Ear Candy: The brain-scratching production technique that elevates tracks

When you think of your favourite artists and producers, there’s always a feeling that the tracks they make are a cut above your own. They have that ‘je ne sais quoi’ that separates them from most other artists' tracks, and it’s something you can’t quite put your finger on.

Whilst they might have outstanding mixes and great mastering, in a composition sense, the use of ear candy is the mystery ingredient that takes a good track and turns it into a great one. They are the often-overlooked, scintillating elements of a track that otherwise seems finished- the musical cherry on the cake.  Read on to find out about how you can implement ear candy into your productions, and what makes it so appealing to listeners’ ears. 

What is Ear Candy?

Simply put, Ear Candy is the extra musical details and sounds that add interest to a track, that make it sound unique, dynamic, and flavourful. They are more than just the basic melody, drum beat, or bassline. They’re little nuggets of production sweetness hidden amongst the typical ‘verse-chorus-verse’ arrangements found in pop music. So what’s it’s used for?

A Sweet Surprise

When writing a great track in the modern era, your goal is to give your track the best chance of having plenty of repeat listens. The issue? Making a great track means repetition is key. If your audience has a catchy hook their brains can grab onto, then you’ve got their attention. The question is, how do you ensure that your audience will stay interested and keep coming back?

That’s where Ear Candy steps in. After a while, a listener might start to get bored of the same hook, the same drum beat, the same bassline, and want to listen to something else. However, if when they listen again, they hear something new, it acts as a nice surprise. If done well, it can be something a listener ends up looking forward to. 

Breaking the Loop

It’s no secret that since the advent of DAWs and digital recording methods being commonplace, it’s immensely easy to copy and paste the best parts of a track. In the time before auto-tune this was called comping, where the best takes would be analysed and stuck back together (mainly with vocal takes). This is great, because it means production can be quicker, more efficient, and more polished than it ever could be. The problem is, with music that is too polished, all emotion gets lost. Incredible tracks find the perfect balance between consistency and dynamism. Ear Candy can add uniqueness and movement to tracks that can sound a little too consistent. 

Some Examples

A lot of the time, Ear Candy isn’t immediately noticeable, and it's only later on your brain picks it up. Take a listen to a couple of the biggest tracks of 2024, and we’ll pick apart how professional producers and musicians have utilised Ear Candy to great effect. 

Sabrina Carpenter - Please Please Please

Man of the moment, Jack Antonoff, perhaps one of the most ubiquitous names in modern music. His fingerprints are over most of Taylor Swift’s music, St. Vincent’s biggest hits, and now he’s helping to propel Sabrina Carpenter into superstardom. 

In the video in this article, Antonoff talks about how some elements of a track are only meant to be passing moments in a song. In ‘Please Please Please’ Antonoff employed the help of some of his Bleachers bandmates to provide flutes and strings, but he only ended up using them very sparingly, as the song transitioned into the second chorus. A good producer would have repeated the structure of the track, or even used all of the flute tracks. Knowing when to sparingly use flourishes like this, is the sign of a great producer. 

Shaboozey - A Bar Song (Tipsy)

Initially a chart-topping single in 2004 by J-Kwon, ‘Tipsy’ has been reimagined by alt-country & Hip Hop artist Shaboozey twenty years later, and is doing similarly well. Next time you take a listen to the beginning of the second verse, listen out for the violin in the background. It’s a lovely musical flourish that brings the whole track together, and adds some higher frequency information into the mix. It doesn’t need to be there, but once you realise it’s there, it’s hard to imagine the song without it. 

The use of a violin here is a great example of world-building within a song. Sometimes certain instruments will be used in tracks to reinforce their influences. Having a violin or fiddle play in the background over an acoustic guitar track makes it seem like you’re sat at a bar, or at a hoedown, which reinforces the alt-country aesthetic that Shaboozey was looking to achieve with this track. 

The Result

The inclusion of extra, additional pieces of musical information in these songs makes them sound far more engaging, rich, complex, and intentional. It doesn’t sound unfinished in any way, and keeps the audience guessing and coming back for more. 

It’s incredibly easy to underestimate the importance of Ear Candy because it’s something you have to hunt for, rather than being served up on a plate. The key thing is to remember that Ear Candy has to serve the song. Unnecessary musical elements and too many ideas in one refrain can sound just as amateurish as not enough ideas. Ultimately it’s about balancing consistency with movement.

Bringing it all together

So how can you implement Ear Candy into your own tracks? Where do you find it? How do you make it? Take a look at these techniques which will help you amass a big library of interesting sound and melodies.

High Flyer

Some of the most exciting kinds of Ear Candy are the pieces that occupy the higher end of the frequency spectrum. These can include high hat trills, rapid risers, reversed cymbal crashes or reversed vocals…the list goes on. By using these musical flourishes, it’ll be easier for most listeners to pick up on the Ear Candy you’ve painstakingly weaved into the mix. 

Low Rider

You can use lower frequencies if you’d like- Explosions, earthquake hits, synth bass stabs. The main thing to remember here is to be careful and not go too crazy. The low end can be a difficult beast to tame, and if you’re not careful you can completely muddy your track with over-the-top sound effects.

Rolls, Hits & Fills

You might not realise, but drum fills certainly count as Ear Candy! If the track could cope without them, but sounds better with them in, then voila! You’ve got Ear Candy. If you’re just starting out, try and incorporate more drum fills into your work where you think the track would benefit from them. 

Play with EQ to find some space

Sometimes it can help to find a sample you like, a drum fill, or even a synth run, and mess around with EQ to try and sculpt a sound that fits into the mix and the arrangement. The great thing about Ear Candy is that it opens the door for an immense amount of experimentation and play. 

The Candy Bank

Perhaps one of the main reasons why ear candy gets overlooked, is precisely because for the average producer it’s incredibly time consuming to build up a series of sound effects you can employ when need be. I would recommend working on sound design, trying to come up with ways to manipulate drum fills, vocals, and synth runs to make them sound interesting to the human ear. 

I would also recommend dedicating a small amount of time each week, trying to find sound effects that you think would work. Just be careful that the samples you use don’t infringe on any copyright, otherwise you could be in for a nasty surprise. If you are worried about copyright infringement, Soundtrap has full integration with Freesound, which is an enormous library of royalty free samples, sound effects, and loops. It’s simply a case of dragging your sample into the arrangement window!

Using DAWs 

A lot of DAWs have their own libraries of royalty free loops and sounds which can be used in your productions. You can normally drag and drop these into your arrangement windows and get to work. However, most DAWs are quite dated, in that they don’t really prioritise this aspect of modern production. The loops can sound quite cheesy, and can go years without any significant updates to the library. 

Platforms like Soundtrap are a great example of DAWs that have modern production styles in mind. On a bi-weekly basis, Soundtrap creates Originals, a series of one-shots, loops, and instruments which are great for crafting a bank of ear candy. They’re sampled from high quality and rare instruments, and are based on a variety of styles and genres. 

Conclusion

Ear Candy is a great way to fall back in love with Music Production again if you find yourself in a rut. It gives you a chance to experiment with sounds, play with instruments in a way that you wouldn’t normally, and is a great way to bring about some inspiration!

About the author

Max McLellan is a composer, songwriter, and audio engineer with credits ranging across film, TV and radio. He provides composition, mixing, and mastering services through his company MKM Audio.