Sometimes I will spend hrs upon hrs on a mix. Come back to it the next day, be completely dissatisfied and redo it, all over again. I will end up having 10 different versions of the mix by the end and be basically settling for whatever I have at the end (which I guess we all sort of settle in the end). But I don't know if I'm just being a perfectionists, anal, or what. Curious if anyone can relate or share their experiences/thoughts on this matter.

 

Last edited: Apr 29, 2022

if it's a paid project or you are a big name, by all means. if it never leaves your computer and only do it for yourself, it's waste of time.

 

Hello @RLV!

When you play guitar and sing, which is analog, it's great when you get everything right and a song is coherent and you play the chords and tempo flawlessly. It's really a huge achievement of our brain and hearing. It takes the whole person to sing and play a piece.

So now you could be happy what you have done, now you can try to make the art accessible to others. Now comes the computer with a DAW and that's where the problems start. You could go into the studio and do what you do at home or in the practice room, namely play your pieces. A sound engineer and expensive equipment make sure that your art comes on a sound carrier.

That would be the easiest but also the most expensive solution. Or you can record it yourself and be your own sound engineer. That will be difficult but not impossible. The analog should be digitized and then processed so that it sounds later approximately as you had heard it yourself when you played live.

The question you can ask yourself is whether you are objective and unbiased at all, because it is your own project that can be mixed properly. Back to your question, I think you should take a lot of time and train your hearing and listen to it several times with rested ears, 10 - 20 times why not 30 - 40 times, in call it ear training or ear training. You teach your brain through constant repetition, that is, the synapses become thicker and so the learned remains longer in the brain and can be retrieved quickly when needed.

So just do as long as you think "Now it sounds good I am satisfied", as long as you are dissatisfied, the piece will not leave you alone, because remember "Problems must be solved. Since this is all very complex, you can also hire sound engineers to deliver the mix in professional quality. Because sound engineers do this all day long and if they have great talent, your recording will sound great.

 

A mix should take no more than few hours.

If you end up with 10 versions I suppose is your music. Have a vision for your music. If not, at least have a very very close reference song in the same genre and tonal balance yours after it

first possible place of error is the sound palette: wrong sounds & textures would be very difficut to fit. Also arrangement of the song helps a huge lot. You can’t have it all, always look for ways to remove any sound you can in any section of the song.

next, you should have a mini mastering chain (at least some saturation and a limiter reducing 1 dB) - you absolutely need to know from the start what is your aing doing to a limiter. This will steer you from using clashing timbres because with a limiter on, you can’t make them louder

also, make as many mixing decisions as possible during production. Is the newsly introduced pad masking your kick? Level and eq-it properly now, don’t just leave it for the mixing stage. You can’t work with that pad? Change it!

As a beginner you may very well identify that there are many issues but you won’t hear exactly what is the issue so you’d spend hours aplying all “texhniques” you learned on tutorials and forums. Usually the solution to 99% of issues is a combination of basics: level, panning, eq, sometimes compression. But you will need proper taste to finish the cake. Make more music, is the only way. You need to be well over 100 songs, to start to have a chance at mixing, no way around it. Right now you have the taste of a customer, you need to get to have the taste of a cook

 

Hi @RLV, maybe you should work towards a CD ROM, 12 songs for example, and then at some point have that professionally mixed.

https://www.online-mixing.de/en/
https://www.online-mixing.de/en/preise/

FROM 10 SONGS
127,50 Euro per song
Gross incl. the legal value added tax.

 

Take hearing breaks often, especially if you are working on closed cans. Ear fatigue and your subconscious mind not really wanting to be there that long will just cause you to hear what you want to hear. You brain will auto correct everything and when re-exposed to those decisions you'll just be disappointed. Take a break and reset you ears.

If you are still creating the song while you are mixing it, rather than just mixing it this happens. If you don't have a deadline who cares how long it takes. If you are on a clock, then stop being cute and just get the job done.

All those little creative choices about saturation color and ducking sweeps that keep a mix from going out the door, for the most part nobody else can hear them or most people will not even care.

 

Your listener is probably not looping your track on repeat via headphones and studio monitors like you are. So you might take that into account. You know where all the "sketchy" stuff is, because you already debated deleting it. So of course you are zooming in on things like that after multiple tries. I would try 1 mix on fresh ears and put it away. Compare it with whatever you end up with in the long run. The first one will usually be better.

