WARNING: This one's gonna be long. But here goes anyway..

Music is at a sad state these days.

Yes, we have a bunch of tools to help us, and with the help of Scale and Chord plugins you can write a song with zero music theory! Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Except, it isn't really.

I don't really check out music posted by other people especially when they put a disclaimer saying that they are beginners without any music theory, who have made less than 10/20/30/50 tracks or God forbid, less than 5 tracks. But every time I do, it's a horror show. I've come across a few tracks now that sound like they literally placed a few random MIDI notes on the Piano Roll and call it a 'melody'. When I random, I mean random. Clashing notes everywhere, notes that do not belong in the scale at all, minor AND major key centers going on at the same time(!) etc..

Yes, we're told time and time again that music theory will save us. But that's not usually the case either, apparently.

Because the thing I feel is the most important part in music production is not music theory or amazing sound design skills or perfect mixing, but EAR TRAINING. Training your ears. And hey, guess what? You need ear training when it comes to mixing as well, it's not just for composition skills. You need to train your ears to hear what an imbalanced mix sounds like. You need to be able to identify what is making the mix imbalanced in the first place. It's ALL about the ears, because guess what? All the music you and I make? We listen to it using our..... EARS!

And the same applies for composition. You need to be able to HEAR what 2 clashing notes sound like, and know that they are clashing with each other. It's a scary thought, isn't it... knowing that there are people in this world who are not able to hear what they are doing 'wrong' musically and yet are calling themselves 'producers' and 'releasing' music. It's like a blind race car driver... driving forward with a very fast car at full speed without being able to see what's in front of him. What happens? He crashes. FAST.

If you are reading this and happen to fall within the category of people I mentioned, please stop whatever you're doing, yes, even stop reading that music theory book you're reading. No amount of music theory is going to help you in the first place if you can't HEAR what you're doing. In fact, it's better to not know any music theory at all but be able to play well by ear. If you can do both, amazing. But I would choose a person who can play by ear any day over a person who can't and yet can read sheet music and know all the music theory in the world (unfortunately, I have encountered the latter more times than I would have liked to).

The reason why I'm ranting is because it's such a weird time for music/musicians/producers/engineers. No other profession in the world go through what we go through. Take a doctor, for example. You can't put on a white lab coat and stethoscope and walk into a hospital and say, 'Hey everybody! I'm a doctor' and off you go into the surgery room. But this is what is happening in the music industry. Anybody with a computer can download their DAW of choice without having any musical knowledge whatsoever and 'make a track'. How is this fair? Well, it's not, and I'm kind of over it. But that's a topic for an entirely different discussion. So what I'm saying is this. If you're going to prioritize anything at all, it's got to be ear training, at least do/learn that if you don't have a background in music and want to call yourself a producer.

At the end of the day, you have to remember this one thing: What good will it do if you can't HEAR what you're doing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqZAxLqJkzA&index=59&list=WL

Such great advice and so relevant.