Photo courtesy of Ivo Riemann

January 13th, 2010 – So you’ve been working on that killer song for a while now. It seems every time you listen to it you get a great idea of how to make it better, or hear something that needs work. With something as personal as music, we want our songs to be perfect. But how will know perfect when we see it? How do we know we’re done?

That’s a very interesting question. I never was a very good mix engineer because I didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. There is always something that can be improved; I don’t think that any song can be absolutely perfectly mixed. So when did I stop working on a song? When I had a deadline.

If there was a designated time that I had to stop working on a song, that was when a song was done. This is why I have never released my own album, because I don’t have a real deadline for myself. I keep swapping out new songs, or never finishing some. The bottom line is that I may never finish an album for myself. Maybe I can trick myself into some sort of deadline, but until I figure out how to do that, I’ll never finish. Finished, for me, means I’m not allowed to work on a song anymore, not that I don’t want to.

Brian from Trifonic/Next Step Audio, says pretty much the same thing in his video below. How do you know when a song is done?

Next Step Audio

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 9:33 pm.
Categories: Producing, Songwriting.

5 Comments, Comment or Ping

  1. Dan Foley

    If you’re having deadline difficulties, it might be worth trying out the RPM challenge this February… it’s a good way to get an album done! http://rpmchallenge.com/

    Jan 14th, 2010

  2. Sean

    @Dan Foley: Thanks for the link! I hadn’t heard of that challenge before. Looks like a cool motivator.

    Jan 15th, 2010

  3. Graham Banks

    I have to set deadlines for myself as well. Usually I will take the list of songs under construction and identify those that I want on the album. Then I will give myself a deadline of 1 week per song, or something similar, to add instruments, redo vocals, mix etc and then I’m done. Yes, I still hear flaws when I go back to those songs later, but that is all part of their character.

    Peter Gabriel can work on a song for a year, and Neil Young can record a whole album in a week. People tend to think of the state of nirvana as the farthest point from current reality, the hardest place to reach. However it is usually halfway between here and the farthest reaches, and it is possible to pass right by it without being aware.

    Mar 29th, 2010

  4. Sean

    @Graham Banks:

    People tend to think of the state of nirvana as the farthest point from current reality, the hardest place to reach. However it is usually halfway between here and the farthest reaches, and it is possible to pass right by it without being aware.

    I like that!

    Mar 30th, 2010

  1. The RPM Challenge : Record a full album in a month! - Jan 19th, 2010

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