When it comes to mistakes or even questionable spots in a recording, they stand out to you because you know exactly where your trouble spots are. So they stand out like a sore thumb to you.

I think we are not actually more critical than listeners. The only real difference, is when they know they like or dislike something; they do not think about, care, question why, or any of it. " I don't like it" and that's that. We actually hear what we do not like, why we think it's not up to par (or whatever).

There is plenty of room for OCD in there. But it's not a requirement.

 

I think compared to the average listener we (musicians) absolutely listen more critically, it's almost unavoidable. maybe with the right drugs or a certain frame of mind haha but you cant unsee behind the wizards curtain, ya know? I agree the average listener might stop at "this doesn't sound good." but once you have the slightest amount of music theory you might think "this doesn't sound good because it's got a bunch of notes that aren't in the scale." That kinda by definition (this one as it relates directly: expressing or involving an analysis of the merits and faults of a work of literature, music, or art.) means you're listening more critically, to your music or anyone's. And you can go further down the rabbit hole of analysis of course the more you learn and let your OCD take control haha.

But it's very hard to REALLY unlearn something. Once you've learned about Dutch Angles in film when you see a really obvious one it's like the marshmallow man popping into Rays head, it just happens. The more knowledge you gain, the more second nature it becomes and the harder it is to go back to that place of sheer ignorance. The average listener just doesn't have the tools to even recognize what to critique, and I mean fair enough music is endlessly deep basically.

 

In reference to your own projects/work; I think a lot of it is summarized in a quote from Michael Cohen. " Well, He knows where all the bodies are buried".

Point out a mistake in a track that you know about, to a listener (before they listen). See if they magically can hear it all of a sudden.

 

Years back I went out with this woman who was close friends with a very accomplished movie director named Mike Nichols. He used to say to her that the only thing he was capable of seeing or hearing when watching his own work was where it had gone wrong, small spaces where he had missed the mark. Seeing those 'misses' was torture for him.

Being an artist isn't about enjoyment or patting yourself on the back. It's about striving for a perfection that you can never possibly reach. In many ways, it's about suffering emotionally because deep inside you know you've never really finished anything, at least not in the way you really wanted to.

So, if you're listening to your work and finding fault, join the club. If you felt any other way, I'd say you were probably already done with music and ready to move on.

 

Personally, I rate everything I do as a 100% flawless success. I am always sadly disappointed by the work of others.
Although Cardi B's WAP came close to perfection.

 

at least in my experiences with my shittily mixed songs in little music venues years ago, playing shows gave me the highest amount of dissatisfaction from my tunes. between the actual poor quality of the mixes, the adrenaline of playing live, and the bad monitoring as audio bounces around I left every show defeated. regardless of positive feedback from people I knew and trusted or strangers it didn't change the fact that MY experience of my own music was shit.

my last show, and my favorite one, I insisted on playing first the slot at 8. at 8 theyre like hey wait 45 minutes, no one is here yet- and I said "no fuck that you promised, I'm playing." so I just hit play and then stood in the middle of a club with 3-4 randoms and my good music buddy and actually got to enjoy it. it still had mixing issues, id walk over and tweak the EQ but I remember just grinning like an idiot at my homie when things sounded like I wanted.

i feel like a good question to ask is "am I trying to mix this song well enough that the song gets through to people or well enough that I think it's the best I can do" those can both happen for sure, and do, but I guarantee we all have favorite songs where there are elements you love in it but that you would consider a flaw in your own production, or at least youd do something different. ice cubes "today is a good day" is just "footsteps in the dark" looped- my ego would NEVER allow me to just loop something so simply and call it good, but with my ego removed if that song comes up Im bobbing my head.

if what you want is to not hear any spots you want to change in your song there isn't such thing as "too critical" right? you just keep going until you cant, then it's either done or it's time to learn more. if the goal is to communicate the emotion of the music you've created, then you only have to mix it well enough to serve that purpose. that's subjective, but given that with your ego removed you can (most likely) enjoy others music at a much lower critical threshold it follows that a "good enough for most" mix is less than YOUR perfect.

