Educating and Inspiring the Next Generation in Audio
Two Days of Sessions in Post-Production, Live Sound, Recording Arts, Film & TV Sound, Broadcast and More.
Over 70 Video Sessions to watch on-demand forever.
Educating and Inspiring the Next Generation in Audio
Two Days of Sessions in Post-Production, Live Sound, Recording Arts, Film & TV Sound, Broadcast and More.
Over 70 Video Sessions to watch on-demand forever.
Today I’m going to be discussing a virtual instrument called Gravity by the folks at Heavyocity. It’s loaded into and powered by Kontakt Engine by Native Instruments. While Gravity itself doesn’t have a free version available, Kontakt is available as both a free version and full version. Gravity is an incredible, extensively customizable virtual instrument designed predominantly for use in modern scoring. It’s comprised of 4 instrumentation sections: Hits, Pads, Risers, and Stings. Each of these 4 main sections breaks down further into complex blends of the loaded-in beautiful, high-quality samples within the category as well as the simplified individual samples for additional customization with the effects and other adjustable parameters.
With these instruments, Gravity allows you to do a whole lot musically for composers who would like to utilize it in developing a full score, but it also can be used for some truly awesome sound designing purposes. Especially when it comes to cinematic style accents, hits, and synthy ambiances, which, as a sound editor, is what I personally have found myself using Gravity for the majority of the time.
Gravity’s MAIN User Interface For Pad Instrument Section
After having initially selected which instrumentation element you want, each category of instrument breaks down into further categories to narrow down which instrument feels right for the moment. The only section that doesn’t do this additional categorical organization is the Hits partition. At the bottom of Kontakt, just below the UI, it also displays an interactive keyboard you can use if you don’t have a MIDI board to connect to your system, which you can also play by mouse click or by utilizing your computer keyboard. It highlights which keys are loaded with samples for each instrument selected as well as breaking down similar groups separated by color-coding.
There is a powerful and extensive variety of effects available to include (if desired) to whatever degree the user prefers, which are also broken down into multiple pages that you can flip between by clicking on the name of each page along the bottom of the UI (just above the keyboard).
Gravity’s EQ/Filter
In the MAIN section, there is Reverb, Chorus, Delay, Distortion, and Volume Envelope with ADSR parameter controls (attack, delay, sustain, release), as well as a couple of Gravity specific effects. These include Punish – which is an effect combining compression and saturation adjusted by a single knob, and Twist – which manipulates, or…twists…the tone of the instrument which you can animate to give movement to the tone itself. There are also performance controls available like Velocity, to adjust the velocity of the notes, Glide, to glide between notes played, and Unison, which increases or decreases layers of detuned variations of the notes played to create a thicker, more complex sound.
Gravity’s Trigger FX
There is also an EQ/FILTER page which of course provides a complex equalizer and variety of filtering parameters, a TFX (Trigger FX) page to temporarily alter sounds by MIDI trigger with Distortion, LoFi, Filter, Panning, and Delay. Under each trigger effect is an “Advanced” button where you can further customize the parameters of each trigger effect. Lastly, there is a MOTION page that has a modulation sequencer that adjusts volume, pan, and pitch of the sound triggered over time, and a randomize button that randomizes the variety of motion control and motion playback parameters. With this variety of motion controls, you can create patterns of motion to either utilize as an individual setting or to link a chain of motion patterns. To add to all of that, there’s an editing sequencer, and each pattern contains a sequence of volume, panning, and pitch parameters. This series of adjustable bars allows you to create a sequence of patterns. With all of these parameters to manipulate as little or as much as you’d like, thankfully, they have the option to save, load, and lock motion controls for easy recall when you find a really cool means of motion manipulation that you’d like to bring back (without taking the time to fine-tune all of those parameters all over again).
