pretensiously philosophical for a moment, it seems to me that this is the ultimate, final essence of what you as a musician/producer is THERE for. All the stuff in #3 could almost be boiled into a rules-based AI system. "If sound is too bassy, apply low-cut." "If sound is insufficiently ambient, increase reverb send." OK, silly examples, but really the same principle applies when scaled up to 'impressive' engineering feats: "If reece is insufficiently twisted, automate fx/resample/layer/repeat." The really human part WHERE YOU COME IN is deciding the sound is insufficiently ambient or insufficiently twisted or whatever. It's in where you decide to go, not the route you eventually take to get there. 

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So........ wtf is the point of this post... I'm struggling to remember myself ah yes..... it basically comes down to: 

- "RATE MY .. / .." threads. - "Hey dogs, I've made these drums, what do you think?" threads. - "Work in progress, is it worth finishing dogs?" threads. 

Do you know what I can't help seeing when I see these threads? 

Someone who is trying to abdicate from their responsibility to listen and judge for themselves. 

Someone who is trying to avoid the very work which most centrally defines being a musician/producer in the first place. 

Now, hopefully, some people are already slightly annoyed because at least that means I'm making some sort of sense, enough for you to tell that's not meant as a compliment So I will immediately seek to alleviate this annoyance with some disclaimers. 

First - this is absolutely not aimed at any individual(s), it's a very, VERY general place I have reached after 6+ years on the grid and 3x that doing music, inasmuch as it is personally critical of someone, that someone is a past version of me.... 

Second - like anything, it is not meant as some black and white statement with no flipside or counterargument. That is, OF COURSE other people's opinions and criticism are important and valuable parts of the learning curve. And of course, the grid is one place where you can find people with the experience and willingness to offer some of that input. I have no intention of saying that seeking external criticism is a bad thing as a producer, nor that it is or should be frowned upon to do it here specifically. 

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What I am trying to get at is a bit more nuanced than that, which is the notion of (1) possible over-reliance on external views, versus the benefits of greater self-reliance (2) asking for external views at inappropriate stages of the production journey or in an inappropriate manner, thus decreasing the value of the feedback you do, or even could possibly, receieve. 

(1) is pretty simple. Basically, every time you ask someone else if the drums are good enough, or if this work in progress clip is worth finishing, then that's a time you're not answering the question yourself, and that's one less piece of practice / training on your way towards developing those listening and judgement skills of your own. Like anything you get those skills from practice. I know it can be hard to trust your judgement (especially (but not only) as a n00b), which is why the natural reaction is to look for validation here. However in some ways there is no real getting around it - you need to make judgements, and make them wrong, in order to really progress longer term. 

(2), i could pussyfoot around forever so I'll try and be blunt and to the point and say: it is almost impossible to give any remotely useful feedback about isolated or incomplete elements outside of a track context. 

I don't think I have ever once responded to a "rate my break" thread and it's not (only ) because I'm an unhelpful cunt, it's because I honestly, 100% believe there is not the slightest possibility I could say anything meaningful. Another of my stating-the-bleeding-obvious examples, a limewax break will sound dog turd in a high contrast tune... or perhaps more insightfully (albeit controversially), the average calibre break will sound dog turd in anything but a calibre track. 

There are two (related) things at play here: intention and context. 

Worthwhile judgement cannot be made, imo, without awareness of intention and context. 

Sometimes things are "wrong" on their own but fine in context. (Or indeed "right" / great on their own, but wrong in context.) Drums may sound weak solo but rolling in the groove and any more forceful would compromise flow; conversely they may sound excessive and overpowering solo but necessarily so in the midst of an onslaught of metal stabs and distorted 808s. 

Sometimes things are wrong for one intention but perfect for another. Like the CV distorted snare onslaught being wrong for a sexy summery liquid roller. So, you may be thinking, well, can't I say "Check my drums! (Aiming for a Current Value style stomper)" ? Well, that's better, true. But it still reduces your intention to a crude reference that may get lost in translation. Ultimately, your intentions should not be fully realisable in text form, they should only be fully communicable through the music itself. After all, if you could express what you wanted to express accurately in text, you'd write poetry, not a tune! So any amount of explanatory notes about your intention cannot fully complete that side of the picture. 

