I'm freaking out a little

[Blooby]

I'm in the midst of a bucket list item in that John and I want to release an album. I decided to have a couple tunes (a vocal and an instrumental) mastered by Ty Tabor (King's X/ Jelly Jam/solo). I contacted him and asked if he had any idiosyncratic needs/wants for preparing the tunes for mastering. He mentioned a couple things, and since that time, I have been riddled with self-doubt over every aspect of these mixes.

Even though I am fully cognizant that this album will be released into a large void with no response expected, the sense of finality from mastering phase has me a bit paralyzed.

Having said this, I have put a bow on the instrumental today, and I'm about to start from scratch with the vocal tune, trying not to be so wishy-washy in the process.

Anybody have some overall psychological advice short of drinking either during or afterward?

Blooby

As an addendum, I want to give thanks to songcrafters once again. I never take for granted the positive community we have all nurtured...where we can share-dare I say it?-our art without overbearing negativity and clashing of egos. As somebody who has been here for a spell, I can say with certainty that the overall talent here has increased exponentially through the years, but even with that, it's always been a place where I would be more than happy to clink a glass with any of its members. Special and heartfelt thanks to its administrators, especially 64Guitars.

[Mike_S]

Hi Blooby,

First off congratulations for getting to this point where you have made a decision to have a go at doing an album, hats off to that. You guys have the talent to make something really great and worth listening to. I don't have any experience that could help you, only that of an enthusiast that puts home made tunes up here on Songcrafters.

If I was to try and say one thing though... you guys make some great creative, original, slightly experimental music. You take chances sometimes and it almost always pays off. Don't let the process scare the part of you away, the magic is in the "taking a chance" being brave, etc. So go for it, don't be afraid, I think that is where the magic is to be found.

I hope some members with more technical help might add some hints, etc. I can't help with that I'm afraid and in fact can't really help at all other that, but best of luck and I hope it goes well. I'm sure it will

Mike

[guitarron]

I say don't let "paralysis of analysis " get the best of you. You'd probably kick yourself down the road for not at least trying. Don't worry about failure. Failures are life lessons we can build on. Go for it.

[Greeny]

By strange coincidence, Max and I released our first album today. It felt like a natural progression to send these songs out into the world, and I felt less anxiety about it than I would with a solo project. I do totally get your anxiety and self doubt about exposing your soul and art, but there's no need. You guys are mega talented and you have always been a guitar inspiration to many on here. I'm in awe of what you play and how you play it. You guys never do tired cliches - it's always pushing boundaries. And I still dream about performing Wounded Souls with you oneday. I'd say just enjoy the trip. When you say 'release' I assume you mean releasing to all the digital streaming sites etc, or are you doing physical media too? We've done the former via Distrokid. It takes up to a week to seed it all out there. I have no idea what to expect, and don't expect anything! What does it matter? It doesn't. You create something and sometimes you're proud enough to want to leave it behind and preserve it for posterity. It's enough. Anything else is a bonus.

Be proud of what you've done and don't get hung up on the production details is what I'd say. Then  onto the next one. Funny how you play live with such confidence but get nervous about mixing your recorded tracks :-)

We've all come a long way these past 15 years. What a ride! And I like how we've all done it together, got better, learned stuff and cross-pollinated.

Be excited and proud you're getting something out there. You rock! 

[bruno]

Easier said than done, however detaching yourself from the process may be quite useful. So, take a dispassionate listen and write your comments down.
The hard part is knowing when enough is good enough. You can always tweak.
Plus never forget that you will hear what nobody else hears, you will hear your mistakes (mine are littered with imperfect playing), however sometimes these are happy little accidents, so embrace them as part of the song.

Do not forget about ear fatigue - always listen the next day!

Other than that, it is a common issue, so you are in good company. Sometimes you have to throw caution to the wind....
B

[StephenM]

Hi Blooby,

First off congratulations for getting to this point where you have made a decision to have a go at doing an album, hats off to that. You guys have the talent to make something really great and worth listening to. I don't have any experience that could help you, only that of an enthusiast that puts home made tunes up here on Songcrafters.

If I was to try and say one thing though... you guys make some great creative, original, slightly experimental music. You take chances sometimes and it almost always pays off. Don't let the process scare the part of you away, the magic is in the "taking a chance" being brave, etc. So go for it, don't be afraid, I think that is where the magic is to be found.

I hope some members with more technical help might add some hints, etc. I can't help with that I'm afraid and in fact can't really help at all other that, but best of luck and I hope it goes well. I'm sure it will

Mike

I agree with Mike...be who you are...there are some bands who never reached their potential because their producers never really understood who they were.... I will make a case in point for Peter Frampton.... his studio stuff lacked the energy and vibe that he really is....thankfully it was recognized and achieved with "Frampton Comes Alive".... even after that the studio albums never really captured that ....

be yourself... and I hope this does what you want it to....I feel fortunate to hear you guys

[Bishmanrock]

First of all, congratulations on realising such a project - I don't think people realise how demanding album production can be sometimes

Anybody have some overall psychological advice short of drinking either during or afterward?