Gravity’s Sequencer
There is one instrument section that’s a little bit different from the rest and has an additional page of customization options that the others don’t. That’s when you go diving into the Hits. In the Hits section, there are multiple options of what they call Breakouts, which are an extensive array of preloaded multi-sample triggers that implement a whoosh or synth rising element that builds and builds until slamming into a powerful, concussive cinematic impact before trailing off. You can use these individually or blend some of them together for a quick means of generating complex, powerful cinematic accents, and sweeteners. These are also all broken down separately into the individual samples to trigger the impacts themselves with each MIDI keyboard note, the sub-elements for a nice touch of deep BOOM to rock the room, the tails to let the concussive hit play out in a variety of ways, and the airy/synth whooshes to rise up into the booming impact. Included in the four Breakout Hits instruments, there’s the additional page of customizable elements added to the UI that I mentioned at the start of this paragraph called DESIGNER. Because the Breakout Hits instruments each trigger a combination of this aforementioned mix of cinematic elements with each keyboard key note, inside the Designer tab, you’ll find that it allows you to modify each of those elements/samples to customize the combinations of triggers.
Hits Instrument Section
Now, after that extensive technical dive into everything that this AMAZING virtual instrument has to offer, I must say, Gravity itself is actually surprisingly easy and user-friendly to navigate and play with. It has definitely become my personal favorite tool to create a variety of cinematic style elements and accents. In being so user-friendly, once you’ve got it loaded up and either connected your MIDI keyboard or setup your computer keyboard to use in its place… simply select an instrument from the menu and you’re good to go! Have fun playing and exploring the expansive additional effects and features I’ve detailed above!
Happy New Year, SoundGirls readers! I am so pleased to kick off my blogs this year with Part 2 of my interview with Anna-Lee Craig. ALC holds many impressive titles, even more, impressive when taken together. Among them are A2 for Hamilton on Broadway, inventor of the mic rig known as the “ALC Special,” and on top of all that, parent of twin toddlers!
If you missed it this fall, be sure to check out Part One of this blog, where we cover ALC’s beginnings in the industry, from getting interested in sound in college to breaking into the industry in NYC and making the connections that led her to her first union jobs and to working with Broadway sound designer Nevin Steinberg.
Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Want to learn more about ALC and the sound design of Hamilton? Check out the two episodes of the “Hamilcast” podcast in which she is featured! https://www.thehamilcast.com/anna-lee-craig/ She is also part of the team that was interviewed for the Hamilton episode of the podcast “Twenty Thousand Hertz”: https://www.20k.org/episodes/hamilton. You can find her on Instagram @frecklessly7 and on Twitter @craigalc.
Let’s talk about being an A2, and then about being the A2 for Hamilton. What is your favorite thing about being an A2?
Oh gosh. I really love my job, so it is hard to narrow it down. So, a list:
-I love when a catastrophe strikes and the mic swap or whatever goes so smoothly that the Mixer and audience doesn’t even know something went wrong.
-I love when an actor tries on a custom rig for the first time and says, “oh this is so comfortable, I don’t even feel it.”
-I love the rituals of a mic hand off and backstage dance choreography that no one else gets to see.
-I love all my elaborate Google Sheets.
Sidenote from Becca: I’m pretty sure this isn’t what ALC meant by “backstage dance choreography,” but here she is busting a move with Lin-Manuel Miranda while getting him into mic! https://twitter.com/i/status/726135286980313088
Can you talk a little about your process, and those elaborate Google Sheets? What kind of paperwork do you make for tracking, rigging, etc., and how early in the process do you get involved with the sound design team?
The A2 usually gets hired just before the shop build- so I’m integrally involved in the rack building, cable labeling, and system setup. I generate paperwork documenting actor/role mic rigs, frequency management, backstage cues, inventory, and anything backstage, related to the sound department, that impacts the daily maintenance of the show.
For Hamilton, how soon after the show opened did you learn the mix in addition to the A2 track?
I trained for the mix at The Public (which is when I joined the show), but it was only in case of an emergency. I was retrained for the Broadway version of the mix 6 weeks after we opened.