I'm insane, my escape is to endlessly suffer with music until I've crafted something i can be at peace with. it's not better or worse, but it's a different perspective to get a mix sounding decent and saying,"hell yeah this sounds fine let's drop it and make another." instead of spend another 10 hours tweaking a compressor setting that no one will ever fucking know about besides you. I think if you answer that question then getting OCD on a song stops from spinning your wheels being hyper critical to just doing the process you get satisfaction from, same as calling it good on mixing a song where potentially you could do even more to spice it up.

 

If you are an artist or striving to hone and meld your newly acquired skills with the light of your innate creativity, self criticism is the shadow cast that which is integral to your growth as it can help lift you from the muck of mendacity and which could have you believe that you are the greatest artist while shredding every bit of your integrity. It keeps you both honest and striving for betterment. A shadow lacks any real substance but is an indicator of something real, that which stands between you and the light of any hope of perfection.

 

Last edited: Aug 26, 2022

You should do what you do best and if you can't do it yourself, you
should leave the mixing/mastering to others who can do it better.

You can save yourself a lot of time and frustration if you can stand up for yourself
that I can't do it. I have tried and gained a lot of insight. It's always trial and error.

 

scratch what I wrote as I procrastinated figuring out how to change reapers midi editing defaults, I'm changing my answer to Lois Lanes. I remember you've mentioned you had songwriting blocks Lois, but at least as far as an idea for lyrics go that is a beautiful metaphor IMO.

I don't remember if you said it Beat16 or another of the heads around here but something that's been haunting me a bit was on a thread about vocals it was pointed out you can't really hear your own voice objectively, which makes it even more difficult to figure out how to mix. it goes back to being able to have a decent perspective, but with how human ears work I'm wondering how blind... deaf I am to being able to accurately diagnosis issues that otherwise might jump out at anyone not me. so I've just been leaning on plugins like nectar or smart EQ and trying to see what they think, and anyway I am the audience so who cares.

 

No one wants to embarrass themselves in public, but nothing ventured, nothing gained and everyone starts small. There are singers who are very self-confident and good for the frontman, some singers are egocentric, they want to see your image on TV on MTV.

Some singers sing because it's great and fun, but they know it's not enough to perform live. Singing for the fun of it.
Singing has a very good effect in our brain and our well-being, how about some OM.
Everyone can sing and dance - the question is whether it's enough for the masses or the radio.
Of course you can do a training or pay the singing teacher - who teaches you the craft.

If you set the quality criteria very high, it may well be that you do not achieve them.
You have then demanded or expected too much of yourself. Who expects too much can therefore be very easily disappointed.
What you want to avoid is dissatisfaction, frustration, self-loathing and stress due to excessive demands.

That's why you resort to the knowledge and skills of other people, that is, you get advice
from other musicians and sometimes you just have to pay the mixer at the mixing desk.

It's a question of whether you recognize the mistakes yourself or whether others say, hey listen, that sounds bad.
With every person it's very different whether you accept criticism or ignore it or if the criticism is wrong.

You can very well get lost in something or become blind, that is, you can not see the forest
for the trees, it lacks the distance and the necessary distance. Ideally, you sit down with
others and reflect on what was good, what was bad, what can we do better, i.e. a team.

If you work alone at the PC/notebook, like most people do, you are a musician, advertising manager,
salesman, mixer and mastering person in one person...! With more professional practice, experience,
knowledge, stamina, will as well as some talent you will surely be able to become satisfied.

A somewhat hypothetical sentence: An invisible force drives us. It can give us energy to go on. Information wants to be free.

In the beginning, when you do something, you always see the result. However, the way there is very rocky, as they say.
But the human being is adaptable and able to learn and creative.

