We’ve been keeping our eyes and ears open for interesting ear training links for you! Here’s what we found recently. As always, let us know if you have any to add!

Jump to:

• The most famous opening chord ever?
• Four levels of musical awareness
• 5 minutes to a better mix
• Free university course: Listening to Music
• What musical clichés do you know?

The most famous opening chord ever?

What’s the most famous opening chord of any song? One which would surely make the shortlist is the jangly guitar strum which opens The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night”:

Site author Brad put us onto this great video explaining the sound of that oh-so-famous opening chord:

Four levels of musical awareness

In a segment from his bass masterclass, Anthony Wellington talks about the four levels of musical awareness which you progress through as you learn:
Click to read the rest…

Last time we talked about Les Paul’s role as the father of the electric guitar. Nobody can question the significance of his innovations there, but that was far from the limit of his contribution to modern music. Next up we’ll be learning about the part he played in the development of modern audio recording.

The State of the Art (in the 1930’s)

Les was just as fascinated with recorded sound as he was with the electric guitar and he was equally important in its development. To put the revolution Les spearheaded in context we need to go back in time to the 1930’s. Sound recording and reproduction technology had already been around for some time, but it was a purely mechanical process with no electronics involved.

Early recording systems were nothing more than a stylus attached to a diaphragm, etching a groove directly into a spinning wax disc. The sound waves produced by the musician vibrated the diaphragm causing the stylus to carve grooves into the moving disc. (This is where the phrase “cut a record” comes from!)

What may surprise modern readers is that the “wax masters” produced could only be used to create a handful of gramophone records before they became damaged! Popular performers had to play a song many times over with multiple recording devices in front of them in order to produce a decent batch of copies to sell.

By the time Les was performing, disc reproduction had improved to the degree that many records could be made from a single performance, but recording still carved directly into a disc – meaning one bum note and the disc was ruined… Unlike us pampered musicians of the Pro Tools era, in the 30’s you had to get it right first time.

Sound on Sound

Today anyone with a laptop and some inexpensive (or even free) software can have a home studio that puts the recording technology available to classic acts like the Beatles to shame, but back in Les Paul’s day the idea of having a your own recording studio was completely unheard of. Even if you had the money there simply weren’t shops where you could buy the equipment. So in typical style, Les built his own.

Click to read the rest…

Today we’re taking a quick breather in the Frequency Fundamentals series, for an introduction to two important topics for audio engineers: EQ Feathering and Spectrum Analyzers. Once you’re familiar with both of these, you’ll be ready for the final part in the series, on harmonics of sounds.

…Here is the answer to the mystery bonus question at the end of the last article. If you’ll remember, I asked:

What is EQ feathering?

Answer: EQ feathering is a way of applying, or rather spreading equalization through adjacent and tangential frequencies on both sides of the main frequency that you are trying to adjust, thus resulting in a smoother tone curve.

Confusing?

Don’t go away just yet. Let’s look at a working example….it will be a much clearer answer! Click to read the rest…