Can you give us a particularly crazy backstage “war story” about some of the crazy things that A2s sometimes have to do in the middle of a performance?
Sometimes A2s have to do address a mic problem that basically happens onstage- like behind an upstage piece of scenery. And then you’re just stuck there, hiding behind that door or whatever until the scene is dark again and you can exit without being seen.
How did the design for the ALC Special come about?
The ALC Special has had multiple evolutions and honestly continues to evolve to this day. The original concept was a request from Nevin- an experiment- could I build a lightweight under the ear rig. It needed to be as far away as possible from the tricorn hat brims, but also look and sound great. Nevin is a fly fisherman, and he must have suggested I look into fly tying. Long story short, much of the technique used in the ALC Special comes from fly tying, including the super strong, super thing fluorocarbon tippet that we tie the mics with.
An up-close look at the ALC Special from the inventor herself! Photo courtesy of Anna-Lee Craig
Sidenote: You can watch Hamilton San Francisco A2 Adrianna Brannon build an ALC Special in the Hamilton-themed episode of “Adam Savage’s TESTED” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=351DxQghbh0
How did/do you balance the demands of our work with having a life outside the theatre? What are your favorite non-theatre hobbies?
To be honest, before parenthood I didn’t balance it very well! I have a few lifelong friendships that I carved out time for and other than that most things were theatre-centric. I would go out with cast and crew friends on days off- my partner would often join in.
Finally, let’s talk parenthood. To my knowledge, you are the first person to be on the sound crew of a Broadway musical who is not only a parent, but who experienced pregnancy and gave birth. This is something I too aspire to do in my career, so it’s really inspiring to see you shatter this glass ceiling for all of us! What was the process for negotiating parental leave from the show? How has being a parent changed the way you think about this industry and the ways it does (or doesn’t) accommodate families?
I remember working a press event for Hamilton] and the A2 on the RF station was a woman very much in her third trimester being a total badass, managing tons of mics, and she completely inspired me. And I thought “F**k yeah. If I ever get pregnant, I’m going to be like her, doing what I love, and kicking ass.” And really at that moment, I’ll never forget feeling like I could do both for the first time. (I’ve been trying to track down her name, but it remains a mystery.
The process of parental leave was very sort of casual. I let everyone in management know I was pregnant and was congratulated and I asked the parental leave policy and they said just to let them know how long I’d be gone. I was paid through the NY PFL for 12 weeks and any extra leave after that was unpaid. Covid hit mid-March so immediately after my PFL was up I applied for unemployment. But originally, I was intending to come back after 5 months off. And that was just kind of it.
Sidenote from Becca: New York is one of only 9 states (plus Washington DC) that has Paid Family Leave written into its laws. Every time I work a job in NY and open my pay stub, I see that a tiny amount has been deducted to cover this program. At the federal level, 12 weeks of job-protected leave must be granted, but there is no requirement that it be paid. And even so, many Broadway shows run for short enough periods of time that they don’t have to offer leave. As recently as late 2019, I know of a male stagehand who was offered zero paid leave upon the birth of his son, and for financial reasons felt the most he could allow himself was one week home, again unpaid, to be with his wife and new baby. I know I am on my soapbox again here, but this too is a huge issue that is stopping folks from staying in the theatre industry and reinforcing the stereotype that Broadway stagehand work is the domain of cis-het white men only.
More on this from ALC.
Everyone knows that the entertainment industry is hard for families. And that continues to be true. Most of all the schedule is completely unforgiving. 8 shows a week? I go to the theater every day except Monday; when exactly am I supposed to recover and enjoy being with my family? But there are benefits to working a night job for now. My kids are young enough to be early risers and they aren’t in school yet. I sacrifice my sleep because I get home at 11:30 at night and get up with my kids at 7 am. My husband and I love the mornings before he locks himself in the office. We all have breakfast together and read books and cuddle. Then I take the kids to the park, and we spend all morning together. I try to nap when they nap but that only happens 40% of the time. And then a nanny comes from 2-6 pm to hang out with them while I make dinner and get ready for work. Then my husband takes over, I kiss the kids goodbye and head to work and he does bedtime and cleans the house.
