Montclair State University asked me to develop and possibly teach a class on aural skills for audio engineers. It’s a great idea! It isn’t just audio engineers who need to know what frequencies and decibels are. These are concepts that any musician would benefit from knowing.

Here’s my first pass at a course outline. The main problem is that this is five semesters worth of material, so I’m sure some of it (a lot of it) will get cut. But these are the things I would want to cover in an ideal world.

Unit One: Fundamentals of Acoustics

1.1 Physics of Sound

• Sound pressure waves
• Anatomy of the ear
• Transducers
• Microphones and speakers

1.2 Standing Waves

• Amplitude
• Frequency
• Adding waves together
• Phase

1.3 Noise

• Mathematical definition
• White noise
• Pink noise

1.4 Sound Pressure Levels

• Decibels
• Subjective vs objective loudness
• The Fletcher-Munson curve

Project: Noise Pollution

Measure the ambient noise levels in three locations: your bedroom, outside your home, and one other place where you regularly spend time. Record the average decibel level and the peaks. List the main sources of audible sound in order of loudness. Are these sound levels harmful?

Unit Two: Rhythm

2.1 Tempo

• Beats per minute
• Italianate tempo descriptions
• The event fusion threshold at 1200 bpm

2.2 Meter

• Time signatures
• The tactus
• Hypermeter

2.3 Syncopation

• Strong and weak beats
• The backbeat
• Polymeter and hemiola
• Tresillo and clave

2.4 Swing

• Swing ratios
• The special case of shuffle
• Eighth note swing vs sixteenth note swing

2.5 Groove

• Participatory discrepancies
• Ahead of the beat vs behind the beat
• Dilla time

Project: Beat Transcription

Choose a song and transcribe its drum or percussion pattern. You will get the best results from a song with a short, repeated drum or percussion pattern (four bars maximum). You can use standard notation, a time-unit box system, or the Groove Pizza. Please be sure to include the artist and title with your transcription.

Unit Three: Frequency

3.1 Pitches and Frequencies

• Review of standing waves
• The range of human hearing
• Scientific pitch notation
• Tuning, interference and beats
• Subjective descriptions of frequency ranges (sub, bass, low mids, etc)

3.2 Harmonics

• The natural overtone series
• Harmonics and tuning
• Just intonation
• Inharmonics and bell tones

3.3 Equalization and Filtering

• Your mouth as a filter
• The parameters in a typical EQ plugin
• High pass vs low pass vs bandpass
• The wah-wah pedal

Project: Spectral music

Create a short piece of music on a single pitch that only changes the overtones/timbre. Use the spectrogram to help you.

Unit Four: Dynamics

4.1 Decibels and Dynamics

• Review of decibels
• Italianate dynamics markings
• Peak vs average loudness
• Attack, decay, sustain, release

4.2 Perceptual vs Actual Loudness

• Performance intensity vs decibel levels
• Masking
• Perceptual loudness in recorded music

4.3 Gain vs Volume

• Amplification
• Gain staging
• Headroom and clipping

4.4 Compression and Distortion

• Dynamic range compression
• Threshold and ratio
• Attack and release
• Limiter
• Distortion, saturation and overdrive

Project: Make It Loud/Make It Quiet

Take a piece of music that is traditionally loud and perform or record it as quietly as possible, or take a piece of music that is traditionally quiet and perform or record it as loudly as possible (don’t hurt yourself!) Consider not just decibels, but also timbre and performance intensity.

Unit Five: Timbre

5.1 Acoustic Instruments

• Instrument families
• Western European orchestral instruments
• Wind band instruments
• Folk and country instruments
• Afro-Caribbean drums and percussion
• Hindustani instruments
• East Asian instruments

5.2 Synthesizers

• Review of harmonics and noise
• Additive synthesis
• Subtractive synthesis
• Frequency modulation synthesis
• Drum machines
• Analog vs digital
• The guitar amp as an analog synth

Project: Sonic Structure Graph

Choose a song recorded after 1965 and create a diagram showing all of the sound sources (instruments, voices, samples, sound effects, etc) and the measures in which they appear. If you can identify specific instruments or pieces of equipment, do so, but otherwise simply describe each sound as best you can.

Unit Six: Space

6.1 Panning and Stereo

• From mono to stereo
• Mid/side mixing
• Multichannel audio and surround sound

6.2 Reverb

• Reflection and diffusion
• Natural reverb
• Artificial reverb

6.3 Perceptual Distance

• Loudness
• Reverb
• Filtering

6.4 Hearing Microphone Placement

• Classical-style miking
• Close miking

Project: Musical Space Graph

Select a recording made since 1960 and diagram all of the sound sources (instruments, voices etc) according to their position in musical space along the left-right and proximal-distant axes.

Unit Seven: Critical Listening

7.1 Mixing and Mastering

• Track-level effects
• Groups and sends
• The master track

Project: Subjective and Objective Description

Give technical definitions of the following words that musicians commonly use to describe sound and explain the techniques/tools you would use to create them:

• Fat vs thin
• Warm vs cold
• Bright vs dark
• Hi-fi vs lo-fi