SoundGym new free courses

SoundGym has been around for a while, but they have a new offering: “Free Audio School.”

I just got an email about this. I can’t speak to the quality because it just came out, but I’ll definitely be going through these. What strikes me is that these courses are LONG. Here’s a screenshot of what they’re offering, because I had to log in (with my free account) to see it. The only one I’m not interested in is Live Sound, so it could keep me busy for a while. :slight_smile:

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I signed up and tried a few ear training exercises and they start nagging you to sign up for the pro version, but it was still interesting.

I just played the frequency one. I did better than I expected, but I pretty consistently under guessed the higher frequency ones.

From what I’ve seen from it so far, I like SoundGym.

I think the lifetime should be cheaper. Its more fun than ‘train your ears’ lol, but I think ‘train your ears’ is equally effective.

Aw damn! That Synth one is new since I visited last!! Shit - if that thing is what I think it is its about time someone came out with a subtractive synth trainer! I cut my teeth on this stuff using the ‘synth cookbook’ trainer and a Moog. I’m glad theres a resource like that out there now!

hmm i will be interested to read what you think after spending some time on it.

I’m not sure if my post was clear, but I’ll just say this in case it wasn’t. The “school” bit is what’s new, and what I wanted to point out. They’re offering a 35 hour Mixing and Mastering course, 23 hour Electronic Music Production course, etc. That is a shit ton of course material. I don’t know which one to take first, lol.

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Ahh!!! Gotchya. I understand…I don’t think that was clear :slight_smile: Thanks! I have a login…I’ll try to look around it if I have some time later!

It looks like they found a whole bunch of free resources on Youtube and put links to all of them on a page.

Honestly, that would not be a bad idea to have on here.

Oh haha I think you’re right! Well, still could be a cool resource.

Something I’d like to see in the way of teaching audio stuff is bite-sized examples. Like when you take an online coding class, the first thing you do is download the example projects that you’ll be working on, so that you can work along with the instructor. It helps get the knowledge to stay in your brain.

It would be neat if these classes did the same thing, in easy to follow steps. Sort of like a guided, hands on experimentation. If you don’t have the same plugins, you can probably get on all right with similar ones.

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I love that idea. I’ve been toying with the idea of making a video series for a long time, and I think that’s something that would actually really set it apart.

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Same here, but I did well on the stereo field position test.
It’s hard to differentiate anything above 5k with my aging ears.

I was thinking about this some more today. What I think would be awesome is like, practice problems. Maybe you create 10 or 20 EQ “problems” that each consist of two short tracks–a kick and a bass, or a guitar and a vocal, or two different synths, etc.–and the student opens up a problem in their DAW and applies an EQ curve to each. Then they compare their finished product with the “answer” which consists of the track that the teacher came up with, and a screenshot of their EQ curves or something.

This isn’t like math where there is only one right answer. However, if they listen to their answer and the teacher’s answer, they may think, “whoa the teacher’s sounds way better, how did they do that?” Or they may think, “I like mine better. Let’s see if I can figure out what is good about the way they did it.” Either way you can learn something useful. Either way it gets you listening and thinking.

I feel like this could even be done SoundGym style, as a web application. That takes any variation in plugins out of the picture. Obviously you couldn’t auto-generate the problems, but you could have “problem packs” designed by all kinds of teachers. But that’s probably a huge project that no one has time for, lol. Maybe I’ll send the idea over to SoundGym. One thing I like about them is that they really do keep coming out with new features. I think they could be onto something cool.

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I just did a few of the “workouts.”

I did surprisingly well on the EQ stuff and pretty poorly on the panning. I’m not in my studio - I’m at an untreated office (I edit TV commercials and make motion graphics) where my monitors are way too wide. Everything felt further to the sides than it actually was.

I might do a few months of this stuff. It’d like to be able to spot frequencies faster and I don’t like doing Quiztones because I don’t currently have a great way to get that into my studio monitors.

Thanks for posting this, Cristina!

I thought that your Little Foot video actually kind of accomplished that. I found it really interesting how the plugin integrated the old “tone generator” kick enhancement trick with the high-pass of the original signal, and added even more tone shaping options. It really challenged “what a kick should sound like” if someone were searching for those options. I can see tons of opportunities with that for hip-hop producers. I almost bought it (“on sale”) as it was such a cool demonstration, but for Rock I just don’t see it see it being useful on all tracks. It almost makes the kick too cool for the snare. :thinking: