Vertical Listening

Every musical composition has an acoustic hierarchy made from different sound layers. When we listen to music, we mainly pay attention to the most dramatic and loud sounds like synthesizers and bass drops, ignoring other sonic layers - missing out on various important details. Vertical Listening involves a practice of paying equal attention to all the sonic layers involved. It’s a process of breaking down the beat in our heads into pieces and hearing each musical layer - independently, thus studying music more closely. Hearing the lowest tones, difficult at times, is the way to start because the beauty of the musical composition depends on individual parts - working together as a whole.

When listening to Aphex Twin's works, in most of the cases, one clearly hears only the highest tones of his electronic beats. Created via modular synthesizers, these sound layers are very noisy and chaotic at times and they stand out compared to the other layers but that's the beauty of it, because one tries to search for and hear those hidden melodic loops which are placed underneath the main sonic layer and when found they sound truly surprising.

Lowest layers of the track, usually act as the main foundation on which other layers are added. The atmospheric sounds and background ambient textures act as the mood setters. Make sure to check out our Ambient Pulses sound pack where we embarked on the journey of creating such musical mini projects.

At Pretty Samples, we engineer individually unique sonic layers, sounds which have their own purpose independently however they truly shine when combined into one whole orchestral composition. At the end of the day, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Sound is one of the most powerful ways to connect with your audience. While sculpting musical projects we take into consideration the inherent process through which one hears, then listens; and attempt to make a natural, almost indistinguishable transition - from attention towards creating interest.