Episode 010 - The Self-Producer Mindset, ”Relay Race” Teams, and what Music Production is REALLY all about!

In this episode:

Staying sane and mentally healthy while in lockdown.

The many, many jobs that 'self-producing' entails: songwriting, composing, writing lyrics, arranging, recording, programming, producing, editing, mixing, mastering, publishing, distribution, marketing and promotion.

The mental state of 'zooming in' or 'zooming out' in music production.

The traditional role of producers, and what we can learn from that today.

The strength of small production teams, and the concept of "Relay Race" music production.

How not to "over-cook" a song in music production and mixing.

Some links mentioned in this episode:

 

Bruce Swedien on mix revision number 91

 

It would mean the world to me if you'd consider giving this podcast a 5-star review. Thank you!

 

How to Subscribe, rate and review this podcast (in less than 40 sec)

 

Contact the podcast host Yarn at mixartist.com.au

 

Tags: #music production, #home recording, #recording, #mixing, #music production, #MixedByYarnTheMixartist

 

Transcript (auto-generated by a robot - please forgive the occasional error):

 

Welcome back to another episode of the production talk podcast, it's great to have you back on board again. And thank you for making it through to episode number 10. With me, it's been a great journey so far. And I would like to send out my gratitude to everybody who's tuned in who subscribed, and especially to the listeners who have given me some feedback, which is extremely valuable. And after the first episode, I think I've received enough feedback to just change directions just a little bit. So I decided that rather than dialing into specialist fields, such as MIDI or audio recording, as I did before, actually need to step back a little bit. And today, I would like to talk about a broader picture, which I would basically sum up as the production timeline. But before we get into this, let me just talk about a one other thing that is very dear to my heart. I hope you are well at this time in in East Coast, Australia, where I'm based, we are currently back in lockdown. And I know this is very taxing on a lot of people. And obviously, a lot of loss of business, especially for musicians, a lot of uncertainty. And yeah, I know that some of our friends are really struggling with the current lockdown situation. So I thought, I've got a couple of recommendations that work for me. And you can consider whether they'd this might resonate with you. And hopefully you can take something useful out for yourself. So when it comes to life on a bigger scale, in a broader scale, there are quite a few things that can drag us down. And if if I allow all of these things to affect me personally, I would probably be pretty down and even depressed. So at some stage of my life a couple of years ago, I made the conscious decision to always look at the curveballs that life throws me and ask myself one very important question first, is this within my control? Or is it not?

So for example, the weather is definitely not within my control. And basically, whenever I decide that curveballs that life throws me is not within my control, then I don't allow myself to get emotionally affected by it. And it really takes this short moment to take a deep breath and think about, okay, this is just really getting to me, step back for a second one deep breath, have I got control over it? Or do I not. And if I don't like a lockdown situation, like the pandemic, like the weather and other things, then I just make the conscious decision not to let this affect me on an emotional level. Because there's nothing to be one, there is nothing that can be improved, there's nothing that can that I can do to change it. So I really try to focus my energy and Shannon, my energy to all aspects of my life that are within my control, such as my business, and my family and my friends. Now, those are things that I actually have control over. And I exercise this control with more conscious effort and engender more, more bigger sense of satisfaction, because I don't waste a lot of my, I don't waste too much of my energy, getting emotionally involved or getting emotionally

agitated over aspects that are not in my control. So I'm not quite sure if this works for you. But it might sound difficult to do but give it a shot. And if you feel like you're currently struggling with the situation you're in, think about whether this might hopefully help you to make better decisions and pull yourself out again. Because that's another little thing that I decided for my life is that if life gives me lemons, it's a me who drags myself out of the situation. I will never allow anybody else to do that. It's it's a very important thing for me that I can look back and say I had the strength to pull myself up. And yeah, I hope this can help as well.