 

I try to mix while I track these days, and its possible to do so with barley any noticeable latency on my M1 Pro. I do this to allow the artist to have a better feel of what it will sound like finished so they can play better and hear everything better in context. I have been working on an album with my buddy's band and mixing is not going to be the most important or time consuming part. Choosing how/what to play for different tracks, filler ideas, transitions, guitar solos are going to suck more time out of this project than mixing. The songs are already written and a scratch track guitar is recorded for reference, but that's where the fun starts for me. Capitalizing and capturing the vibe of the song and actually producing my buddy's work with him is where time will be most spent. With that said, maybe one nite with my friend listening to me polish what has been tracked is all I will need - definitely not 10 hours or really more than 3. BUT... if you are doing something collaborative, always have that other person in the song there while you are mixing. Instead of walking away to "cool your ears down", you have a fresh set of ears constantly when a like minded individual is in the room with you mixing

 

For me , it's anywhere between 1 to 2 years on a song. And deleting the project right before handing it over to the mastering engineer.

 

Making different mixes of one and the same song can be helpful if you learn something from it. Otherwise, it's a waste of time and you'll drive yourself crazy.

Back in the days I tried to make perfect mixes (mostly for myself) until I found out that this is just not possible. Better try to make a good mix, take a break (if possible for a day or even two) and then try to make it very good. That's all you can do.

 

As mentioned by a couple others, I'm ALWAYS mixing, at every step. Each new element added should be evaluated, and the existing elements reevaluated, in the new context. I can mix most songs in an hour or two because when I mix they are 90% there already.

 

Yeah it's my own music. I have some released and plan on releasing more, so it will leave my computer, but if anyone ever hears it, that's another thing.

 

@BEAT16

Yeah, I don't want to pay anyone to mix my stuff, too expensive and I'd rather just learn to do it myself... I've been making music a long time, it's just that I've only been dabbling in the kind of music I'm doing now for a couple years, and it's eons away from mixing electronic music as I did before. I know so much about mixing and mastering but there are just simple things that will drive me up the wall about guitars clashing with vocals and getting real sounding drums vs what I did before with just drum machine sounds, synth samples, and so on and so forth. Thanks for the feedback!

 

i'll let you know when i finally finish one

 

@lxfsn

Yeah when I was making electronic driven music (Rap, edm, etc) I would have my mixes done in a couple hrs no problem. Switch to rock music with guitars and vocals clashing, getting real sounding drums and all that stuff, it has really been much more of a challenge to bring what's in my head and my references out into the DAW. I've been making music for a good while now, just over the past two years I have probably maybe 200 - 400 songs, played, produced, engineered, mixed and mastered. So I know a bit what I'm doing and I definitely see my progress. It's that last little leg of the race that's causing me to spend so much more time than I usually would on mixes here lately, just trying to figure out what that 5 - 10% I'm missing is.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

Last edited: Apr 30, 2022

I agreed with what several said. the best thing is to record yourself and have someone else mix and master it, because you get used to the original sound. And then everything else sounds strange to him, because it just wasn't like the first thing. It always happens to me. I haven't finished songs for years, because I'm a retailer, because I don't have money to pay someone to mix. In addition, I am not convinced by the sound of my instruments versus the sounds of loops, they are much more realistic, I had already talked about this a long time ago, how to make a mix between real and virtual instruments, but that is another topic. The point is that, as they already said, if you are creating and recording, that may also be the error of taking so long, I wrongly record and create at the same time. And also as they said, if it's for you, you have all your time, but you also waste time doing new things. If it is for others, you should base yourself on what the client wants.
I think that the subject of recording and mixing is very complicated, and even more so when one is demanding with oneself.

 

Never spent more than a few hours mixing. I usually create, mix and master all by myself and it usually take 1 or 2 days to make everything.

 

jealous of you guys, i can make a rough draft in a couple of hours maybe but then there's a gazillion parts where a tiny little something is just a bit off or not as clear as i would want, and then i spend literally weeks doing automation for individual notes and crap like that until i get a 'final' mix lol

 

It would be really nice if people on here giving advice, had examples of mixes they have done in order at what level is the advice coming from... because I think when I post on here sometimes, people assume that I am a complete newb.... and I'm really not. I'm no 20 yr veteran either and have never had any professional training or anything like that, nonetheless, I am not a rookie .....

I just like to see if there's something someone else has figured out that I haven't or have been taught that could be useful in advancing my skill, it can be super helpful.

But yeah, some examples of mixes some of you giving advice would be really nice to know the weight of credence you advice is worth.

 

As long as it takes. But like others I rough mix as I go.. And at the end, I clean things up with EQ and panning and whatnot.