Critical Listening

Course Authors: Dan Thompson No matter how good a song is or how accomplished the musicians playing it are, the wrong mix can leave an otherwise beautifully crafted song sounding unprofessional and unpolished. Critical Listening provides recording musicians and aspiring producers and engineers with a better sense of the mixing process, and develops the ability to hear and identify the key features of a well balanced, artful and professional-sounding mix. Through weekly training drills, analysis of classic recordings, and comparative studies of different styles of mixing, you'll learn to identify width and depth, frequency range, dynamics and the different mix approaches used in various musical genres. You'll learn to hear and identify techniques such as panning, alternate types and uses of reverb, delay, compression, phasing/flanging/chorus, and different types of distortion. The course also explores various types of instruments and arrangements, distinguishing between Telecasters, Strats, and Les Paul guitars, single versus dual coil pickups, direct versus miked acoustic and electric guitars, tremolo versus vibrato, Rhodes versus Wurlitzer electric pianos, and more. The course will also take you through the steps to turn your listening space into a more critical listening environment. Whether you are a recording musician looking to ready your music for CD, or an aspiring producer or engineer, you'll not only learn what elements are most important in a mix, what sort of arrangements you should be working towards, and how to optimize your mix to make your song as compelling as possible; in the process, you'll open your ears up to a whole new level of music listening and awareness. By the end of this course, you will:

hear width and depth, frequency range, dynamics and the different mix approaches used in various musical genres. identify techniques such as panning, alternate types and uses of reverb, delay, compression, phasing/flanging/chorus, and different types of distortion, distinguish between different instruments, pickups, miked versus direct acoustic and electric guitars, and what mixing approach might be most appropriate for your music. optimize your listening setup into a more critical listening environment.