Pause and listen – Easy techniques to teach our children

All throughout my childhood, my parents would take my siblings and I on mountain walks every Saturday in and around Bergen in Norway, where I grew up. Being outdoors has always been an important aspect of my life. I realise now as an adult, if I do not get outside for some fresh air and get my body moving daily, I can more easily feel tired as well as losing focus and positivity during my daily tasks. Most often all of these feelings and emotions instantly disappear when I step outside the door. Research has shown that children, benefits greatly from being outdoors, it is beneficial for improving both their mental and physical health (Harvey, et.al, 2019).

On these walks when growing up, my parents taught me to appreciate the beauty in creation. The little water streams running through the fields, the smell of fresh air just after the rain had passed, or the beams of sun coming through the woodlands. All these things I was aware of as we climbed those steep hills on our Saturday Adventure. My mum would model this by stopping and saying things like “Oh, do you hear the robin bird chirping? I wonder if she is finding food for her little ones in the nest over there?” or my dad would go “Listen, do you hear the sound from the waterfall?”.

Pause

All these observations don’t seem to require so much, and yet they do. It requires us to stop and pause, acknowledging what is around us and training our minds to be present. To use our senses as we are seeing, hearing or feeling it for the first time. It requires us calming our mind, in order to recognise the beauty that surrounds us.

So, as this is a music blog, what does all of this listening to sounds in nature have to do with anything?

I was very exposed to music in my childhood. I would join my father when going to the opera, or my mother when going to a choir concert in the local church. We would sing together every evening. But it was listening when being outdoors, that taught me to be an active listener when going to these musical events, and to appreciate the art of sound. So how can we train or inspire our children to do the same? Down below I have gathered two simple and fun ways you can try the next time you are outdoors.

The pin drops

I learned from my secondary school teacher a trick that I have used several times when teaching in school. If you’re out on a walk with your little ones, take a pin or a needle, or anything that’s small for that matter. The aim is to hear the pin drop and fall to the ground. For this it requires everyone to be still and to listen in carefully. It might take a few attempts for everyone to hear it fall to the ground, but the reward is great; now you have everyone’s attention. To continue the quiet you can whisper, “did you hear it?”. If you do already have everyone’s attention, this step is not necessary, however, a good trick to have up your sleeve.

What can you hear?

Now when everyone is listening, take this opportunity to get everyone to close their eyes and for a minute to just listen to their surroundings. If some of them are impatient, demonstrate to them that you are putting a timer on your phone for a minute and show it and then have them close their eyes. Then after a minute, have the child or children share what they heard. Now the challenge is to go after these sounds.

Younger children activity

If you have younger children, an idea for going after sounds can be to imitate the ones you hear. If you hear a car beeping, you and the little one can try to imitate the sound. Or the dog in the street, what sound does he make? Simply walking around becoming aware of these sounds are so helpful! (Shimpi, Akthar and Moore, 2013).

Older children activity

If you have older children, you can use your phone with a recorder app (most smart phones have this) walk around and try to record as many sounds as you can find. Can you hear some birds? How loud is the traffic noise, or maybe a plane? When you get home, listen to your new sound library and get a discussion going about which sound everyone liked the best. A fun thing to do as well is to have the children show their new sound library to the rest of the household.

Do let me know down below in the comment section how it went. What did you experience? How did the children react to the challenge?

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References:

Harvey, D. et,al., 2019. Psychological benefits of a biodiversity-focussed outdoor learning program for primary school children. Journal of Environmental Psychology, [online] 67. Available at: <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494419303536> [Accessed 11 March 2021].

Shimpi, P., Akhtar, N. and Moore, C., 2013. Toddlers’ imitative learning in interactive and observational contexts: The role of age and familiarity of the model. Journal of Experimental Child Pshycology, [online] 116(2). Available at: <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096513001318> [Accessed 10 March 2021].

‘Transparent’ vs ‘Character-Driven’ Limiters for your Music Part 1

Hello, everyone, I’m Alex, and in this two-part post, I will be reviewing four different limiters. Two of these are “transparent” and the other two are “character-driven” limiters. I will also be giving some suggestions on how to approach these audio limiters, and explain what type of limiter you may consider using for your mixes or final masters.

Why is limiting important?

Whether you want to make your music louder or just change the tone of your vocals, instruments, synths, etc, limiting your music can potentially shape your music into an entirely different realm. There are many different types of limiters, but I will now discuss the two main types.

What is transparent limiting?

A transparent limiter limits the sound without making major changes to its character. In modern music, we are obsessed with the loudness war and insist on taking everything and turning it up by many decibels, by slapping on a limiter and heavily cranking up the gain. The most ideal transparent limiter should not affect the tone of the sound at all, only making the source audio louder. For this, some limiters may sneak in clipping for the best results possible.