Your mileage may vary, but I'm personally a very big fan of lists. Make a list. Give yourself time to sit down, breathe, and think of everything you need to do between now and the point where you're fully done (which for some also encompasses post-release, if you have any sort of distribution/marketing steps to undertake).


Try not to make any list item too large. I learned early "write song" is a damned stupid thing to do, instead later stripping into a very granular "write guitar", "record guitar", "write lyrics", "record vocals", etc. The smaller your list items, the better. You can keep adding to it as you remember things.

You may be pretty late into the project so maybe you'll only have a small list, but either way I find the visual element of what's left works much better for my panic than just trying to cobble my head together and remember. It also helps having such small items that if I'm creatively burned out (and this happens to me mostly in the latter half of album production because there's less actual creativity and more production/functional steps), I can maybe just chip away at a few small items on the list for the day rather than just sit panicking thinking "ohgoshtheressomuchtodo" and staring at my screen paralysed.

Don't underestimate the mental element of being able to cross items out. As you reach the end, seeing that list shrink will be a massive boost and show how much you've accomplished, as opposed to what's left.

It does however depend on your mentality, so maybe it's not for you. If it is, I'm a bit fan of managing everything via Trello. Good luck and I'm sure the end result will be awesome regardless!

[guitarron]

Your mileage may vary, but I'm personally a very big fan of lists. Make a list.

Yes definitely record your thoughts throughout the process. Ideas, thoughts and questions get easily lost

[Ferryman_1957]

I wouldn't worry too much about the mastering process. That shouldn't change things too much, it should only add some gloss/coherence/a bit of pixie dust. The real work is done in the mix and unless he's going to remix the tracks, there's not much he can do. So I would revisit your mixes. If you are happy with them, no need to worry. You will get releasable quality masters back with all the level matching and loudness stuff properly sorted. If you aren't happy with the mixes, then fix them before you send them off because mastering can't fix any fundamental issues.

Well done on doing this. I had plans to do this but realised I will likely never get round to it.

[AndyR]

First, "He mentioned a couple things" would you mind me asking what the couple of things were?

Asking for a friend

On the freaking out a little. A little's good, gets the relevant wotsits going in us.
I hear you on the self-doubt thing...
I think I might have a mechanism for dealing with it - and I THINK it's related to Bishmanrock's list recommendation (although I haven't used lists that much in the past, I do find myself using them more nowadays in my little "music" world...) ... it's my personal route through, and it encompasses most of what the other guys have said too

Personally, right at the moment, I'm going through a WHOLE bunch of stuff on the music front with my switch to a DAW. It might look like I'm not doing anything cos I'm just lurking, but bugger me, I have NEVER been as busy on the home music and production front as I have been in the last couple of months. And, aside from the moments of doubt, I'm finding it really satisfying.

I had a song ready to post, but I found I've been caught up in my own little private "loudness war" for the last x years. Each post had to be as loud as the previous... And it's partly down to how they're presented on alonetone where I host them. If I'd stuck this new one on alonetone, mastered as I thought proper in the DAW, then the next track on my "home page" will be the last one from the BR1600 and it's LOUUUWWD, and that was because the previous one was loud, etc, etc. (Also I was comparing volume against other posters on alonetone, and here, etc, etc) and it makes the new one sound, er, crap, and then begs the question "why don't you go back to the BR?" 

Eventually, after much investigation and learning, the only real solution, for ME personally, was to remaster all my old BR tracks. That might sound like overkill, but I picked one at random, got hold of the original stereo mix (pre BR mastering) and mastered it in the DAW, and ... WOW! Even using a quick/easy approach to mastering, it was A) sounding 200% better than what I posted originally and B) in this particular case actually louder than what I'd originally managed, and C) A LOT closer to what I'd mixed in the first bluddy place!!!!

I've now spent a couple of weeks getting CD backups onto the BR, then identifying the original mix track (not always easy, on the older ones I didn't bother naming the tracks ) and then exporting that mix to the PC via USB 1.0 (BR1600 only supports USB 1.0) and then backing up the project via USB 1.0 so I don't have to rely on these old CDs again...

Having got that done, I've got a folder with the original stereo wav mixes to 50 songs I did on the BR.

I've got a mastering project in my DAW with five songs in - the ones that will be my five Latest Tracks on my alonetone homepage when I've posted the new one.

These are:

The new one
Silver Pillow
I Give In
The Practical Gardener
When I Try To Be Me

It gives me a nice mix of rockers/proggie/acoustic to cut my mastering teeth on, and isn't biting off too much in one go before I can post anything. It's also helped me to learn how to master songs in relation to each other - eg for side one of an album. Once I've got those five done, all the others will be a lot easier, I can do them at my leisure, or record new music instead (knowing I'll never make the same mistake again in my private loudness war), or compile some albums from what I've got already, maybe even think about this releasing thing you guys are doing, or... whatever - it's all fun and keeps me happy...

But the periods of SELF DOUBT!!!

"Omigod, how am I ever gonna figure out how to do this?" - turns out it wasn't too difficult, I've got some basic idea now of what the real point of mastering is - what it means to ME, what MY goals are, and how to achieve those goals..