And I'd like to share another aspect of my life with you that I believe helps me to keep my mental health together and it's

comes with two aspects of it like a yin and a yang, so to speak. The first one is exercise, no matter what the weather is, I get up in the morning and walk our dog and get some fresh air and get out there and exercise physically, I don't do as much physical exercise as I should do. But it's important to get started and have a starting point of regular physical activity. And by physical activity, I basically mean something that involves fresh air that probably involves the outdoors, if that's feasible for you develop a habit of getting out there. So why is it so important to get physical exercise, I believe that our brain works a little bit like a muscle. And if a muscle always does only one thing, it will eventually lead to pain. Good training, exercise always contains two things, a period of stress where you work your muscle, and then that period of relaxation where you can recover. And the morning walk with my dog is what gives my brain exactly that break. So if I constantly think about my business, and all the jobs I have to do, and my current to do list and all the things that haven't fallen behind with her constantly think about those things. It literally compromises my intelligence. And I noticed that if I treat myself to a regular break, where I focus on something completely different, where I walk my dog, where nothing distracts me, well allow my mind to just wander freely, I just come back, and when I feel relaxed, and I feel recovered, and suddenly I make better decisions, I've got better ideas, I'm more motivated. So that's a little story from my own life. And while this is definitely something that has a positive effect, it's something active I need to do to get a positive effect on my life. There's another thing that I also would like to share with you. And this time around, it's something that I need to stop where I need to reduce something. And I noticed that the more I consume news and social media these days, the more I start to worry, the more I start to get involved in arguments online, the more I start to freak out about all the things people throw at me on social media, and it took a moment of realization, where I was away from my phone for an extended time to realize what's actually going on. And let me just sum it up. You know, I think it is my belief that most people today and I'm definitely one of those consume more news and social media than we need. And the reason for that is mainly that we are being lowered in social media is designed to keep us clicking and scrolling by. So in other words, they design their products to constantly make us go back there, it's some kind of an addiction, we could call it brainwashing in some way. And I find that if I give in and allow myself to indulge myself into not checking the news 12 times a day and spending two hours on social media each day, then it keeps my mind on a constant state of alertness. And that's not good, that's really not good. Because that literally compromises my creative ability, my decision making my family time is compromised, because I'm not fully there. So I try to remind myself to really cut back. And it means for me that I don't need to check the news many times a day, maybe once in the morning, it's okay to stay up to date with what really counts. And especially with the social media, it's so easy to get drawn in, to keep clicking, to stare down this rabbit hole were to not be

to be drawn in by other people who try to alert people for their own cause. And unfortunately, we live at a time where many of the social media posts that I see these days, if I look very carefully, I see that there's somebody behind it who's trying to manipulate people. And it's their job to keep us on the edge in a constant state of alertness. And I'm trying to cut these things out of my life to a healthy degree. So the way I do that with social media is that I try to remind myself to not consume more than I produce. Let me explain this one more time, I try to remind myself not to consume more social media than I produce. In other words, I don't want to be the person on the receiving end, who constantly scrolls up and down the social media pages. I want to use my social media time to share my podcast, for example, and my little videos and stories for my clients and other things that I think are useful for sharing. Because again, this is something that I have control over. And I can give it a positive spin spin that I believe is useful to me, and hopefully to you as well. While if I take the passive role, and just keep scrolling, I'm subject to, to what other people decide for me to use my time on. In other words,

Other people ride my agenda. So I'm taking some control back. And I write my own agenda for social media by trying to focus more on producing my own content and filling it with with a positive spin. Okay, so I think I should really move on here. But yeah, just a few tips from from me personally, to everybody who might be struggling with lockdown wherever you are in the world, sending my love out to you and sending you all my strength. I think together, we can do it. And hopefully these tips help you to get through your day just a little bit better.

Good. Okay, enough about that.

