Golden Ears Club

“An audio ear-training course for recording engineers, producers and musicians. Dave Moulton started doing such training as an educational exercise for students back in 1969, and has since used it everywhere. “

Golden Ears club copies an ear training program developed by audio guru Dave Moulton.

NEIA instructor Rick Smith, who runs Golden Ears club, was taught this program by Dave Moulton at SUNY Fredonia from 1985-1989.

Golden Ears is an effective technique at improving a student’s abilities to hear very critical and minute changes in an audio signal.

Golden Ears club will meet for an hour each week.

Golden Ears club currently meets each Wednesday at 7pm in Studio A.

Contact Rick Smith for questions.  aineprof@yahoo.com

The Golden Ears program trains the listener for the following:

Frequencies
Trains you to recognize boosts and cuts in all ten octaves of the frequency spectrum. Progressive drills build from simple boosts in music to more demanding single octave cuts in pink noise.

Effects & Processing
31 possible signal processing changes, grouped into simple families: amplitude change, gross and subtle distortion, slow and fast release compression, equalization changes, stereophony anomalies and time-delay / reverberation settings.

Delays and Decays
Delay settings from tenths of a millisecond to whole seconds; panning / slap / spaciousness effects -- in mono and stereo, on sustained and transient sounds. Reverb parameters -- predelays, decay times, etc. Invaluable when creating programs.

Endorsements:

“...the music business is about sound, and anything that can help you capture and manipulate better sounds merits a look. After repeated listenings, I was actually able to discern which octaves were being cut or boosted in the frequency drills... after getting over my terrible score, I realized that the ability to identify small nuances in signal processing can help fine-tune a good mix, or even save a tough one... The more you listen, the better you become.”
-- Electronic Musician Magazine

“...Golden Ears has given me the confidence to tackle some of the most exciting and demanding projects... [Golden Ears] provided me with an understanding of the audio post and sweetening needs... to work on the sound design for the world's largest Omnimax theater... after working at the ear training course, mixing, synth programming and sound design just became second nature. I will request that it be a required text for all students.”
-- David Musial, Music Technology Department, New York University