15. April 2017 | Developers | Carl
Talk-Zone #55 Interview with SoundGym
Welcome Noam. You’re a part of the interesting online-platform SoundGym. Please tell our readers what is SoundGym and whom is this for?
SoundGym is an online audio ear training platform for music producers and sound engineers. It provides a complete personalized training program where music makers can improve crucial listening skills such as frequency detection, compression, gain difference detection and much more.
There are thousands of audio companys out there to develope sounds and plugins. But an audio ear training company is very unusual. How did you came to the idea to begin with such a start-up?
Ahh, it’s an idea that was running in my head for a long time. Mixing is a complex mission, and the basic idea behind SoundGym is to break this complex mission into many small ‘sound atoms’ that can be trained and improve. I think that many people generally tend to put to much emphasize on gear and pay less attention to listening skills. Our ears are actually the most important gear in our studio, great ear and are the key for making great sounding music.
Do you work with education institutes?
Yes, we have a special plan for institutes. SoundGym provides institutes, students and teachers a private online environment for ear training, learning and communicating, it’s like a private SoundGym for schools. We already work with some big universities and colleges around the world. It is great to see a SoundGym ear training course on the syllabus :)
How much workouts, games or lessons do I have to do to get an objective feedback about my skills? When and how will the training improve my mixes?
You will get the first indication about you current abilities at different sound fields fast, but improving can take time. A novice engineer or producer that uses SoundGym will be able to improve his listening skills very fast. The improvement will be big and it should be quite easy to achieve.
A more experienced engineer that uses SoundGym might first learn about his skills. Thing like ‘I am great at this but not as good as i thought at that’ become conciseness. Then while training on SoundGym on a regular basis most engineers will see a significant improvement in detecting sound nuances. The results that they are seeing on SoundGym are objective so when a progress is made, it is easy to detect.
Could you explain the benefits of each game/exercise? What will each one do for my audio engineering?
We currently have 8 games on the platform. New games will be added as we go.
Different games train different abilities. ‘Peak Master’ and ‘Kit Cut’ will help you get better frequency detection, ‘Filter Freak’ will add the detection of different EQ filters with different settings, ‘PanMan’ will help you learn about the stereo field in your mixes, ‘DB King’ will teach you about gain differences, ‘Dr Compressor’ will help you to detect compression, ‘Delay Control’ will make you know how different timing sounds like, and ‘Distorted Reality’ will help you to detect distortion.
I have to admit that some of the lessons are not easy to complete successfully. Many people aren’t having much patience and endurance to learn new skills and think that trainings could be boring. But SoundGmy is always making fun and entertaining. Is the the key to your success?
We want ear training to be fun. I think that people get motivation and learn better when training is also fun. So SoundGym is also like a playground for music makers, where you can improve your skills while playing sound games, pass levels, compete with friends and enjoy your time. You also earn ‘SoundCoins’ for doing great on SoundGym and you can use it for getting more training sounds, to get discounts and much more. Gamification and fun are at the heart of the gym.
It seems that SoundGym is not only an audio ear training platform. The community is also an important point, right?
We got an amazing community on SoundGym. People are so helpful, and it is a great privilege to have such an intimacy with our members. Listening to our members needs is surly a key for a better SoundGym, and in the development process of the platform we pay much attention to what members wants. It is also great to see that we got some amazing talents and fantastic engineers that are using SoundGym to improve their skills.
Are you satisfied with the feedback and the support of the people?
We had fantastic feedback from the beginning, so we knew we are on the right direction. We are very satisfied to know that we help both beginners and pros improving and making better music. People really love SoundGym, it is amazing to see how effective it is for our members, and it encourage us to make it even better.
Are you / Is SoundGym a team of educated sound-engineers or how did you get all the skills to known which topics will be needed for sound games and trainings?
Actually we also run a boutique music production school (names ‘LFO’) for ten years now, so ye we have a ‘bit’ of experience in audio education, and it’s surly helps a lot, since we know our students needs. I am also a music producer and a mixer, creating music under the name Gingold X.
Which kind of features could we expect the next year(s)?
A year is a lot of time at the SoundGym world :) SoundGym is always a work in progress. We trying to move fast, adding new sound games and features all the time. We just added an new distortion detection game, and we plan to add new sound games and many more surprises.
Now you’ve got the chance to tell our readers something that you’ve always wanted to say.
We have just opened a space on SoundGym for German speakers. The basic plan on SoundGym is free forever, and has a lot of value to offer, and we welcome both pro and free members on SoundGym, so start training and improve!
Thank you very much for that interview.
Thanks you Noizefield, you rock!
More information:
SoundGym website
SoundGym @ Facebook
SoundGym @ Twitter
SoundGym @ Instagram
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