Welcome back to the ongoing series that began with Frequency Fundamentals. I trust and hope it has been as helpful for you as it was fun for me to write.

Moving along, this is the start of a new series that will dovetail with the frequency series. Consider it the second suite of a broader work. These new articles will continue our discussion and build on top of the foundation we laid down previously. This time we will focus on audio effects.

“Relevance?”, you ask.

Find me a musician, audio professional, or recording/mixing/mastering engineer that doesn’t use audio effects – and I will be the one to question if they have red blood coursing through their veins!

A more pertinent question would be this: “Effects… OK. But why now?”

If you are familiar with the previous frequency series, you should know the answer by now:
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Songwriting and ear training are two concepts that are strongly linked together, which is often overlooked. The goal of songwriting is to create music for an audience to hear. The goal of ear training is to develop a sense of hearing better able to listen to musical ideas.

A musician with better ear training is going to be better at listening to songs written by others for ideas. In addition, it helps to be able to objectively listen for those same ideas in your own songs. There are few areas of ear training in particular where songwriters should focus.

Dynamics

The pitch and rhythm of notes are an important aspect to writing a song, but dynamics also play a substantial role in songwriting. Dynamics is the area of music where a songwriter plays with how loud a song is. This is not necessarily the same idea as altering the volume of different instruments in a mix, but it can sometimes be related.

The ‘palm mute’ used by guitarists is an example of a guitarist using dynamics to alter a part. Both examples below are A power chords played with a straight eighth note pattern. The second example uses a power chord to introduce a dynamic change. There is no chord or rhythm change – but the dynamic change from the palm mute changes the line by accentuating the first downbeat and second upbeat of the passage.

Example 1 - Power chords without dynamics

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