J.M. Jarre said in an interview: We face a musical problem and try to solve it.

 

hahahaha this is always me reading one of your posts Beat.

you packed a lot of wisdom into that, enough its made me think of things from a different angle. especially after the last few years, as mentioned i feel nothing on the few occasions I've gotten feedback about the style of my music. good, bad, that's just not what resonates with me, the drive I have is to get my insanity out in a way where maybe I can salvage something good feeling out of it.

that IS the case with me- so really why would I care about sharing it in order to get feedback that in the end will get me closer to where I want? I've been thinking since I don't care why share anything, but since I don't care why NOT?

I am gonna get to house sit again sometime soon, it's quiet and I can actually build a towel mic booth there so after I get some vocals recorded next I'll post something for feedback when I get as far as I can on it. the bare minimum for me is getting takes that are close to what I want (I mean duh) but as I'm making emo electronic stuff I don't mind slapping pitch correction and layers on to a degree, and sometimes the robot effect with reverb IS what sounds best to me in that context. a tuner will tell me if I'm on pitch or not (plus that is certainly clear when I listen) but I'll need other ears for any feedback on how to approach other adjustsments. some songs I feel like call for a natural sound, others robot.

haha and yeah the 3 general types of critique you'll get: useful, wrong, and then valid opinions but that drift into stylistic choices. those are my fave, because they make you think about your aesthetic choices and you either end up more confident or with a different idea for a direction. like a couple years ago when I got heavy into music again i posted a song on reddit and one comment was complaining that it was too straight forward and simple. this gave me pause- who wants to be basic? in the end though after thinking about it, the thing is I LIKE simple music that beats me over the head with it's idea. so many of my favorite songs fall into that category, and I like how catchy/poppy/whatever sounding music contrasts with the worrisomely dark lyrics that spill out of me and my girly voice. before that comment I hadnt reflected too much on it, but the style and especially singing I was super unconfident about. still am about the resulting sounds to a lesser degree, but after that I became secure in what I wanted to accomplish with my stuff vibe wise. which was a huge leap forward from just making random beats for fun, the objective changed from "find a cool sample to chop, rinse repeat" to "learn as much as about how to get tracks to sound like you want"

this topic reminded me of that, cause yeah if you don't know what your goal is, how will you know if you've reached it or even if youre going in the right direction? some things that seem like goals kinda aren't, like a vague "getting better" isn't very actionable, where "getting better at hearing compression" is. and sometimes we aren't honest with ourselves about our goal i feel, or havent REALLY thought about it. if someone started to make music because they wanted to be cool and meet people to date that is a just as good of a reason as anything else, but if you tell that to a bunch of elitist musicians they'll... be elitist about it. if you let outside shit sway you too much you'll find yourself working on learning weird scales so that the elitist musicians don't think you're stupid, meanwhile the punk rock dude playing power chords is partying and doing what you wanted without knowing the name of a note. in my case that was me making hip-hop beats for years past where I was learning anything because that was "cool" music and this stuff now is ... not. but it's me.

sorry I'm on no sleep and now construction has started in this shit complex, hence the word vomit. but the original poster was saying just like I repeated how the flaws in other people's songs he doesn't mind but in his he does. it seems to me, half awake, that maybe that is the result of not knowing what to focus on. if a song you love doesn't sound immaculate, then it's not the mix that you enjoy but the feel. alternatively, some of if not MOST of the best reference tracks are not songs I would listen to beyond that application.

ok I wrote that all out instead of drinking coffee, maybe I can grab some zzz's now. on the subject of reference songs I wouldn't listen to I fat fingered play on my phone at the checkout line last week and 50 cents In Da Club started playing. I opened my mouth to explain but then was like, ehhh best to just move on for everyone's sake.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 26, 2022

Ain't that right...

 

Hello @macros, I have read all your sentences and I am glad about your openness to talk about yourself and the world.

