The Magic Button Is In Your Ears

If you’re a producer, you’ll know that the search for the magic button is absolutely real.

We consume information like junk food, looking for the answer – that one thing that will take us from mediocre to full blown pro with…well, the push of a button.

What makes it worse is that we are literally working with buttons and knobs every day, so this idea that one plugin or compressor setting will transform us into gods is even easier to believe.

The truth is that none of us will ever find it. The instantaneous, push-this-to-transform-your-music-in-seconds button just straight up doesn’t exist. It’s a myth, and if anyone tells you different, they’re trying to sell you something.

The best path is through your ears.

So, we’ve accepted that the search for the magic button is a waste of time, but how do we know what to focus on to improve as quickly as possible?

The answer is ear training.

If ever there was a straight – albeit long – path to mastery, it would be majoring in ear training.

Learning to understand what your ears are trying to tell you will improve your music more effectively than anything else.

You might be killing it in the soft synth department or have a ton of knowledge about different distortion units, and that’s great! But at the end of the day, the extent of your success with making music will depend on how well your ears a developed.

We are supposed to listen to music, after all.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t other contributing factors to making good music, nor should you stop learning about your DAW, how FX work, sound design, etc.

It just means putting ear training at the top of your to do list. The sooner you’re able to truly hear what you’re doing, the less time you’ll waste and the more amazing music you’ll make.

You’ve found the path, now it’s time to walk it.

While there’s no shortcut to developing your ears, there are things you can do to make sure you’re moving forward as quickly and directly as possible. Here are a few ways you can speed up your ear gains:

Aural training:

This isn’t as fun as making basses, but it’s worth doing. Use an aural training app (I just bought Quiztones – like, just then) to help you identify different frequencies and tones.

Can you imagine being able to pick out what your mixes or individual elements need to sound better? That’s what this will do.

It might take a while to see results, but this is an amazing way to spend your time if you want to improve.

Intensive listening:

I learned about this in my music degree. It’s about homing in on details, listening to the envelope of a sound, the dynamics, the way individual elements work together to make something whole.

Close your eyes and mess about with this – it can be a form of meditation, I reckon. You get really close to sound, which is important if you want to be in a relationship with it for the rest of your life.

Listen at low volumes:

This is something you probably hear a lot, and with good reason.

If you’re not familiar with the Fletcher Munson Curve, look it up. It shows us how we perceive different frequencies across the spectrum, and how the response changes as the volume does. Essentially, the quieter the volume, the more dynamic range we can hear.

This is invaluable knowledge to have if you’re trying to develop your ears; listening at high volumes gives you misleading information about how loud something is. If you want to get better, listen low.

Make lots of music:

Ok, it’s not really an ear training tip, but it’s essential.

Every sound and every song you make will be sonically different. You need to learn the unspoken rules of making music, which will allow you to hear whether or not something is right dependent on the context.

This is immensely important. You can’t just listen to an acoustic drum loop all day and then go and EQ dubstep drums in the same way.

If you make a lot of music, you eventually create flexible guidelines, loose rules to go by that can be tweaked accordingly depending on the track. Do not underestimate the power of smashing out tunes.

Last words.

Stop looking for the magic button and start listening. There is no one thing that will make you a better producer, but this will keep you on the right path and stop you from wandering off into the bushes too often.

If you want to get good at something, you have to do the “homework”, and making music is no exception. At least your homework is making and listening to a lot of music!

I hope this helped. Now it’s time for me to go and practise what I preach (although, to be fair, I did get a bit caught up in Quiztones in the middle of writing this).

If you’re looking for other ways to improve, you might want to check out 7 Music Production Tips I Wish I’d Paid More Attention To, to make sure you're moving in the right direction.

In the meantime, how do you train your ears? Is there something I didn’t mention? Let me know!

Until the next time, my friends.

Cheers :)