The All-Things-Audio Blog

A perfectionist rarely gets things done. Commit and move on. Chances are your "perfect product" won't be perfect 5 years from now.

Doug and I scored a TV series that interviews various creative entrepreneurs. One of the creative artists is named Jake Parker. He is an inspirational and talented artist who really has his head on straight (he drew the picture for this post!). One thing that was a big takeaway from me was to get away from being a perfectionist. I always try and make everything perfect. Perfect mix, perfect vocal, perfect drums, etc. But the truth is, I look back at things that made me pull my hair out and realize it wasn't worth all the stress. And in almost every single case, I think to myself now "oh man... If I did that now it would be 100 times better." Which proves a point that he made in the show. He said something along the lines of  (not a direct quote, but summary) “If you spend all your time and energy trying to make something perfect, you’ll...

If you don't have a vision for how your song will sound, you're going to be shooting in the dark and just end up twisting knobs and getting nowhere. By determining the sonic end goal of a song before you start, it will speed up your mixing tremendously.

Before you mix, determine what makes a "good mix" and write down a list of goals and milestones you need to hit to achieve that "good mix." A great practice is pulling up a song that you're going to use as a mix reference. Write down what you like about it and see if your song has something similar. Don't COPY it sonically. Pick out what you like and then give your song a listen through with a pen and paper. Write down where your song is and where you'd like to end up.

For example. Let’s say you use Justin Bieber's All Around the World (link to song) (one of my favorite mix reference tracks, it sonically is fantastic to my ears) as your reference track and you love the beef of the kick. Listen to your song and see if your song...