Critical Listening: Learning to describe the sound of music

So you’re working with a mixing or mastering engineer on a piece of music you created. At some point, you’ll be sent a first mix/master and expected to listen to it, feel its new aesthetic shapes, and respond with feedback and/or corrections. Seems simple enough, but turning sounds into words and translating those into requests very often turns into a draining, mystical thing. It’s easy to let sounds slide past you, and even easier to list too much unnecessarily. So let’s look into ways to be an efficient listener, quickly write down your thoughts, rather than loop a track for 2h straight while vacuuming and cooking until no shred of perspective is left.

Firstly, and most importantly, the basics. Critical listening of a mix/master should be done in a sound system you know and trust, and on “fresh” ears (not after 2h of loud music). You probably don’t need fancy hi-fi/studio monitors (the sound engineer already has those, plus a room that’s specifically designed for critical listening), just speakers/headphones you’ve listened to a lot. Some people respond well to listening with added context, so it’s okay to first listen to another similar music track you like. Just be careful not get too much into comparisons – there’s a dozen technical and perceptive issues that could make that comparison wildly unbalanced.

When you’re ready to write, you should ideally try to point out every feedback point and correction within the first few listens. Repeated listening severely distorts your perspective (mixers and masterers treat taking a break like an actual tool). Throughout the process, avoid the temptation of finding mistakes just because it feels like you’re supposed to write something.

So how do we write a perfect feedback and correction list? A good list starts by pointing out the sounds or sensations that are well executed, so they stay that way through the corrections (Example: the drums are really punchy, impactful and have a good sense of space). While listing a correction, it specifies a time in the track, and then uses language that describes sounds and sensations to highlight the elements that could be raised/lowered, fixed or changed (Example: 1:23 – Keep the percussive sound of the guitars on the sides, but I’d like to hear more of the Drums that play with it; 0:30 – The fade-in on the organ should feel more like it’s approaching us from far away).

Trusting your sound engineer is crucial for the project to thrive. It’s worth remembering that their biggest contributions to your project are a pair of very tuned ears, as well as an ability to quickly and deeply conceptualize sounds. This goes both ways – a sound engineer should trust an artist’s ability to know the feelings they want to evoke throughout their work. Since a mixer/mastering eng. will spend many hours performing thousands of minute adjustments on a daily, the biggest way your feedback can contribute to better work is by focusing on aesthetics and sensations – for most artists, that’s exactly where their ears and imagination are invaluable. It’s more like “I’d like to hear the bass roar more clearly”, rather than “It needs 2db more bass so the track hits harder”. The first highlights a sensation and sound, the second is stepping into technical territory, where the engineer is likely to have tried a lot of different possibilities. 

In my personal experience, the same thing often happens with the “2db more on the bass” type feedback. The engineer raises the bass by 2db and the mix goes way past the limit, since it was already squeezing everything out of the low end. Then everything starts sounding quite muddy and usually loses a bit of loudness. The mix is sent back and the next feedback notes suggest raising the vocals and other instruments even further, because now they’re unclear and too quiet (the bass is taking space from everything else). This starts a cycle that could go on indefinitely and where the mix just progressively loses balance as everyone loses perspective in their listening. When an artist trusts the engineer’s decisions on the technical problems they face on a daily basis, and the engineer hears the former’s suggestions to elevate the sensations and feelings in the piece of music, every correction round is an elevation of the music, rather than just fixing problems.

Finally, it’s essential to be conscious and realistic about what mixing and mastering can do to music (follow this link for an article on what mixing and mastering can be). At their highest level, mixing and mastering are about elevating and reshaping the aesthetics sounds of a track, amplifying and aligning the sounds, sensations and ideas it evokes. It doesn’t add sounds, but rather gets the most out of the ones already existing within the track. Mixing can’t fix a vocal recording with the wrong performance or delivery, or totally change a guitar tone that’s not right for the song – same as the finish can’t fix a door with the wrong handle. Mastering can’t (or shouldn’t, at least not without consequences) fix a drum sound that’s full of unpleasant resonances or a bass sound that’s not quite right.

As a final note, does it seem like this text implies that you’re somehow very unable to listen objectively? Don’t worry, it’s not you, we’re all terribly non-objective listeners – mixers, masterers and audiophiles included.

Pedro Joaquim Borges, 2023