And besides, you're still missing the other side, the context of the rest of the track. 

Like I was rambling under #1 (listening), hearing is a funny old thing, very subjective and fuzzy psychoacoustics are heavily at play, and so different sounds will sound different in different contexts. Sitting with a body of pads to cut through, you might need a little more boost on the low mids of a drumtrack than you realise on its own. Sitting with the ambience of pads floating around it, you might need a little less reverb on the drumtrack than you realise on its own. Etc etc. 

And I mustnt overemphasise the engineering side, because it's equally true and important for music. Which is also why there are problems with getting truly meaningful criticism when posting a 'full mix' clip - ie, you give me the whole context of drums+bass+pads+etc, but only 30 sec of it. That 30 sec may seem far too hectic to me. I might tell you that the drums too wild and unpredictable and complex in rhythm. But if, in its musical context, that 30 sec came immediately after 4 minutes of extremely straight, predictable, unchangingly repetitive rhythm, the same thing could sound totally amazing (due to a larger-scale arc of tension and release) 

In a piece of music every element, sonically and compositionally, is subconsciously judged against everything else that is happening at the same time, everything that happened beforehand, and even, retrospectively, by what happens afterward. (To be even more 'zen', it is also judged by everything that is not happening at the same time, that has not happened beforehand, and does not happen afterwards. ) 

With isolated elements and/or tiny clips, a listener cannot grasp these broad contexts nor infer broad intentions, and as such the potential scope & value of their feedback is highly limited. 

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Soooooooo, what am I saying? 
Finish your tracks 
Yes, in a way, it does come down to something that simple. Plenty of other posts saying similar things, I guess I just came at this one from a roundabout way. Basically, only when you completely finish a track can even YOU "judge your judgements". Because all your individual judgements above build on top of each other, and choosing one thing at one point can render an earlier, previously 'correct' judgement wrong (or a previously wrong one right), etc, etc. 

If you finish a track you (and everyone else) can stand back and say quite definitively: "The break is lacking in ghost notes. Back there when I made the judgement to mute those ghost snares, I made the wrong judgement." Whereas if you only ever made a huge folder of breaks, you can never really make that call, and certainly nobody else can. Perhaps you (or the somebody else) loves sparse 2 step beats, so the judgement is that the break sounds great. It's only in the tune you can get the realisation that in the tune it needed more flow. 

So basically that's my advice, for people wanting 3rd party reassurance / criticism / validation - yes, it's healthy to look for those external opinions, but rather than be impatient and look for input on bits and bobs here and there, FINISH TRACKS and put them in the showcase, because then those opinions will give you more value. 

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And my advice for people wanting to develop their own listening & judgement, to achieve more self-reliance, is very similar -- go to the showcase. 

I think the single biggest thing I did to improve myself in that dept was regularly reviewed other people's unsigned efforts for dnbscene. I honestly think I got more value, personally, from reviewing tracks, than I did from the reviews I received on mine. (that's not meant to belittle people who took the time to offer criticism, of course) 

Honestly! Not just saying that to encourage more people to review in the showcase, it's entirely true. Like anything else, you improve listening & judgement by practice. Sheer repetition of the routine: 

1. play unsigned material, try and listen to what is really there 2. ask yourself: - is this good enough - if not, why not? 

Now of course you most importantly need to do that on your own stuff, but for most people, especially when you're still a n00b with all the stuff in #3, you simply dont finish enough tracks quickly enough to give those skills the level of practice to improve to the level you want. So you find yourself seeking external validation... which as I have hopefully argued above, only perpetuates the issue. So, next time you get frustrated not being able to tell if your work in progress is worth finishing or if your drums are up to scratch - instead of asking 3 people if your drums are up to scratch, go to the showcase and decide whether three other people's drums are up to scratch. 

It's much easier to train yourself to hear common mistakes / problems in unsigned stuff than by A/Bing with great stuff, for the obvious reason that the great stuff doesnt have those problems. And it's much easier to train yourself to be fully harsh in both truly hearing and in judging things, when it's someone else's track rather than your own precious baby. 

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So, well, this rant has run out of steam now, sorry for the TL;DR, hope it wasnt entirely useless.

Followers of emvol