I think the balance I’ve figured out could be impossible for most theatre families. Most parents don’t have a partner that works from home (and my husband turned down a promotion in order to keep working from home; not everyone can even afford to choose family flexibility over paycheck). And I don’t know if we’ll be able to maintain it when they are old enough to go to school. We’re gonna wait and see. And if the schedule ultimately makes me feel like I’m missing out on my real life (which I used to think my job was) then I’ll leave. Maybe permanently, or maybe just until my kids are a lot older. There will always be work to do. Maybe not the same work but I guess that’s been the biggest shift. I don’t define myself by my job anymore…
ALC with her partner and the twins!
More SoundGirls resources on balancing career with being a parent from SoundGirls blogger and badass mom April Tucker:
https://soundgirls.org/the-audio-girlfriends-guide-to-pregnancy/
https://soundgirls.org/mixing-with-a-newborn/
Thanks so much to Anna-Lee Craig for taking the time to share her story! Please follow her on social media, and feel free to reach out to me if you too want to do this career and be a parent, and if this blog made you feel inspired. Getting to write it sure inspired me!
Also, I am taking requests for what topics you’d like to see blogs about this year. Reach out to me via my website, beccastollsound.com, and happy new year!
If someone mentions Feminist Punk Rock, most music lovers would point you towards the Riot Grrrl movement. Starting in the early 1990s, the Riot Grrrl bands were brash, political, and popular. Founded in Olympia Washington in the United States, the Riot Grrrl movement merged the musical with the fight against misogyny to and fit what we deem the popularized Feminist Punk Rock movement of today. Feminist Punk focuses on the cross-cultural ideas of gender equality, and its political music movement has spread across the globe. Recently, the Feminist Punk Rock ideals have been gaining popularity within a new band of women, in the country of Pakistan.
Feminist rock has been a new type of protest that has emerged in Pakistan political movements. Garam Anday, Hot Eggs, is a feminist Rock band that has been gaining traction in the region for their feminist critiques of the government. Garam Anday works to critique the gender discrimination that occurs in Pakistan. Through the use of their lyrics and music videos, they are weaving a narrative of women who are fighting back against the gender bias in Pakistan.
Garam Anday gained a large portion of their fame through their song “Mas Behn Ka Danda”, which translates to Mother and Sister’s Sticks. In this song, the women sing about the reckoning that is coming from women and girls challenging the sexist and patriarchal systems that are set up in Pakistan. In the song, the women sing
“we are coming after you boy, with our burning eggs, Mothers and sisters bring our reckoning”.
In this line, the women are taking back their feminine descriptors and using them as a source of power. Often in songs, the female body is used as a sexual object. However, Garam Anday uses their distinctly feminine bodies as a source of power in their song. By taking the very distinct female anatomy of eggs, i.e. ovaries, and saying those ovaries are coming after the men, Garam Anday is citing the power that a woman has to push back against patriarchal systems of power. Politically, the song’s use of eggs is powerful because it is a direct allusion to the sexual violence that takes place in Pakistan. At the moment there is mass sexual violence towards women. In government spaces, men control and diminish women’s bodies. For example, in 2021, Prime Minister of Pakistan Khan responded to the rape crisis in Pakistan by saying that it was occurring because “if a woman is wearing very few clothes it will have an impact on the man unless they are robots” (Tariq). This is just one example of how gender and sexual violence is perceived in Pakistan, This is the violence that Garam Anday is working against in their music. By creating a song where ovaries are seen as the site of power, Guram Anday is creating political messages of female empowerment through their music.
