Guide to song analysis
Audio engineering and music production is the art of curating sounds on both a wholistic and individual level and creating an end product that is the some of its parts; as well as conforming to the genre, style, audience, and scope of each project. To achieve this goal critical listening is a very important skill to develop.
"In order to share information, sound must first be evaluated and understood by the listener."
(Moylan, 2015, p. 87)
The following guide is designed as a template for critically listening to a piece of music and effectively communicating what has been heard. Reference tracks are essential for any audio professional as they provide guidelines and inspirations for any project. To analyse any piece of music in this way we must use both analytical and critical listening.
Analytical Lisening
"There is more to music than just the sounds. There is also the meaning and the purpose of the music. A composer or songwriter always has a meaning or emotion they are trying to get across."
(D'Virgilio, 2014)
Questioning why a piece of music was created is essential to understanding its context. To know if a song meets your criteria as a reference track you must know:
-Who created the piece, their influences and career trajectory.
-Who this piece of music was created for (target audience).
-When and where it was created and any technological limitations of the time.
-What inspired the piece.
-What meaning or emotion the piece is trying to convey.
-The history and distinguishing features of the genre.
It's easy enough to find all this information out through research. Once we know this information and are keen to use a piece as a reference track we can move on.
Critical Listening
"Critical listening primarily comes from the engineer's point of view. From the engineer's perspective you would be listening to the physical details of music."
(Music-production-guide.com, 2013)
To me critical listening comes down to the "how" of a piece; how the sounds were created, how they relate to each other, how they fit together and how they fit the genre. To do this the modern audio professional has an arsenal of tools at his/her disposal. The DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is the primary tool of the modern audio professional and my preferred DAW is Logic Pro X. I use tools within Logic to aid my critical listening with visual guides and metering tools.
I break the critical listening component of song analysis into 4 sections composition, spectral balance, dynamic range and soundstage.
Composition
The first step to analysing any song is setting up a DAW session. This allows me to analyse the composition component and create visual representations. As you can see below (previous reference session) I have imported the audio, analysed the key, time signature, tempo, length, phrasing and structure of this piece. I've also named, cut and colour coded each section.
Spectral Balance
From my previous post Psychoacoustic concepts you will know the range of human hearing is roughly from 20Hz to 20kHz. Each instrument or sound used in any piece of music has it own frequency range (see below) and it's the way these frequencies fit together in a piece of music that make up its spectral balance. Armed with this information when listening to a reference track it key to decipher which instruments/sounds are present, the pitch/frequency being generated by each instrument and the way each instrument is given space within the mix.
(Stephens, 2012)
While critically listening for spectral balance I use the FabFilter Pro-Q 2 as a spectrum analyser (see below). With this tool a try to listen and look out for any specific frequency bands that are more noticeable or lacking in the mix. I also try to think of the key of the piece and look for any resonances or harmonics present that add to the timbre of the sound. (Corey & Benson, 2017, p. 123)
Dynamic Range
"Sometimes even a level adjustment as small as 1 or 2 dB on a single instrument can have a noticeable effect on our overall perception of musical intent and meaning."
(Corey & Benson, 2017, p. 127)
Dynamics simply put is the varying levels of volume throughout a piece of music. The use of subtle and drastic changes throughout a musical work can add emotion and transfer energy to the audience. Referring back to my post the human ear doesn't hear volume changes in all frequencies the same way. Understanding this when looking at dynamics will help in replicating the desired results.
Just as when we whisper it is personal and secretive and when we shout it's intense and ferocious. The same can be expressed with music. To understand this returning to my daw session I use volume automation to plot out the dynamic changes throughout the piece as a whole (see below).
It is worth taking some time at this stage to think about the gain staging of each individual instrument to find its place in the mix. Understanding the role of each instrument in the mix will help guide you on how this dynamic range was created.
Soundstage
(Sandoval, 2016)
Knowing how the frequencies and their amplitudes in a mix is great however; as you can see in the video above there is a little more to it. With stereo panning a mix can place each instrument anywhere across a virtual sound stage. Check out my post to understand how our ears and brain decode this information.
In a mix hard panning to the left or right puts the instrument to either side. In the same way partial panning can place it either side of centre and if both signals reach the listeners ear at the same time the signal is perceived as coming from the centre. When listening to a piece of music pay attention to where each instrument or sound is located in this field and try to understand the choice of the engineer who put it there.
Depth is also something to consider at this stage. Reverb and delay can be used effectively to achieve this. An instrument or sound with a lot of reverb is perceived as further away in the mix and a dryer signal closer to the listener. There are also some very interesting psychoacoustic and sound design tricks that are used to create wider mixes (this is a post for another day).
Stay tuned
Over the next few weeks I will be using this guide to analyse several songs and posting the results.
References
Corey, J., & Benson, D. H. (2017). Audio production and critical listening: Technical ear training (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
D'Virgilio, N. (2014, November 21). How To Listen: Part 3 — Analytical and Critical Listening - inSync. Retrieved from https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/how-to-listen-part-3-analytical-and-critical-listening/
GEORGEGTPS. (2013, April 18). Hacking The Hearing System: 9 Psychoacoustic & Sound Design Tricks To Improve Your Music. Retrieved from http://getthatprosound.com/hacking-your-listeners-ears-9-psychoacoustic-sound-design-tricks-to-improve-your-music/
Moylan, W. (2015). Understanding and crafting the mix: The art of recording (3rd ed.). Burlington, MA: Focal Press.
Music-production-guide.com. (2013). Critical Listening vs. Analytical Listening. Retrieved from http://www.music-production-guide.com/critical-listening.html
Sandoval, L. (2016, May 16). The Art of Mixing (David Gibson) | Thriller - Michael Jackson | 1982 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ_0vca-jFg
Stephens, R. (2012). Musical Spectrum [Infographic]. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/ricstephens/6694364471/in/album-72157626747544142/