Free Course - Critical Listening for Studio Production

Thanks!

MIT has a large catalogue of courses available for free, but no college credit is earned, and you have to buy your own texts.
 http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/music-and-theater-arts/21m-380-music-and-technology-recording-techniques-and-audio-production-spring-2012/
 
 

dubdisciple
It's weird that i do fine on the quizes...except for the ones that use marimba

Wow, I'm so glad you said that - me too!
 
But I've also run into lots of trouble on the very last quizes where you have to identify a narrow band of frequencies removed from a sample.  Just shows how much training my ears need I guess.  Did you get all the way to the end?

SGodfrey

dubdisciple
It's weird that i do fine on the quizes...except for the ones that use marimba

Wow, I'm so glad you said that - me too!
 
But I've also run into lots of trouble on the very last quizes where you have to identify a narrow band of frequencies removed from a sample.  Just shows how much training my ears need I guess.  Did you get all the way to the end?

I stopped halfway through the quizzes, but will resume today.  It was a humbling experience.  I know I don't have perfect pitch recognition, but I am usually good at relative pitch.  Great example of how timbre can affect pitch perception.

I think perfect pitch recognition is pretty rare isn't it?  With a lot of the later quizzes, the only way I could work out the answer was to cross-compare with the other questions on the same sample.
 
Let me know how you get on.

dubdiscipleGreat example of how timbre can affect pitch perception.

Yup, I agree whole-heartedly. And, yes, it's a humbling experience. Methinks this is where we separate the musicians from the engineers.

Thanks so much for posting this.  I have been getting people at the studio to check it out and they are amazed at how trained or untrained their ears are,.

Razorwit,
I had the same feeling of you for the question 10...

Hi Mattelus,
Yeah, trying to differentiate between +6 and +9, particularly on a 1k sine wave, was tough sometimes, and I'm in a treated room listening to very nice monitors. I found myself doing a lot of "OK, I know that +12 sounds like someone is shoving a spike in my ears, and +3 sounds like someone poking at it with a q-tip, so is this closer to spike or q-tip?". The other frequencies weren't as bad, but for me at 1k it's all kinda ranking levels of uncomfortable. I actually found myself measuring my flinch response a couple of times :)
 
Dean

Are you guys still hanging in there?  Must admit I've fallen behind but catching up this week - right now I'm only a week behind.  Anyone else finding that this material is seriously challenging?  The week training on compression and gating was gold dust for me!  Actually getting back-to-back listening examples and tests for thresholds, ratios, attack and release was brilliant, I may actually be able to step away from the presets when I venture back into Sonar.  
 
The week spent on changes within a narrow frequency band and eq I found extremely difficult at times, but there's no doubt my ears are improving.
 
I keep finding that every time I look ahead at what's coming up I think "I'll never be able to do that" and I won't be able to hear any differences at all, but the practice is working; the way the exercises gradually increase the difficulty is excellent.  I'm also swinging between elation and despair.  Right now I'm doing well, hence a good time to post.