Slow Sound Modulations by Andrei Georgescu

Andrei is a 23-year-old certified Bitwig Studio Professional who began producing music at the age of 17. Currently, he makes music under the artist name of Liviu. He plans to get a degree in Computer Science on top of his two current music degrees with the eventual goal of creating VSTs and working in the gaming industry.

Download the package

Click here to download the Slow Sound Modulations package.

The .zip file contains two folders: one with exercises, and the other one with sound files.

Unzip it and use the import button to load the exercises in TrainYourEars. Don't forget to add all the sound files to the audio player too.

Andrei Georgescu’s introduction

This package is intended for intermediate and advanced users.

Training your ears to recognize equalization is essential to being a great DJ, musician, producer, sound designer, composer, as well as any other role that deals with audio. This familiarizes you with the frequencies that comprise audio and allows you to recognize and even create creative equalization. Examples of this are: the heavy use of filters in DJing, wah pedals used in rock music, most if not all sessions of mixing and/or mastering, most instances of sound design, and most if not all electronic music composers.

However, the issue lies in the fact that most training material for equalization relies on non-modulated static sounds, noise or music. These, of course, have their place and should be practiced, but one major aspect that seems to be missing from most training exercises are modulated non-static sounds. An example of this is trying to determine the equalization effect upon a sound that has other effects being added to it over time, such as distortion, delay, reverb, compression, etc. Some of these do in fact affect the frequency response, but that is the reality of how we deal with audio in real life for the most part.

Most real world instruments are not static and change in an immeasurable amount of ways every millisecond. Outside of simple sound design, there are few scenarios where the audio you will be dealing with is non-modulating. Using music is a good solution for this, however, most music tends to be predictable and repetitive and I feel that it teaches you more about how that piece of music works, rather than how to identify equalization amongst other modulations in general.

The main difficulty in these exercises are that some of these modulations do in fact change the frequencies and/or their amplitude. However, that is why the equalization itself is as straightforward as possible. Having to identify an incredibly small specific frequency boost in a sound that is being put through a slew of effects is not in my opinion a worthwhile use of time. I look at my exercises as flipping the traditional hard equalization/simple audio into easy equalization/difficult audio. I believe this fills in a much needed void in equalization training and will benefit many intermediate and advanced users.

The exercises will start off easy but continue to get more difficult. The exercises that involve filters will have less random modulation than the exercises that are less frequency based.

The sounds are named based off of the modulation that they change and the exercises are five basic filter types intended to be used with any of these sounds. In a sense, the exercises and sounds are flipped in this way as well. The difficulty is decided more by the sound being selected than the exercise, however the combination of filter type and sound is the most important aspect and thus experimentation is encouraged.

Please note that in order to properly use this package you have to enable the "Loop Song" feature in the Audio Player screen:

List of Sounds

1. Amplitude

This sound involves modulating amplitude of the overall sound.

2. Noise

This sound involves modulating noise on top of the overall sound.

3. Sync

This sound involves modulating the oscillator sync of the first VCO.

4. Waveshape

This sound involves modulating the waveshape of the two VCOs.

5. Mix

This sound involves modulating the mix between the two VCOs.

6. FM

This sound involves modulating the FM.

7. Resonance

This sound involves modulating the filter resonance.

8. Beating

This sound involves modulating the beating between the VCOs.

9. Beating 2

This sound involves more modulation of the beating between the VCOs.

10. Pitch

This sound involves modulating overall pitch of the sound.

11. Filter Types & Frequency

This sound involves modulating the filter types and frequency.

12. Filter Types, Frequency, Waveshape & Sync

This sound involves modulating the filter types, frequency, waveshapes of both VCOs, and oscillator syncs of both VCOs.

Questions and Feedback

If you have any questions or feedback about this package you can contact us. We'll be happy to help!

Have you created some interesting exercises and want to share them with the world? That's awesome! Just send us an email (to the email address above) and we'll publish them here :)