Let's change the subject. Let's talk about the self producing musician that you are,

what is your job? Look, I think we all have a pretty clear idea, you know, you've probably spent some time working on your own music. And you probably have a very clear idea of what your job is. So to try to sum it up, and let's see if we can actually call it one job, or maybe even many. So what's part of the responsibilities of a self producing musician? So I thought about the production timeline, and just decided to just break it down. And let's just start with a song and follow the song start to finish. So where does it start, it starts with an idea. And that leads to the job of the composer or songwriter, which obviously, is a very important part of the entire process, and definitely one of the most fun parts as well. It's a very creative part. And, yeah, because you're here, I assume that this is something that you're very familiar with. Good. Let's also talk about the lyrics they need to be written. And that's a very important part, if not the most important part of the song itself. The lyrics are definitely what gives the song, the heart and the soul and the meaning. And in many ways, that's what listeners will connect her, along with the vibe and the energy of the song, of course, the next stage is then usually some kind of arrangement and instrumentation phase where we think about Okay, do we need an extra verse? Do we need an extra bridge? What about the chord progression that we need to throw in is C powered or something else, where you know, the loose bids that came together in songwriting, are turned into something that has a structure and it's generally a wise idea to you know, think about this and lay it out maybe on a sheet of paper or on a computer along the timeline of your digital audio workstation.

It's a wise idea to you know, try to refine the arrangement and instrumentation as much as you can before you go into the next phase, which is then of course recording or symptoms, programming, let's disband are these two things up, basically recording and programming. By that I mean, you capture the performance, you get them down onto the computer, or you

record signals into your digital audio workstation and start to build the song up from there. So right now, that's actually the job of recording engineer, which is nowadays also attributed to self producing musicians. As part of recording and programming, there comes a stage that we call editing and editing can be an extra part, it can be done separately, in some people literally edit along as they record and program music.

But yeah, depending on your workflow, it might be an extra workflow step. I just mentioned that usually,

that a traditionally, recording and programming is a task owned by recording engineers and studios. Just like this. There's also audio editors, specialists who do nothing else but audio editing and specialize on let's say, drum editing, performance improvement, pitch correction, timing correction, things like this. Good. And the next stage that the song will then enter is the mixing stage, where we basically take all the signals, blend them together beautifully, process them and fit it all together in a really nice sounding mix. which then leads to the mastering stage and mastering is the final stage of the music production process. Where a bunch of mixes is then looked at by a mastering engineer, then fine tuned and sound and volume and loudness, and made sound as if it all belongs together to one album.

I would say that up to this point, we can bundle it all up as music production. And all of these steps belong to music production. And it's actually quite a few different jobs if we think about it this way. However, the job's not done yet. It keeps on going once once you've finished the production process and the song is now ready, in entire new can of warm opens up. It all starts with publishing and distribution, which again is expected from self producing musicians today. However, there were times when professionals

had a job of music, publishing and distribution. And that was all they did all day. And this leads directly to the next stage, it's not just good enough to just get the song out there, it needs to be heard. And that needs a little push, which we call marketing and promotion. So in other words, it's never good enough to just put a song out and wait for the world to find it. That's just not how it works anymore. Instead, people need to be reminded people need to know about it. And that leads to marketing and promotion, which again, is a job title by itself. As part of this, some artists then produce videos, which I warmly recommend, it's definitely a good workflow. And that by itself is a big new job. And then there's one more steps songs lifecycle, which is life presentation life events. And yeah, we all know that the life industry has taken a serious hit over the last couple of years, in some places on the globe, it's coming back in some places it's not. So we're definitely in a mixed bag at this time about nevertheless, promoting oneself for life gigs is an important part of his songs lifecycle, and that leads to management, time management, scheduling, contacting promoters, contacting venues and festivals, and trying to score gigs, which obviously is another full time job by itself. Live streaming, is a rather modern way to do it all online, perfect for a lockdown. And yet another way of producing one's music live, which also includes a lot of work just like playing in front of an audience. So if we just look at all of those jobs that are all part of the music production timeline, and the job of the producer.