"Omigod, looks like I couldn't mix for toffee on the BR" - turns out I could! Once I'd got hold of these mixes and listened to them (I didn't have access to them, I never exported the mixes, just the masters, I haven't heard them since that day) ... When I heard the original mixes that I said "done" to... I'm STUNNED by what I'd achieved and then "threw away" via the mastering at my fingertips and, even worse, using Audacity to render MP3s on a PC where the audio driver was set to 48.0 not 44.1 (that's the windows default, check it out, fix it). It turns out these things have fabulous mixes compared to the abomination I've just created in a DAW...

And so on to the next doubt...

"Omigod, I can't mix for toffee without the BR, that's why I left DAWs in the first place... AGGGHGHG!!!" - actually... it turns out I can... over the last day or so, now I've got a handle on mastering, the old BR songs sound swee-eet... the new one, not so much. I knew it was the mix, I didn't want to go back, but... I had to. So, in the mix for the new one, having heard the issues at the mastering stage, I've been going in and removing lots of little tricks and techniques I'd put on because... well... because (we're talking parallel compression, saturation, and so on, that all the youtube vids tell you about, and now I've got the tools to do it easily...) The lesson learned is: the techniques are fab and groovy, but they are for special case - in other words, when you need them - they are not requirements. I have to finish the work, but it's looking v promising now.

"Omigod, am I getting sucked into too much technicalities, the paralysis of analysis, was it actually "good enough" already" - actually, for me personally, although it felt like it for a while, it's a big resounding NO. I've had several times of Mrs R going "I think it sounds great, I don't know what you're worried about". I explain, tell her what I'm going to learn, what I'm going to do with that, she goes "I can't hear what you mean" ... two days later, I have the fix in place and she goes "oh good grief, I see what you mean now - it's fab!" (And then I go "but it's still got this bit wrong" LOL). All I'm doing is learning how to do stuff, in a way that works for me, so that I can do it more easily next time and... most importantly ... present my stuff to the outside world in a way that I feel happy with (pretty much "it's the best I can do right now, live with it")

I could go on - but hopefully those are all doubts I guess we all experience in some shape or form.

My "mechanism" seems to be a mixture of different things already mentioned in the thread above. But possibly the word "detachment" is one of the most important, from my experience, that's been said.

I experience the doubt (about whatever), then I reason "hang on, it's just something to learn about so I can make a decision I'm happy with".

That's one of the reasons I asked what Ty Tabor's requests were. Is that what triggered the doubts? I was imagining it was me asking... and then not understanding the answers or realising my mixes were nowhere near that state... That would definitely knock me back... but then I'd do the "oh it's just more stuff to learn about"

I've watched several videos by engineers talking (or ranting!) about the material they get for mastering - partly to find out whether I'm starting in the wrong place when trying to learn to master... And what I took away from it was this: My mixes are perfectly good enough to send to a mastering engineer (as long as I get the format etc in the state they prefer). In fact nearly ANYONES mixes are good enough.

The one thing that seems most important to get right is this: if you're going to master or send for mastering, putting ANY compression/limiting on your final stereo mix just to make it louder is absolutely daft. It severely restricts what the mastering process can do for you. Putting compression and limiting on individual tracks and busses during the mix is fine, even essential depending on the material. It can improve the mix, might even increase how loud the master can go. But treating the final mix like that - IF you are going to master - is CRAZY. If you're not going to master, then go ahead, it's perfect - you're just doing a little bit of what mastering will do.

Whether you normalise the mix, and to what level, is not that important either. Just make sure it doesn't clip (well, they can fix that, but still...). If the engineer prefers to start from -3db and you supply a file peaking at 0... all he's got to do is turn it down at the start of the chain!!!

Anyways, if you already like your mix, it's good enough - it's YOUR artistic statement. Feel free to worry about that side of it forever , but once you like the mix and say "enough, I can do no better now with the skills and resource available to me now", then it's done.

It's the mastering engineer's job to do the following (you're paying him/her, remember, they work for YOU, no matter how famous they are):

A) NOT MAKE IT SOUND ANY WORSE THAN IT DOES ALREADY
B) make it louder so it competes in the intended marketplace
C) not make it so loud the streaming services will turn it down quieter than everyone else's
D) fix any EQ issues that arise during that (and therefore any perceived mix/volume issues that appear - I always wondered why "mastering" brought things out and hid others, now I know)
E) if you have submitted a set of songs (eg for an album or EP), massage the eq/loudness of each so that they all fit together and the listener feels good and doesn't have to reach for the volume and tone knobs while listening to this set

Finally, sorry, long post again, back to those self-doubts:

Everything in this music thang, all the way from the songwriting and performances, through recording and mixing, through mastering, and even marketing and placement, and EVEN our decisions as the end user consumers... EVERYTHING involves artistic decisions of one kind or another.

All we can do is recognise this, put ourselves in the position of making our best personal choice for each one and, even more importantly, put ourselves in the position of being able to accept and live with that decision later.

If we can do that, we should be able to cast out our doubts and get to sleep at night... (obviously, I can't... ... but that's my basic approach to feeling at least a bit better and removing the paralysis so I can do a bit more)

ANYWAYS - well done on going for this. Good luck