THE LISTENING ROOM
by Thomas Haines

Recently I hosted a listening room at the 6th annual Mid Point Music Festival. The festival hosted 240 unsigned musical acts to showcase their talents to a very enthusiastic independent music audience over a three-day period. Those familiar with the wildly popular SXSW music festival held in Austin every year know of the legendary intensity of these events.

The listening room was open to every MPMF participant who wanted to have a “golden ears” engineer/producer critique one of their songs. Most artists provided a disc as well as various parts of well-executed professional promotional materials. Although this was labeled a “technique” critique session the conversations quickly turned from which microphone to use to what are you trying to say with the song. Even though each song was performed by talented musicians and technically sounded good, something was wrong and they intuitively knew it. This reminded me of how we as an industry chase the latest technology and market trends thinking that these will give us the ultimate competitive edge only to fail to grasp the elusive brass ring (myself included). When ask about the songs meaning, the artist had a difficult time articulating the songs intention in any consequential and succinct way. Soon it became evident to everyone in the room that something essential was missing.

The fatal flaw was that they had not listened to the song as an audience member. As someone who is intently listening for a reason to continue listening. These talented young artists had not developed an effective or interesting structure to deliver their musical ideas thus clouding the song’s focus and obscuring the meaning. The lyrics that could-have-been were not given their due, forever relegating them to second-class status, preventing them from delivering any lasting impact. The craft of song writing and arranging was lacking at a functional level. In the end, talent and dedication alone are not enough.

I had a sense that all of us left the sessions energized by the experience. The up-side to these discussions was that each song had most of the elements needed to push the expression to the next level. With the insights gathered from our time together, adding some soul searching, craft refining and hard work, some of these songs will grow into completed expressions ready for an eager listening public to embrace. I for one will be looking forward to their next efforts, listening with ears wide open.

Thomas Haines is an Associate Professor Electronic Media at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. He received his BMusic, MMusic in composition at Butler University. A faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival and School since 1999 where he serves as the Founding Director of the Susan and Ford Schumann Film Scoring Program. Aspenmusic.org. He is an active performer and composer, writing, performing and producing music for film, video, and multimedia productions. As a recording engineer and producer, he has extensive experience in orchestral and chamber recording and electronic/acoustic music productions for record labels such as Clavier, New Albion, Centaur, Naxos, Mode among others. He was a recipient of a National Association of Broadcasters Grant to study the effects of surround sound production in radio advertising and continues conducting original research in surround sound production aesthetics and effective listening techniques. An expert Apple application user, Haines regularly gives seminars and training sessions for the suite of music production Apple applications. Apple commissioned a short orchestral film score to demonstrate their Logic production software at the Telluride Film Festival in September of 2006..