What is ‘character-driven’ or ‘colour’ limiting?

When you think of analogue equipment, for example, the idea of transformers comes into mind. Sage Audio has made a detailed, but a cohesive explanation of transformers. To summarise, they mention the idea of transients being cut and coils of insulated wires being wrapped around magnetic cores, which in turn forms a process named magnetic coupling. All of this forms harmonic distortion, and in the case of limiters, this is a reason why some may prefer character-driven limiting. This is why you often hear the terms “warm” and “crackly” being thrown around, due to the origin of transformers. The ‘colour’ of these Limiters is what makes them attractive, regardless of whether they emulate Analogue equipment or not. Another way to think of a limiter with character is the idea of sprinkling on ‘sweetness’ or ‘sugar’ to a sound. How much depends on the artist’s intentions and the context of the music. The same can be said for other digital and analogue processes, not just limiting.

Which of these two types should I use?

Which type you use may depend on the type of music you are making and simply what taste you and your audience have. First, let’s take a look at the qualities of the W1 Limiter and Loudmax, then see what makes them transparent and why you may want to apply them to your music.

“Transparent” Limiters - W1 Limiter vs LoudMax Limiter

W1 Limiter

George Yohng’s W1 Limiter is as simple as ‘transparent’ limiting gets, except there is an adaptive release. It is useful for your limiter to understand and anticipate what’s coming next in the audio before it decides how much limiting it does to the audio. This is especially useful for dynamic songs where you have super quiet verses followed by super loud choruses, for example, or the music gradually becomes louder and the limiter therefore begins to warm up in its limiting. The adaptive release option, which places the release time at 250.0ms gives more opportunity for the signal to be smoother.

Even though this limiter doesn’t protect against true peaks as much and has some harmonics (if pushed ridiculously hard), it sounds almost identical to the L1 Waves limiter. This is my favourite limiter, because even a couple of decibels is enough to elevate and add more elegance to a sound. Yes, it may be ‘less’ transparent than LoudMax, but unless you really are aiming for a drastically different sound, this should be the easiest limiter of all of them to use. The adaptive release will help reduce artefacts tremendously.

LoudMax

As well as being able to link the ceiling to the threshold, LoudMax’s ISP protection can allow opportunities for automating the ceiling for sections where the limiter may start to work too hard. With limiters like LoudMax and W1, the gain compensation is one aspect that makes ‘bad’ or ‘flawed’ distortion difficult to achieve with these limiters. However, if you push the threshold way too high, (depending on the transients), this can potentially make the music duck too much, especially if the audio is overly loud and it introduces a hyperventilated effect to the music. You may also achieve an extremely beefy and crunchy effect on the music, which can possibly remove the transparent quality of this limiter. This artifact is also similar to Logic’s legacy limiter.

This limiter is also FREE and simple to use. If you are looking for a limiter in your arsenal, this one can take a bashing, if you want to use it for extreme purposes. I use this limiter and the sweet spot for me is -3dB to -5dB. Even with that range, the perceived loudness is incredible.

In this post, I have discussed the transparency of LoudMax and the W1 Limiter and how they can occasionally bring more character. In the second part of this post, I will take the opposite approach and go into more detail on VladG’s Limiter. No 6 and TDR’s Limiter No. 6 ‘character-driven’ or ‘colour’ limiters, as well as how you can use them as transparent limiters, depending on your approach to using them.

Supporting the Jazz and Hip Hop Scene In London

Artists from this scene who have been having the largest impact when breaking into the mainstream, include a variety of people. Including Biig Piig, Lava la rue, Nine8 collective, Puma blue, Kofi Stone, Loyle Carner and many more. All of which are musicians supporting hip hop and jazz music. The biggest factor of which all of these musicians have in common is they combine elements of jazz and hip hop into their music. Making them crucial artists as this is a combination seen rarely and has needed to be brought back to life.

Top left, Nine8 Collective, top right, Loyle Carner, bottom left, Puma Blue, bottom right Biig Piig. These artists have worked their way into the industry with the help of small venues, local promoters, merchandising and other ways in which they have built a closer connection with their fans. But noticeably, the biggest name having an impact and helping sustain this scene are a collective of artists called Nine8. As a collective who collaborate with other artists frequently, Nine8 reach out to artists who are needing to be heard. They will go through mutual friends to find new talent to work with or may even hear a local musician they like the sound of and reach out to them.

I want to focus on a music scene that is growing in London but needs to be noticed by a wider audience. This needs to be talked about, as I want to find bands who are within this genre but struggling to share their music and have it heard. This genre is begging to build a community which I want to support and share. In these articles I will go through the elements contributing to this community other than music.