stage7

Cool Lee, those are great ideas. If I can remember what it is, there was a free VST pitch correction plugin I was using a while ago that had a chart as it went through the song and showed exactly how far off stuff was.

I actually have a frequency chart like that too, the one that comes with Bob Katz's Mastering Audio book.

Recently I've been pretty interested in the idea of ear training excersizes for audio engineers. More importantly, I've been trying to think of a way to more easily and accurately identify frequencies, hear when a voice or instrument is sharp or flat (even just by a little), hear when a rhythm is off by a little bit and if it's early or late. All the kinds of things that could easily come up on a day-to-day basis. Right now, I can get there if I hear things a couple of times usually, but I'd like to get myself to the point where I can hear this stuff while tracking is going on.

I've considered making myself a playlist of audio clips with various tones to get the first part down, but for the rest of it there's not much I can think to do but keep working on it in real life situations.

I'm also looking at the book Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals by F. Alton Everest. Link. I'm not familiar with any of his other books, but it's got pretty good reviews.

Any thoughts/comments on this book? Or any on things you've done in the past to train your ears?

Thanks!

my weakest point is getting people to be on time!

The owner of the studio that I intern at right now told me last week that they used to have a lot of problems with getting people to show up on time, or sometimes at all. They started requiring a deposit for the first 2 hours of each session when you booked time there. If you were late they'd take the money for the extra time out of your deposit, or if you didn't show up they'd just keep it. Now they rarely have anyone show up more than 15 minutes late.

I'll second that I have a serious problem with asking people for money or charging them for the hours I actually put in. Like a few weeks ago I did audio for a DVD for a nonprofit organization and I really didn't want to charge them that much. I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist when setting EQ or other effects, and I feel like I spend way too much time on it so I really don't want to go and charge someone for the 3 hours I spent getting this one track "just right". I ended up billing them for 7 and a half of about 14 hours that I actually spent on the project. And I ignored the hour drive both ways, cost of gas, and time spent setting up and tearing down.

The other major issue I feel like I'm facing right now is keeping the "big picture" in mind when getting individual sounds. Like I'll set up my mics for each instrument until I have a great tone for that instrument as a soloist... and completely ignore where I want it to sit in the mix later. All of a sudden I've got huge drums, huge guitars, huge bass... and a severly cluttered mix that needs a lot of EQ to get it to work. To compensate for this, I've been listening very carefully to CDs to hear what space each instrument is REALLY taking up. Like where the bass sits in relation to the guitar and the kick.. what frequency ranges are brought out and where it's cut. I feel like it's helping... so we'll see how my current project turns out

Fortunately, this is a peice of gear you can definitely try before buying. Take a couple hours, go to a Sam Ash or Guitar Center, or whatever else you have nearby. Bring your guitar. Compare the POD to other amps there, and to what you're used to at home.

I have a POD 2.0 and I hate the thing. It's noisy and all the distortion types on it sound fake to me. The clean channels are pretty decent but that's about it.

I've heard good things about some of line 6's actual amplifiers though.