It's a lot of work. And it's so many different jobs. So let's just think about this for a moment. And let's just, you know, hit pause for a second and rewind in our minds to an earlier time, a couple of decades back, let's pick the 80s and the 90s, when the world of music production was very, very different. Back in those days, these jobs were rather separate. So there were designated recording engineers that were different mix engineers, there was always a separate mastering engineer, there were record companies involved that took care of publishing, distribution, marketing, and all of those things. And at that time, during those years, musicians mainly focused on composing and songwriting, performing arranging songs and performing them in the studio and, and life. And most other jobs were taken care of by professionals.

That's definitely no longer the case. Not many big record, companies are still in existence. So most music that is released today doesn't go through these steps anymore. And that's fine. We just need to accept this as it is, and just move along. But what does that mean, for us?

I am of the belief that none of us can be good at everything. That's definitely true for myself, I know that I have certain fields that I'm really good at, like mixing music, for example. There are also other aspects that I'm not very good at. So looking at marketing and promotion, looking at how I promote my podcast, I find a lot of room for improvement. I'm learning as I'm going at the moment, and try to get better at it. But I have to admit that this is definitely not my field of specialty. If I look at what other people are doing, I am actually, you know, very humbled by how much better they are promoting their own work. So it's definitely not my special fields. And I believe that if you look at all the steps of the production timeline, you probably found a couple that you're a specialist for. And there may be a couple of others among where you realize, yeah, well, I always knew that I wasn't that good at mastering, or I'm not that good, a video producer or something, whatever this may be, but other things you're really good at. So here's my recommendation for music production in the 2020s. Rather than doing it all by yourself, or outsourcing most of it, which was the 90s way, there's a third option that somewhat sits in between, I'm talking about small teams of specialists. Imagine producing a song could be like a relay race, where you might be really, really good at writing songs and coming up with really catchy lyrics and arranging a song to perfection. And you might even be okay at recording some things, but maybe you know, somebody who's actually much quicker and more effective at it. So here's an opportunity to know form teams to outsource some of the elements and team up with other people who are better at it. And that's what I mean by a relay race. You know, if you try to run the entire race by yourself, you're not going to win it, the other teams will always outperform you. So instead, pass the

Rely on at a point where you're out of your comfort zone where you realize that okay, the song is now entering a phase that you are not specialized into anymore. And now pass it on to somebody else, and form small teams of people who cover the entire range. And it might be that you need one person to help you with mixing and mastering, and another person to help you with publishing, marketing and promotion.

That could be anything else, you know, any any blend of all the components that make the songs lifecycle. But if you help each other out, if you form teams where you can rely on somebody else, it will give you the strength to focus more on on the things that really count for you the things that you're really good at your superpowers use those use those.

So there's a very good chance that the beginning of a song, the first steps of the productions lifecycle, probably something that you can cover rather well. However, even there, it might be wiser here to get some help. So if we sum up the production steps one more time that songwriting and composing, writing lyrics arranging instrumentation, recording, programming, editing, mixing, and mastering. If you take on these steps by yourself, again, it is really difficult to be very good at all of them. And and when you're involved in a production like this, it is very easy to get lost in details. So for a moment, just visualize a PDF document or maybe a DA w session on your computer, you're probably familiar with the concept of zooming in and out. So in other words, you can either zoom out and you don't see the details, but the entire song or the in part, tie a PDF, or you zoom in and you lose the the angle or the the perspective to see the entirety, but you cannot see all the tiny little bits and pieces. The same thing applies to being a music producer as well. And it's very easy to get lost in these zoom in phase as I would call it where you you know where you mentally zoom into details and you work on details, let's say a certain height better and or is it a certain way a guitar node sounds at the tail end or you know, whatever this may be, and and get lost in those and spend countless hours tuning details.

Without having the perspective, the overarching holistic perspective of seeing how this actually makes sense in the bigger picture. And that anger, that zoomed out perspective is the traditional definition of a music producer. So let's talk about this for a moment, what is an old school music producer the way music was produced in the 80s and 90s.

producers were hired to oversee production. And back then producers often spend most of the time on the couch, shouting directions at the musicians and engineers, they want to involve themselves. Sometimes they played some instruments or operated the console. But in many cases, they were deliberately withdrawn from all of this. So the producers job was to keep the holistic perspective, the zoomed out perspective of the entirety. So while the musician might be lost in thinking about the best way to make people feel this guitar, so in or play a more impactful synth line, the producer just zoomed out, and looked at how this would tie into the song, and how it would serve the song. And even further, how would how this song would work within the album.