Guram Anday has further politically organized through the locations at which they play their music. In 2019, Guram Anday “performed at the Aurat March where they escorted the pidarshhi ka janaza” (Khuldune Shahid). Performing at the Aurat March is important to note in terms of Guram Anday’s political popularity. The Aurat March is a political protest against the violence against women in Pakistan. By being invited to the march, Guram Anday secured public awareness and acceptance as a voice for change in women’s rights in Pakistan. Guram Anday is following the feminist Punk Rock ideas of music’s political organizing influence taking it to help use it to uplift their message of women’s empowerment and the message of the Aurat March.
While a Bikini Kill reunion is unlikely, the spirit of feminist punk rock is still alive and well. Guram Anday is just one example of how Feminist Punk Rock has crossed cultural boundaries to unite under the common cause of gender equity for all. Guram Anday shows us that feminist punk rock is for all, and is used by all. Guram Anday shows us that the fight for equity in music should not be a western focused approach. Instead, it is an intersectional and global fight for ALL women.
Watch Garam Anday’s Music Video
The sound industry brings me such reward. There’s nothing else like it. I mean just a month ago I was hiking up to the highest waterfall in the world with 20kgs worth of gear and camping equipment on my back, doing location sound for a short film (we entered the Rode Reel competition for 2021), and the fact that I could call this “work” amazed me. Getting back to the city, I was pressed for time with a three-day deadline to deliver an original composition, post-production audio editing, sound design, and foley. The “rush” of the job had me pulling all-nighters and feeling like I had a purpose.
Then, not surprisingly, I crashed. Exhaustion hit, and along with it came imposter syndrome, frustration, and feeling like I wasn’t good enough because I couldn’t get what I could hear in my head out onto the DAW. Not to mention I was working with the cheapest and most frustrating laptop and software (a major downgrade from what I was used to when I was at Abbey Road). I felt depressed, deprived of sleep, and full of self-doubt.
I quickly realized that I had done it again – getting myself into the “go, go, go, crash” cycle. I had to remind myself of the most important lesson I have learned in my life – to be like a crotchet rest. (I even have one tattooed on my wrist to remind me!).
I like to think of it like this – a crotchet rest is actually a note. What I mean is that it is a part of music where you “play silence”. It’s intentional, and without these written into the music, the piece would just be noise.
In life, you must be intentional about where you insert your stillness, your silence. You must create space for the notes so that they can transform into a complete piece of music.
It’s just like in life. I figure that one must be deliberate about where one fits silence into their existence, and not be freaked out by it (because we tend to believe that when we are still, we aren’t accomplishing anything). I see this intentional rest as a fundamental requirement in my path to success. It’s almost like intentionally “playing the silence” in my life for it to form a whole, “successful” piece of music.
So much of the brain’s energy is taken up on regretting or dwelling on the past or fearing and worrying about the future. And if it’s not spending its energy trapped in some irrational fear, then it’s almost certainly using whatever it can to distract itself from stillness. Things get so chaotic, and we fall into the trap of resisting stillness.
One tends to resist stillness, especially when life gets busy as there seems to be “no time”. But the act of making stillness a priority – of playing the silence – is one of the most valuable things to remember when life gets tough. It requires you to go within, to consistently check in with yourself, to observe without judgment, and to listen deeply so that you can determine whether the thought, action, or feeling you are currently experiencing is harming or helping you. It helps you see if there are things you are giving your time and energy to that are not serving your highest good. It allows you to take ownership and responsibility for where you’re stumbling and to redirect yourself toward a healthier you. This stillness is a space of infinite potential. It gives your mind and spirit a chance to expand, explore, and let go.
That is why, being like a crotchet rest – intentionally playing the silence of life – is one of the best pieces of advice I can give you. So, perhaps in your day today, think about playing the silence in your own life. Where can you make stillness a priority? Where can you stop resisting stillness? Where can you be intentional about moving into the space of infinite possibility?
Give it a try. Even if it’s just for five minutes and begin to see the ripple effects of its power in your life.
