Hello, i was just wondering on other producers opinions about your ears! yes your ears.Do you think you've got everything polished & finished in your production! but to go to it the next day & maybe the vocal wasn't like that yesterday & some other things not right. i get it a lot with tuning vocals, thinkin thats spot on & then sounds diffo the next day. i suppose that's why we have collabs & second opinions.

 

Ear-fatigue. I have it with my right ear.

 

Most of the time this is a symptom of ear fatigue: Simply mixing too long, and or mixing too loud without taking breaks to reset your senses.

It can also be a symptom of cognitive distortion during your sessions: Being too hyped up and using an emotional state of mind to excess; rather than using more of the critical and analytical senses during the mixing or creation process. Cognitive distortion can also be amplified or caused by drugs and alcohol if that's what your into.

It can also be a symptom of over analyzing and zooming in to small aspects of the production without taking the time to zoom out and observe the part your editing as a part of the whole. If you zoom in too much without checking the bigger picture, you only realize your perspective was skewed after you've relaxed or rested. Some things sound good in isolation, but fail to work when assessed in the from a broader perspective. This same principal also applies to drawing, painting and other visual arts literally.

Also, many times 'sleeping' on an idea and coming back to it the next day gives us new perspective on things we were previously unaware of. So I always encourage artist and the people I work with to always factor "sleeping on things" before assuming they've made up their mind about the final version of anything.

 

Last edited: Sep 27, 2024

Perspective can change for many reasons, yes. Making sure not to work fatigued, working at reasonable volume and taking regular ear breaks really helps have a consistent perception of what you're doing.
And yes, sometimes my objectivity gets fouled up and I just have to walk away for something for a while. But it's not often.
I definitely agree about hyper focusing on details. You always have to keep the whole picture in front of you because everything affects everything else.

 

My ears would never lie to me. I've known them intimately for last 66 years now and I trust them implicitly. They no longer work well though and I can't hear enough at times to track for instance an acoustic guitar, but no, they've always been truthful. They just do as best as they can sloggenly do after years of way too much volume on stage and in the rehearsal room. Wearing those shit Walkman headphones at full volume in the NYC subways in the 1980's didn't help the cause any I'm sure.

 

ears (hips too) don't lie. it's you (your brain, the unconscious/uncontrollable/automatic part) lying to yourself which is even a more complicated matter. got it figured out my first few years tho. I don't know if I have anything worth sharing because truly I don't know for sure, I hope really got it figured out as I thought I am. Same goes with "my room is a little too low mid heavy" that I always remind myself in my new room everyday now. Just being aware of it all the time, I guess.

 

In that sense that you said, yes sometimes.
Not with tuning vocals specifically, but mostly with melodies.
Sometimes i make a melody thinking is a great one then on the next day i realize it doesn't fit the song at all.

 

well do you think that you get inside my brain and hear what i hear mr wizard?

 

Any producer has to be kind to themselves no matter what the music or technique is.
I save a dry gain staged almost labelled as that before anything. Then a save as when I start the process.
Everything mentioned above from ear fatigue, to hearing loss, to colored sound and more is normal.
I know only one method for me that has a consistent degree of success. If it all starts to sound the same, I do not go anywhere near it or any music for 24hrs. Then your ears are fresh again.

2x sets of different speakers and good headphones to check imagery help too.

 

Alongside ear fatigue, it can also result from your monitors and the temperature of the voice coil. As it gets hotter though use, resistance increases, changing the representation of sound.

 

It's the strongest indicator for a bad listening environment.
I never have ear fatigue.

 

The short answer is yes.

My reasons for it:- If I go play a track that was mastered in the 80's inside Ableton without hearing anything first, it will sound perfectly fine. However, if I play a track that was from a just a couple of years ago that was mastered perfectly and then go back and listen again to the 80's track?

It will sound RUBBISH every time to me.

 

Yes, I also recognized that. The thing is that a lot of music from those times simply was not produced well.
To be honest, a lot of it was more or less randomly produced well.

 

This is my environment had it for years.

 

Early Black Sabbath albums (just by way of example) objectively sound like utter garbage but no one cares because the music kicks so much ass. If your music is good people won't obsess over minor defects in production and you shouldn't either. just make everything as good as you can make it at the time you're doing it!

 

shiiii!! we had such in school

 

is the answer... cheers people

 

Sincerely, in anything, if we compare anything of 40 years ago to today it is going to be different. As human beings, many people have unconsciously been conditioned to think something is either better or worse, as if there are no other options for description. That's pretty normal these days.
The true reality is that it was more than likely good for its time as anything should be, and only different. The technology, times and too many variables mean it is truly just different and probably sounds good for the period. If you stack it up against other music of the time it would likely slot in just fine I doubt anyone would say James Jamerson was a horrible bass player, but if he was recorded today, his bass would not likely sound the same too.

 

I disagree. I was the most obsessed metalhead in my teen years and early 20s and I would've said the same as you have here for many years, but I just cannot listen to music that has low production value anymore. Also, in time, I've come to realize a lot of that music just wasn't very good or well performed anyway; it was just something that was so radically different in its era and had this huge youth fanbase to support it that shortcomings didn't get in the way of commercial success.

But it's not like that anymore. I often tell people now that listening to a lot of music (especially '60s and '70s rock that I absolutely hate) that I have the feeling parents yelling at their kids to "turn that shit down" decades ago, listening to the same music, must've had.

I was driving yesterday and Ozzy's "Shot in the dark" came on. It's a great song, but it's unlistenable next to Powerwolf's cover. The latter has just so much better timbre, smoother bass, clearer drums, the guitars don't sound like a swarm of bees, and Attila is a much better singer than Ozzy. There's really no reason that Ozzy's original, nearly 40 years ago, could not have sounded like this other than a skill issue.

Honestly, a lot of the modern "80s rock" throwback bands like Crazy Lixx and Steel Panther are what the actual '80s bands were trying to sound like.

Many people have difficulty placing a date on '90s country songs as well as AC/DC because they did not really follow any production trends of the day. Shania Twain's hits from 30+ years ago all sound like they could've been recorded just yesterday and for the same reason. Elvis' "Stuck on You" came out in '56 but sounds just as good as a modern recording minus the vocals being a bit too wet and has better bass than most '80s rock recordings.

So my thesis is unless we're going back to the early days of music production, there's really not that much difference between 40 years ago and today even if trends have changed.

Anyway to answer OP, I find these days I have the opposite problem. I'll spend all day working on something and start doubting it, but come back the next day with fresh ears and realize I was worrying about nothing.