And this is an angle that we should always remind ourselves of doing everything ourselves, know the zoomed in perspective of being self producing musician, and the zoomed out position of an external angle is something that is very difficult to achieve, if you're the only person doing that. So what I'm trying to say is even if you're the self producing musician who does everything yourself, find yourself others who can give you this external perspective. And my recommendation would be to just reach out to other self producing musicians who you respect for for their work. And every once in a while just meet up and exchange your ideas. Ask ask a good friend, can you give me some feedback? What is it you hear here, and the angle always should be

a broader perspective. So if you exchange feedback with somebody else means you take the zoomed out producers angle for somebody else and they do the same for you. It's important to really focus on the bigger picture. And a good way to do that is to limit yourself to feedback and not give you know several chapters full of details. But instead limit yourself to maybe two or let's say maximum three things

That one would do to improve the song. So if you had to limit it to the three things that are important, that would really make the song better, what would it be? that forces you into this holistic perspective. And that can really, really help.

I'm not saying that all the little details that we often fall in love with. I'm not saying that they're not important. However, I found that if you focus on the details too early, you lose a lot of time. However, if you focus on the holistic angle very early on a lot of the details that are in my mind, but didn't make it on the priority list, they eventually solve themselves further down the line automatically, as you address the big picture decisions. And the big picture decisions always need to be how entertaining is the song? Does this song keep my attention up, start to finish? And if it doesn't, maybe the song is too long? Or maybe it needs a new part? Maybe it needs something that just wakes the listener up again, it says, oh, whoa, what's going on here? Now those are the things that I focus on a lot. I focus on on the lyrics whether I understand the story. And when I listen to the lyrics, does the song Give me the same vibe? does it support the story of the lyrics? Or does it work against them? Those are things that I try to focus on. In other words, when I when I have my producers hat on, when I look from an holistic perspective, at a song, I definitely don't want to think about the snare drum has a little bit too much 400 hearts, and maybe the reverb time should be 1.7, not 1.65 seconds. That's detail walking, that's irrelevant in the big picture. So I just noticed I learned over time is that we always bring myself back to the holistic view, and work there. All those details seem to solve themselves automatically along the way. Good. So yeah, that's a little recommendation of how we can use what we know about traditional ways of producing today to our advantage.

Let me just tell you a little story that I found very telling. It's a story of three music professionals. And they recorded a song and it was a really strong song. So they started mixing. So at that time, there was a professional mix engineer involved, and they got into it. And usually the way it works is that the mix engineer just builds up the mix from scratch. And towards the end, another musician comes in and give some feedback. And then the mix is refined, which we call revision process. So then the second mix is done from there, and so on and so on. So they keep working on it. And the mix engineer, very, very capable person, one of the best in the world actually kept working on it. And the musician was super supportive and full of ideas of what could be done better. So eventually, they found themselves are working on MCs revision number 91. I'm not kidding you. It's number 91. And at that time, the producer came in and said, What are you doing here? Yeah, we just work on the mix. We're making it better, we're making better. So the producer stepped in and said, Let me listen.

And then he said, Hmm, okay, awkward moment of silence afterwards, they said, Okay, stop for a moment. Go back to mix number two.

