Ear Fatigue – Is It a Real Thing?

When I was at university, a visiting professor warned us against making our dissertations focus in an area that we were not an expert in. For example, many students wanted to write papers that approached a topic from a socioeconomic standpoint and others were considering a topic that had more of a psychology aspect. The subject of this blog post is talking about ear fatigue, and whether or not it is real. I will not be looking into the true definition of the term from a scientific standpoint, or approaching this as if I was writing a medical paper – I want to go through my experiences and how I would suggest that you deal with the phenomenon.

What Is ‘Ear Fatigue’?

Ear fatigue is something that I would personally define as when your ears just do not work like they are supposed to. It could be that you have been recording or mixing a project, and you have heard the song so many times that you begin to make unnecessary changes, you start to hate what you have done already or you suddenly lose vision for how the song can progress. 

This can also happen when you are writing a song or directing a band, with the results being essentially the same. This affects everyone and each person has no set time in which they develop ear fatigue. In fact, sometimes I get this when transcribing a chord progression or melody and it does not just affect guitar players.

The main cause is just repetition; having something repeat an unquestionable number of times can really mess with your ears.

How Can We Avoid It?

There is no real way to avoid ear fatigue necessarily. However, there are a few steps you can take to lessen the chances. If you are editing a lot of music rather than mixing, rotating between different sets of headphones or studio monitors can be very useful, though you would obviously want to stick with one listening option for reference. Taking regular short breaks, knowing when to stop and simply being well rested/focused is probably the best way – it will creep up on you, though. 

One way you can avoid this whole issue is with a positive mental attitude; if you are genuinely enthused about the project regardless of context, then I have found that the project is more likely to make progress at a faster rate – some people would argue that this is the ‘spark’ you often hear mentioned.

How to Fix It?

I always remember the advice a teacher gave to me when I was trying to complete a difficult crossword puzzle – they simply said “Your brain is getting tired of it, doing something else for 10 minutes and try it again”. To me, that was a revelation and like I was trying the puzzle through an entirely new set of eyes. I have found that doing the same thing when approaching a music-based problem definitely helps. I might try another song or just remove myself from the situation entirely if I am trying to learn a song or record a section of a tune. One important distinction to make here is that sometimes you are “in the zone” – this should not be ignored, though identifying what ‘the zone’ precisely is quite difficult. 

When it comes to songwriting, it is not unheard of for people to sit on riffs for weeks, months, years or even decades. It could be that you spend so long, and such a lot of brain power trying to get that sound from in your head to the real world, but afterwards you are just sick of it. It is not a waste, but should then be retired from the archives and be ready to shine again another day. There is no shame in this - I always see it as your ears just simply being tired. This can apply to a simple chord progression, a melody, rhythm or a fully-fledged song. This is not exclusive to just amateur musicians; everyone from the bottom to the top can be affected like this in their creative endeavours.

On the subject of songwriting, we often fall into a familiar pattern of playing when we create with our main discipline. This comprises patterns and shapes that we may have adopted into our regular playing through practice or performance. This can inadvertently hinder the songwriting process, so to fix ear fatigue when working on a piece, some musicians like to switch to an instrument they are not as familiar with. This is something I discussed with guitarist Nick Johnston in an interview with The American Guitar Academy – you can view the interview here. 

Final Thoughts

I was recently thinking that ear fatigue is like the opposite of having an ‘ear worm’, which is where you can’t get a song out of your head and it is stuck on repeat for what seems like forever. It is my belief that these two phenomena are completely natural and, when it happens, it can be frustrating. 

Have you ever suffered from ear fatigue? What did you do to fix this?