In May 2021, I left my radio job of four years to start freelancing full-time. I’d been editing podcasts for a couple of different clients for the past month or two, but now I was starting to pick up more work, and it felt like the right time to make the leap.
Unlike a lot of people, I was fortunate to remain in employment throughout the pandemic. I’d been working from home for over a year (an interesting experience when your job is in live radio). But I was ready to move on, for a combination of reasons. So when new opportunities presented themselves, I couldn’t say no.
I won’t lie: I was terrified. As someone who suffers from anxiety (more on that in a future blog post), I was plagued by that voice in my head telling me I was crazy to go freelance. What if the work dried up? What if I wouldn’t make enough money? And in the middle of a pandemic! What was I thinking?
My fears weren’t entirely unjustified. I did have a few quiet weeks early on. But as I soon learned, things can change very quickly, and before you know it you’re juggling two or three different projects at once. Seven months in, I still have times when I’m not very busy. But this isn’t always a bad thing, especially coming off the back of a particularly hectic period where you feel you’ve barely had time to breathe. It helps you take a moment to refresh and refocus.
I think the biggest worry for a lot of freelancers is a lack of stability. It’s true that this is a risk you take, but if you’re able to build a strong client base, it really helps. Don’t underestimate the power of a good recommendation. If you do a great job for someone, chances are they’ll work with you again (or even give you a regular gig) and will be only too happy to let someone else know about you, which in turn leads to more work.
Despite my worries about the negative side of freelancing, I’ve also found that there are a lot of positives. I really enjoy having the freedom to choose my own hours. Some people might struggle with structuring their day and resisting the temptation to procrastinate, but luckily I’ve always been pretty good at motivating myself to sit down and get things done. I will freely admit that I am not a morning person. That’s not to say I can’t or won’t get up early for work (I used to have a 5 am start on Sundays) but I certainly don’t enjoy it. So I don’t worry too much about the 9-5 thing unless a project specifically requires it. As long as I’m getting the job done to the best of my ability and communicating clearly with my clients at all times, that’s the most important thing.
The freedom to choose not only which hours you work, but which projects you work on, is another positive. But there are also challenges. I’ve had to think long and hard about my boundaries this year. When you’re just starting out in the freelance world and trying to build your client base, it can be very tempting to accept everything that comes your way. Maybe the money is really good, or it’s a chance to gain experience in a new area that will look great on your CV. But what if you’re already juggling a lot of projects and barely have any free time? You might be afraid to turn down work in case that client doesn’t offer you anything else in the future, or you might just be keen to make a good impression and show them what you can do. But sometimes it is good to say no. If you take on too much, you will simply be incapable of giving your best to each project. The work itself will suffer, and so will your mental health. We’ve all experienced burn-out, and we should try to avoid it wherever possible. Only say yes if you think you can realistically manage it.
Setting boundaries is also important when it comes to dealing with existing clients. I’ve been very lucky to work with a lot of brilliant people, but occasionally you do come across someone who thinks nothing of asking you to edit an hour’s worth of audio at a minute’s notice, or sending you WhatsApp messages about work at three in the morning and expecting you to respond. Thankfully a rare occurrence, but it does happen. Many people feel unable to switch off from work even when they’re not freelancers. They might stay late at the office or answer phone calls and emails after going home for the day. But when you’re freelance, these issues are often magnified. There are people who expect you to always be available, at all hours of the day and night, and who want everything yesterday. And there are others who set unrealistic expectations, such as consistently giving you badly recorded audio which you simply cannot fix. Being open about your boundaries and the ways you will and won’t work is important. That way, clients know exactly what they can expect from you, and what you expect from them. If they’re not willing to respect those boundaries, you can walk away and save yourself a lot of stress. If they are willing, you’ll have a healthy and harmonious working relationship.
In hindsight, I think the decision to go freelance during a pandemic was more of a blessing than a curse. This whole situation has forced businesses to consider remote working, and so many more people have also started podcasts in the last two years, which means more work for freelancers in the industry. I’ve been working with clients from around the world from the comfort of my own home, which I never would have dreamed of pre-pandemic. And it’s not just podcast editing; I’ve also recorded and sound-designed audio drama, made radio promos, and even appeared on shows myself as a contributor.
