Mixing Progress

[catsittingstill]

I felt like I was spinning my wheels on the album--doing a lot of recording but not really making any progress.   Part of my problem was mixing.  As in, not mixing enough to keep up with the recording. 

Mixing is tough for me because it involves a lot of decisions.  "Which take is better, A, or B?  Is this weak note weak enough to warrant cutting out a piece from a different take and patching it in?  Where I made this patch--is it noticeable?  Should I just give up and record this vocal line over at my next session?  This mandolin part--is this as good as I can play it, or should I try again next time?"

There's also the fact that after I've done nothing but listen for flaws for an hour or two, songs with flaws are painful and really, if you listen closely, all of my songs have flaws.

But mostly it's the decisions.  Making decisions tires out my willpower and I hit a point where I either can't decide or start deciding randomly, or making a default "safe" decision ("do it over; that way I don't have to decide if it's good enough until next time.")  Which is not very productive.  Actually, the random decisions might be fine.  In many cases the decision is difficult because I can't hear much difference between the two options; in which case a quarter is a fine decision-making machine.  Or want-clarifying machine if I don't like the way it came down.

Anyway I talked about this a bit with Alice on the trip to OVFF and she made some suggestions.  I've decided to do an hour of mixing every day, rather than aim to mix a song or x number of songs every week.  Some days I've been doing two hours of mixing with a break in between.  I asked Bill Sutton and he said he sometimes spent hours on a single track, so it sounds like no, I'm not pushing this to ridiculous extremes.

So I have preliminary mixes of Providence Skies, Somebody Is Waiting To Eat My Soul and Swan May as well as Art Feeds Life and Hold The Line which I mixed a while ago and put on Bandcamp.  Which makes a quarter of my album.  Okay, it seems to be working.

Comments

[laughingrat]

Mixing always sounds like a nervewracking process to me, since it's all mental and electronic. You can't just pick up a hammer and swing it and have the job done. Seems like something you could really agonize over.

[catsittingstill]

Oh you totally can.

I remember in the last stages of the first Echo's Children album sitting there in the studio listening to the final mix with the tears just running down my face because it wasn't perfect; I could hear it wasn't perfect and there was nothing I could do about it, and I had to decide that night whether we were going to send it off to the CD factory in time to have it out for our big concert at the Ohio Valley Filk Festival or not.

I have since gotten better at letting go of these things, but yes, it can be hard.

[randwolf]

Sympathies & I'm glad you found a solution that works for you: I'm going to pass it along.

This is one of the reasons pro engineers and producers exist. It's the same reason editors and publishers exist, really.

[catsittingstill]

If I had the money to spend on this project I would probably hire a pro. For the mastering, if nothing else.

[keris]

Oh, you do the "toss a coin and if I don't like the answer I'll toss it again" thing as well? I've done that for, oh, probably over 40 years, and always been somewhat amused at myself.

"all of my songs have flaws"

Actually, all performances of songs have flaws. Many times only the performer can hear them, but there is no such animal as a perfect recording. And yes, the more times you listen to it the more you find them. I'm told that much the same is true of writing...

Limiting yourself is probably a good idea, it works with a number of other creative things. Then do something comletely different and see how fresh it seems the next day...

[catsittingstill]

Sometimes it is a way to decide; sometimes it is a way to find out what you want, which is a way to decide.

I also used to carry a 10 sided die to generate random numbers. (One of the computer programs I worked with required a random number "seed" and no human-generated number is truly random.)

I find I have less trouble sitting down to mix when it's "only for an hour." Then I often go longer than that, which is at least a way to finish the mixing.

[keris]

Yes, I remember the first time I noticed what I was doing with the coin toss and realising "actually, you (I) really don't want to go out to that event". I think by that time I'd taken the probability down to something like 1:255 (8 tosses).

Yes, the "only an hour" turning into an overnighter 'accidentally' is one I have done many times, usually via "just a few more minutes". Time flies like an apple, or something...