And it blew all the current mixes out of the way. That sounds like a bunch of amateurs, doesn't it? they wasted a lot of time trying to refine something with that zoomed in detail perspective. And they must have lost the big picture. And it took the producer to get that musician and the engineer to see the bigger picture. Can you relate to the story? Well, I definitely can. I've been in similar situations many, many, many times in my life. And this story No, I can probably lift the curtain here is actually a real story. And it evolved one of the best mix and recording engineers who has ever lived. Bruce Swedien. The producer who stepped in and as straightened their hands out was nobody else but Quincy Jones, and the musician you probably guessed it by now was Michael Jackson. So some of the most influential, most professional, most amazing artists, performers and engineers in the world fell forward as well. And it took Quincy Jones perspective to to get them back on track and help the musician and engineers to step out of it, look at the bigger picture and find a mix that might have had a couple of minor imperfections. But the big picture was just amazing. The song they were working on is Billie Jean. And I'm sure you've listened to it many times in your life and I still think it's one of the best pop songs ever written. And it's also got the most amazing mix and the most amazing production just you know the drums and the bass by themselves is worth a Grammy and Michael's performance. Nothing else to say you know the song you know how amazing it is.

So what I'm trying to say

As you all know, we're not alone with this, it happens to all of us that sometimes we get lost between the big and the small angle. And it's

it's natural for us humans to get lost in details. And as we do, we sometimes lose the bigger picture. And what we need is friends, to help us see the bigger picture again. That's why I'm recommending to you to involve your friends in production form small teams, and sometimes outsource certain parts. So one of the aspects that I definitely recommend outsourcing is the mastering process as mastering is.

Mastering is probably the hardest thing to learn. If that's not something you've done many times in your life, mastering requires the most experience.

It's what's the point where a lot of damage can be done by unexperienced people without being aware of the damage that is being done. So mastering is an art form, never allow anybody else to tell you anything else is nothing but an art form. And it takes a lot of technical understanding, and a lot of musical taste. To be good at mastering it takes years and years and years of experience. Also, mastering is one of the more affordable processes. Compared to let's say, booking a studio for recording for a couple of days, getting some mastered, doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. And I would generally say that it's probably the best investment. So if you decide to team up with somebody else, my tip would be not to spend the money for an entire album on mastering straight up, but maybe start with a single. And if you can save up a little bit of a budget, consider passing the single onto more than one mastering engineer and see what you get back. See it like an investment. It's not about losing money or being inefficient here, it's an investment and finding a teammate somebody to take the relay off you and race for, for your song, for the best outcome of your song. See what you get back. Now listen to the masters from an emotional point of view, you know, just focus on what does it make you feel when you get it back. And I would say that a good mastering engineer, obviously, will do you know, lots of sound processing or maybe just the necessary sound processing. But what I generally want from a mastered song is to get it back and to feel the music a bit more. So in my opinion, and some people may not argue against that. But my personal opinion, mastering is more about making things louder and brighter. What I really want from a mastering job is to get the song back and to have a layer removed, that allows me to feel the song better or things that cloud of the song should be gone. And and I want to feel the music more. And that is not an easy job to do. So I recommend to consider a professional mastering engineer as the very first step for building small teams.

Yeah, you can then also go into other steps such as editing. So when, let's say you'd like to consider, I don't know, let me pick something like tonic retro for drums or pitch corrector for vocals, there's a very good chance that you can teach yourself how to do that in your own dw. But also consider how good the outcome is, if you do it for the first time, chances are, there will be few oversights won't be just perfect yet, and how much time it takes you. And if it let's say takes you an entire day, maybe just maybe it might be worth hiring somebody else who does that professionally. Because chances are in two hours, they can get a better result than you could in entire day, if they are specialists in editing. And therefore you know, even if it cost a little bit of money, it might still be worthwhile. If you weigh this up against an entire day's work for yourself, look at it from this angle as well.

mixing of course is another story where it may be worth considering a professional. Gotta be a little bit careful here. As you all know, I'm a professional mix engineer myself, and it's not really about trying to sell my product to you. That's not what I'm talking about. But I would definitely recommend to consider professional mixing for everything that you want to release for eternity. So if it's just a demo to promote yourself for gigs in your local area, I actually would advise against hiring a professional for mixing. Chances are you can do a good enough job at home to produce a song or a demo that you can pass on to the local pub sent quiet gigs this way. So where would I draw the line? You might have heard about asrc codes, which is a digital code that helps your songs to be recognized in streaming platforms. And this code is also used to return

royalties back to you. My recommendation is that whenever you decide that your song is good enough to be published, with the intent of returning some money back to you, meaning making royalties, or having airplay, and so on, I think that's the point of time when you need to consider professional mixing, and probably also mastering because once it's out there, it's out there. And it's a wise idea to have a professional look over it, and make sure it's absolutely right.