I’d only been doing this for about a week when people started asking me when I was planning to return to a “stable” job. It occurred to me that many people outside the industry still don’t really understand freelancing and just how common it actually is. Then again, I also used to get asked how much longer I was going to do “this radio thing” before having to get a “proper” job. So I guess being employed by a radio station is now considered stable after all!
I don’t know what the future holds; none of us do. But for now, I’m enjoying the diverse range of projects I get to work on and the freedom to pursue what interests me.
Hit Like A Girl and SoundGirls, leading organizations in the effort to grow the music community for girls, women, and non-binary and trans people have announced a new collaboration that will add impact to Hit Like A Girl X, the 11th annual edition of the groundbreaking contest for women drummers and beatmakers.
Last year SoundGirls members shared educational video content about tuning, miking and recording acoustic and electronic drums on the HLAG-X website and SoundGirls members sat on judging panels for HLAG-X drumset and beat-making categories.
To learn more, visit www.hitlikeagirlcontest.com and www.soundgirls.org.
Hit Like A Girl® is a celebration of female drummers, percussionists and beatmakers. The organization was founded in 2012 by Phil Hood (Drum!), David Levine (Full Circle Management) and Mindy Abovitz-Monk (Tom Tom). Now in its 10th year, the Hit Like A Girl Contest has had more than 10,000 participants from 50 countries and has reached nearly 100,000,000 online impressions. Additional HLAG Directors include Louise King (Rhythm Magazine), Sarah Hagan (Marketing & Artist Relations), Danielle Thwaites (Beats By Girlz) and Diane Downs (Louisville Leopard Percussionists). HLAG sponsors include many of today’s leading drum, percussion, electronics, accessory and media companies while its judges include many of the most popular, most respected drummers on the planet.
SoundGym and SoundGirls collaborate in order to encourage and support women and girls in the audio industry.
SoundGym members have been donating Pro subscriptions to support women in sound.
First Step Register for a free account at soundgym.co
Then in your settings use our school code CP8I4084H89
The second Step Fill out this form and we will provide you a year subscription.
When I began studying music production five years ago, I spent a lot of my hours working through critical listening techniques for records I found or ones that were recommended to me. The goal of this practice was identifying elements of arrangement, recording, programming, and mixing that made these particular records unique. At the time I was studying, I was introduced to immersive audio and music mixes in Dolby Atmos, but there was a strong emphasis on the technology’s immobility – making these mixes was pretty impractical since the listener needed to stay in one place relative to the specific arrangement of the speakers. Now that technology companies like Apple have implemented spatial audio to support Dolby Atmos, listeners with access to these products can consider how spatialization impacts production choices. Let’s explore this by breaking down spatial audio with AirPods and seeing how this technology expands what we know about existing critical listening techniques.
Apple AirPods Pro with spatial audio and noise cancellation features
It’s important to address the distinctions of spatial audio, as the listening experience depends on if the track is stereo or mixed specifically for Dolby Atmos. The result of listening to a stereo track with spatial audio settings active is called “spatial stereo,” which mimics the events of spatial audio on stereo tracks. When using the “head-tracking” function while listening to a stereo track, moving your head will adjust the positioning of the mix in relation to the location of your listening device via sensors in the AirPods.
For a simplified summary of how this works, spatial audio and Dolby Atmos are both achieved with a model known as Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF). This is a mathematical function that accounts for how we listen binaurally. It considers aspects of psychoacoustics by measuring localization cues such as interaural level and time differences, and properties of the outer ear and shape of the head. If you are interested in diving into these localization cues, you can learn more about them in my last blog.
