Originally Posted by TuneMonger
Alan, I've been trying to improve my mixes, and one of the main things I've done toward that end is to listen to your tracks. By everyone's comments here, you are the gold standard. So that's how I'm trying to learn. I appreciate the free lessons! (g)

Staying busy is important. I'm glad BIAB is filling that void for you.


Hi Bob,

Thanks for dropping in for a listen. As far as me being the "Gold Standard", well, maybe, but I wouldn't bet my last dollar on it. But i do OK, I think No charge for the lessons! Your visit is marked as "account paid"!

I don't really have any secrets. My recording process is older than Neanderthal. I also do not read or write notation, nor do I know music theory in the sense that is normally defined as such. I have a personal system that works for me, but it's far from formal theory.

I use my ears and my gut feeling to arrive at a finished product.

This one thing I'm about to say can put the consummate musician into apoplexy: I am not a perfectionist. I'm almost 80 years old and have been playing and composing music since 1963. I learned a few things over that span of time.

1. Nobody is perfect.

2. Make your goal to create a musical piece that equals the top shelf of your skillset.

3. Spending hours upon hours striving for perfection usually ends up as a great waste of time. For practical purposes, perfection is unobtainable. You can often do more damage to a creation by spending hours upon hours seeking that one thing that is probably out of reach, and by doing so, you can do more damage than good to musical creation.

4. Know and respect the limits of your ability/skillset. This is my approach to that: I'm still a pretty good guitarist, just but no longer clean enough for recording because of a disease I have that affects my hand (focal dystonia). That has limited my skillset. I accept that. So, after I've played a new song 20 or so times and it gets no better, I let it go for a few days and then come back to it. After a dozen or so attempts it's still no better, I know I've done the best i can do. Even though I might want to have done some a little more impressive or, i accept it's not in the picture. I'm good with that as I know I did the best I could possibly do. When I do my best, I'm satisfied.Bjut don't confuse that with learning to do more things (new chords, new progressions, new percussions, new inversions, et.). Just keend in mind that all these new things we learn have to fall within our skillset. But learning new things is always good. We just have to keep in mind, as time and experience reveal, those new thing we learn also have ceilings. I accept that.

5. By continuously trying to exceed our capabilities, we become frustrated and that can interfere with the quality of what we are trying to create.


There is more, but those are the basic parameters i work within. Basically, I don't lie to myself, and I embrace the limits of my abilities and work within them. As I said earlier, that doesn't mean not learning new things - we should always try to learn every new facet of our trade - we just need to accept they, too, peak levels of attainment.

Sorry about the long rant, but I thought I would share some of the basic principles of my approach. Mixing has its own subset of parameters I use I can PM you with more about that if you'd like.

I slogged through all that stuff above so whomever might read this understands a little bit of my approach to music creation - the physical aspects, rather my mental approach.

Thanks for the visit. perhaps a few things I mentioned might be of some value for you.

Take care,

Alan

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