I would prioritize mastering higher than mixing them. However, it might also be both. So yeah, for demo, don't hire professionals for professional release for a release that will have your name printed all over it publicly. For the rest of your life, definitely consider getting a mixed and mastered by professional. Okay, good.

So, where does this leave us now, as self producing musicians, we just noticed that we have so many jobs to do we know as a human being we can be a genius at every single one of them. I would recommend to take a moment and reflect and take a sheet of paper and write down your strengths and weaknesses. Which of these workflow steps are you really good at? And which ones are you not that good at. And then look for people who can further those gaps, build small teams build the mastering engineer that you always work with, because you just know that you gel so well, or maybe find yourself, somebody who can help with promoting, and so on.

Good. For the next few episodes, I would like to now look into the concept of the production timeline and zoom in on individual steps in more detail. I've got another interview lined up with my dear friends, Tom and Chelsea of skyrider, where we talk about the creative parts, and a lot about songwriting. And then I would like to take you further into the recording process, and editing and mixing and eventually mastering and also have an interview recorded already with my dear friend Shane, who is a bit of a genius about publishing and marketing his own music. And hopefully there will be a lot of valuable information there for you. But for today, I want you to look at your own strength, look at your own weaknesses, in all honesty, and think about how you can team up with others to get through the production quicker and more effectively. So the analogy of a relay race really helps me to understand now what needs to be done. And I think hope up this makes sense to you as well, you will find that once you have built a small team that the production time for a song can be significantly shorter. And I think this is a very important aspect here. Because time works against you. Basically from the moment you start writing a song The clock starts ticking. And what I've learned is that if we fall in love with an idea, this love just doesn't last forever, it's a bit like a teenage romance or something, you can almost tell that eventually you'll fall out of love with this song or this idea at some stage. And producing effectively means to produce fast enough to get it done before you fall out of love with the idea. While you're still excited while you're still full of enthusiasm. There's nothing more frustrating than producing a song that you actually don't realize anymore. And it's only halfway done and feeds like every step is an uphill battle. And that can be really demoralizing, it can really drag you down. So what I'm advertising for is a rather quick workflow, where you get an idea, you pull it together, you don't overthink it, you just go with the flow get into a flow state and one stage after another you just knock it out and get it done and move on to the next stage without thinking about it too much. Because when you think too much, when you have too much time to think about your editing, or your current state of the mix, then you might get lost in detail and again, and you end up just like Bruce Swedien and Michael Jackson adds a revision number 91 and it's still not better. That's the risk we're facing. So sometimes a good workflow to stay on track is to work rather quickly. And just keep going keep going. Sometimes you need to accept minor imperfections. And you know what, I even believe that minor imperfections belong to each song because it tells your listener something about you about your personality and people love that.

Okay, good food for thought. A good way to finish this episode for the day. If there was anything important if there was anything valuable in this episode.

For you, I would love if you could please recommend this episode to other friends may be recommended to people that you want to have in your relay race team. recommend this episode on social media please, if you're part of a musician's group, Facebook group or something, please do me a huge favor and post this episode on social media on the musicians forums so that hopefully more musicians will have listened and tune in and can share their ideas with us. Well, let me just say thank you to you personally, for tuning in today and being around and listening to, to me waffling about music production all day long. So I really appreciate this. I'll be back with more episodes very soon. Stay safe, stay mentally fit. Stay away from social media and too much news consumption and always look out for your physical and mental health exercise enough. Look well after yourself. Bye for now.