I believe that there are lots of people out there who are different from me: they feel the same pain and joy I feel, but they feel it through the words. They also sense colors, hues, ambiguities and resonances, but they don’t get them from the sounds, rather from the meanings that come in words. And this, I guess, is what poetry is about. When my wife listens to Mark Knopfler sing The Man’s Too Strong, she hears a somewhat ambiguous Christ-Judas allegory, while I hear some really interesting guitar sounds and awesome dynamics.

This means that if I’m ever going to be a successful producer, I’ve got a problem to solve. I’m not necessarily hearing the same things my audience is hearing. And my students, Don Puluse, all of us have the same problem. We don’t hear the words. But most of our listeners hear those words, loud and clear. So, if we are going to reach those people with our recorded music, we are going to have to tune in to what they hear. We can’t just assume that they hear what we hear in the music, like what we like.

Part of the answer, of course, lies in simply being aware of the problem (consciousness-raising, they used to call it). If you become sensitive to a bias, a weakness or a problem in your method, that sensitivity by itself will cause you to compensate for it. So just thinking about the possibility that maybe your significant other hears the words more than you do should be a help. But there are some things you can do, and some approaches to “producing” lyrics that can be a help.

One obvious thing you can and should do, of course, is always have a lead sheet with lyrics on it standing by when you mix or are preparing to mix a song. Even better, you should memorize the lyrics. Even better yet, you should spend some time thinking about those lyrics, wallowing in them. This shouldn’t be heavy-handed or pompous, but you should make every attempt to go inside the lyrics the way you go inside the music. Let the lyrics resonate inside you. Become one with their images, feelings and associations. Once you have internalized the lyrics, so that they are part of you, you will be in far better shape to approach the task of mixing the song in which they reside.

The second thing you can do, of course, is to study lyrics and poetry. I refer you to wordsmiths like Pat Pattison (who also writes for H&SR and teaches at Berklee), for some real help here. I drive to work with a guy who, while working in the administration at Berklee, is slowly working his way through the Berklee curriculum on a course-at-a-time basis, with the goal of being a MIDI-based songwriter, recording and producing his own music (does this sound at all familiar?). As he and I battle through the anarchy that is the Fresh Pond Parkway in rush hour every morning, he naturally likes to play me his latest efforts, for my critical appraisal. And, at one point, even though I don’t hear words very well, I noticed that his songs had developed considerably more impact and focus, that I liked their hooks, their intensity, and the clarity of their production much more than I used to. When I mentioned this, he told me he was in the middle of a course with Pattison, and was trying to apply what Pattison taught. And so, just the way that my preoccupation with sounds has an impact on listeners that they don't understand, so the lyrics have an impact on me that I don’t understand either! Hallelujah, education works!

The next, more concrete, thing we can do is pay attention to the level and intelligibility of the vocal tracks in the mix. I know it sounds really obvious, but I've burned myself lots of times on this one, and I’ve heard zillions of recordings that suffer from the problem. Often, we get so caught up in mixing for musical impact that we tend to balance the vocals a little too low, to a point where it has become almost a stylistic feature of rock and roll that the lyrics are hard to hear. A useful test here is to check the mix turned down 20 dB and ask yourself if you can easily, clearly and naturally hear the words. Also, ask your test listeners if they can understand the words, particularly at the lower level (try asking them what the song is about).