Spoiler: Insecurity: How to overcome it

Insecurity: How to overcome it

Insecurity often runs like a thread through the entire life. Professionally as well as privately, every decision and action is critically questioned, there is a lack of any self-confidence and the entire behavior is determined by doubts. Insecurity to this extent is not only exhausting, it also gets in the way of your own success and can be to blame for you not achieving your goals. If you don't trust yourself with anything and let yourself be guided by insecurity, you create more and more new problems for yourself, increasingly deny yourself and become a poor copy of a role model. A negative development that can be stopped early if you manage and overcome your insecurity...

Uncertainty is quickly explained at first glance. It is a state of doubt in which we question ourselves, our own abilities or decisions, the environment, the path we have taken in life so far, or even our future plans. We always feel insecurity when we have the feeling that we are no longer in full control of a situation, that we cannot accurately assess and predict the consequences, or that we cannot influence events that affect ourselves. Uncertainty is always also fear of a perceived danger, even if it is not perceptible to outsiders.

Uncertainty is opposed to the human need to make everything understandable and tangible. As synonyms to uncertainty, insecurity, ambivalence, uncertainty, misgivings or even doubts and worries are often used.
Feeling uncertain is not fundamentally bad. It is an early warning function to point out possible dangers or risks. Thus, it is normal and understandable to feel greater uncertainty if you are not well enough prepared for an exam or task. You can use this feeling to take countermeasures in good time - danger recognized, danger averted.

But it doesn't stop there, because for many people insecurity becomes a permanent condition that represents a great burden.

Self-doubt grows with insecurity. You no longer trust yourself, develop skepticism about your own abilities and decisions, and increase self-criticism.
This often goes so far that you no longer trust your own judgment. One's own opinion loses value; one listens to what others think is good. Even your own goals fade into the background, since you are uncertain anyway whether they are right or whether you could achieve them.
A slow and steady process of self-deprecation, set in motion by persistent insecurity.

Work on your self-confidence
The best way to overcome insecurity is to get to the root of the problem and tackle the cause. If you succeed in strengthening your self-confidence, insecurity will automatically subside. This works best when you become aware of your strengths. Write down successes, ask friends what they particularly appreciate about you. The better you feel about yourself, the more confident your appearance will be.

Stop assuming things about others Insecure people like to misunderstand things.
They relate everything to themselves and interpret statements to fit their own doubts. This is a bad habit that you need to work on in order to overcome your insecurity. Focus on what was really said - not what you think might have been meant.

Get out of your comfort zone more often
You can leave your insecurity behind if you keep realizing that it is completely unfounded. Get out of your comfort zone, get out of yourself, do something new and try different things. You will learn that your worries, doubts and concerns slow you down, but are devoid of any reason or cause.

Develop a healthy optimism
Insecurity can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your initial insecurity ensures that you don't even really try, eventually actually fail, and conclude that you were right all along. This is a cycle that you need to break by being optimistic. Force yourself to start from the positive - this too becomes self-fulfilling and can become a habit.

Source: https://karrierebibel.de/unsicherheit/

 

I literally just copied and pasted that into a note on my phone after reading. thanks beat... music is good to focus on! im a bit of an extreme case. however got some sleep, and after all that talk about goals I decided the tonight I'd start mixing down a track as well as I can with the aim of trying to get some feedback. I haven't done that for a while so it'll be a good way to get my bearings on where to go.

 

Thanks.

 

yes , but from genesis of the thought to finished product you've heard it a hundred times. you will never hear how your music will sound the first time. Forever forgotten. We are so guarded with our actual thoughts , I feel like creation of music is the opposite, then in post its back to the critic. Everyones a critic until they hear something they love , then that thing is hard to describe , so better not. Just make sure you do whatever is necessary where you own it as intellectual property, then let someone else love it.

If you tried your best and you dont love it , then you need to learn to love yourself. Then the next sounds you make , repeat.