A simplified layout of a head-related transfer function (HRTF)
Ultimately, the listening experience of spatial stereo and Dolby Atmos mixes is different. For example, tracks that are mixed in Dolby Atmos involve different elements of the instrumentation that are placed as “objects” in a three-dimensional field and processed through a binaural renderer to create an immersive mix in headphones. Meanwhile, spatial stereo sounds like a combination of added ambience and filters and the AirPod’s sensors to form a make-shift “room” for the song. Using the head-tracking feature with spatial stereo can impact the listener’s relationship to the production of the song in a similar way to a Dolby Atmos mix, and while it doesn’t necessarily make the mix better, it does provide a lot of new information about how the record was created. I want to emphasize how we can listen differently to our favorite records in spatial audio, and not how this feature makes the mix better or worse.
An example of object-oriented mixing in Dolby Atmos for Logic Pro
For this critical listening exercise, I listened to a song mixed in Atmos through Apple Music with production that I’m familiar with: “You Know I’m No Good,” performed by Amy Winehouse, produced by Mark Ronson, and recorded by members of The Dap Kings. It’s always a good idea when listening in a new environment, in this case, an immersive environment, to listen to a song that you’re familiar with. This track was also recorded in a rather unique way as the instruments were, for the most part, not isolated in the studio, and very few dynamic microphones were used in true Daptone Records fashion. The song already has a “roomier” production sound, which actually works with the ambient experience of spatial audio.
The first change I noticed with spatial audio head tracking turned on is that the low-end frequencies are lost. The low-end response in AirPods is already pretty fragile because the speaker drivers cannot accurately replicate longer waveforms, and our collection of harmonic relationships helps us rebuild the low-end. With spatial audio, much of the filtering makes this auditory perception more difficult, and in this particular song, impacts the electric bass, kick drum, and tenor saxophone. Because of this distinction, I realized that a lot of the power from the drums isn’t necessarily coming from the low end. This makes sense because Mark Ronson recorded the drums for this record with very few microphones, focusing mostly on the kit sound and overheads. They cut through the ambience in the song and provide the punchiness and grit that matches Winehouse’s vocal attitude.
Since a lot of the frequency information and arrangement in many modern records comes from the low end, I think this is a great opportunity to explore how mid-range timbres are interacting in the song, particularly with the vocal, which in this record is the most important instrument. When I move my head around, the vocal moves away from the center of the mix and interacts more with some of the instruments that are spread out, and I noticed that it blends the most with a very ambient electric guitar, the trombone, and the trumpet. However, since those three instruments have a lot of movement and fill up a lot of the space where the vocal isn’t performing, there is more of a call-and-response connection to these instruments. This is emphasized by the similarity in timbres that I didn’t hear as clearly in the stereo mix.
You know I’m No Good” in Apple Music with a Dolby Atmos label
Spatial audio makes a lot of the comping instruments in this song such as the piano more discernible, so I can allocate the feeling of forward movement and progression in the production to what is happening in these specific musical parts. In the stereo mix, the piano is doing the same job, but I’m able to separate it from other comping instruments in spatial audio because of how I moved my head. I turned my head to the right and centered my attention on my left ear, so I could feel the support from the piano. Furthermore, I recognized the value of time-based effects in this song as I compared the vocal reverb and ambient electric guitar in stereo and spatial audio. A lot of the reverb blended together, but the delay automation seemed to deviate from the reverb, so I could hear how the vocal delay in the chorus of the song was working more effectively on specific lyrics. I also heard variations in the depths of the reverbs, as the ambient electric guitar part was noticeably farther away from the rest of the instruments. In the stereo mix, I can distinguish the ambient guitar in the mix, but how far it is in perceptual depth is clearer in spatial audio.
Overall, I think that spatial audio is a useful tool for critical listening because it allows us to reconsider how every element of a record is working together. There is more space to explore how instrumentation and timbres are working together or not, and what their roles are. We can consider how nuances like compression and time-based effects are working to properly support the recording. Spatial audio doesn’t necessarily make every record sound better, but it’s still a tool we can learn from.