Make music for you fans, not yourself.
Apologies up front because this is a rant…
Stop concerning yourself with the minutia in the mix and start thinking about what’s important. What might that be you ask? It’s the song.
Your fans don’t care if the hi-hat is a tad too low in the last bar of the third verse. They don’t care that the last note of an arpeggiated guitar run during the outro is a little too loud. Nobody hears this except for you, the artist. Let me, the mix engineer, make these calls. This is what I do. I MIX music so that it translates the best it can to all formats and to all audiences.
Some of the best advice I have ever received came from my mentor and engineer extraordinaire, Cliff “Cliffy” Zellman. During many, many mixing sessions when producers or artists were obsessing over the most finite of things he would turn to me and say “Lopes, it doesn’t really matter and nobody cares.” Meaning that your fans are not listening to those elements in the track. They are listening to two things, the melody and groove – that’s about it.
I understand that this is your art and that you want it to be perfect, but who are you making it for? Yourself or your fans? If you’re making it for yourself you may want to ask yourself one simple question. How many copies are YOU going to buy? My guess is that your answer is zero.
