Understanding How Others Hear
When collaborating in music, ideas often need to start with words. But which ones?
I’ve had the privilege of working with hundreds of people in the industry. Some are singers, others are musicians, and many are producers, directors, advertising executives, or combinations of all the above. No matter someone’s background, their relationship with music is always unique. I’m constantly surprised by how differently people interpret and respond to it. I’m convinced we all consume and process music in countless ways. One person reacts to rhythm, another to lyrics, another to instrumentation. Is it neurological? Do we each process musical patterns differently?
When I was in primary school, I was terrible at maths. Working through an equation never felt natural to me. Looking back, perhaps the issue was that I was being taught one method when my mind naturally worked another way.
It wasn’t until high school, when I was introduced to logic puzzles, that everything clicked. They felt easy. In fact, because of my poor maths results, my teachers suspected I was cheating. In truth, logic puzzles simply aligned with the way my mind processed information, whereas traditional arithmetic didn’t. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just how my brain had learned to approach problems.
The other subject that made perfect sense to me was music. The relationship between notes, chords, rhythms and patterns, and even the way it all appeared on a page, felt logical and intuitive. I could see the patterns and the sense behind chord progressions. Every now and then I meet a like-minded colleague who shares that same internal logic, and it is always exciting. I can only imagine that famous collaborators like Lennon and McCartney, or Elton John and Bernie Taupin, must have had something similar between them.
It is still a commonly held belief that the best creative results happen when the group responsible is small and tight, such as a team of two or a closely knit band. This applies to many creative mediums, not just music.
When mentoring, I have noticed that when a group becomes too large, it is almost impossible to find a shared “language” that allows everyone to understand the ideas. It is only when the numbers are reduced to one to three people that minds genuinely meet and the best work can emerge.
These days the industry is full of both highly trained musicians and naturally gifted performers. I often work with artists who have strong musical instinct but no technical training. They do not read music, follow charts or play an instrument. As someone who put in years studying theory and history, I used to be mildly irritated by people who seemed to aim for success without the groundwork. However, I have softened over time. After all, people like me are often brought in to help refine and legitimise the work that naturally gifted artists create.
This brings me to my point. A big part of my job is figuring out a client’s personal framework for understanding music. Before we can finish a project, we need to land on the same page and speak the same language. Film directors often think visually, so I might use words like “light”, “dark”, “sunny” or “rusty” to describe musical ideas. Dancers think in movement, so I use terms such as “flying”, “rolling” or “heavy”. This means I need to shift my own perspective and try to experience the music through their viewpoint or through the purpose of the project itself.
At the end of the day, it is all about how an individual makes sense of music. Some feel it physically, some emotionally, some through nostalgia and others intellectually. So yes, it is a brain thing.
Even among singers, there are differences. Some perform perfectly with headphones in a booth. Others need one ear uncovered so they can hear themselves in the room to stay on pitch. If you have ever been on public transport and heard someone singing along badly to the music in their headphones, it’s possible they would be far more accurate if they could hear their own voice. It is another clue that we all perceive sound in slightly different ways.
I once worked with a well known entertainer from Vietnam. We recorded and produced several covers. After I edited, tuned and polished the vocals, I sent her the mixes. She immediately cringed and said the tracks were not “stereo” enough. I was baffled. They were absolutely stereo. When she played me her previous recordings, I realised she was used to hearing her voice with a healthy dose of dense, karaoke-style reverb. I reluctantly applied a similar treatment, and she loved it. Since then, I have listened to more contemporary Vietnamese music and now understand the different aesthetic sensibilities behind it.
Music may be a language in itself, but as creators we need to be multilingual. We need to understand each person’s unique perspective and choose the right words to bring our musical ideas together.
