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scooby_doobie
07-31-2009, 06:54 AM
Does anybody else suffer from this? I’ve been tracking guitars all day, but I’ve done hardly any work. There’s probably nothing wrong with the performance, it probably sounds okay, but take after take I find something wrong with it and delete it and start again.

Perhaps it will sound okay once it is mixed properly with the other tracks. My confidence is fading and my rut is getting deeper.

Does anybody else suffer from this perfectionist syndrome?
How do you deal with it? How do you know when enough is enough and move on? How perfected does it really need to be?

Cheers!

Murt
07-31-2009, 07:31 AM
Does anybody else suffer from this? I’ve been tracking guitars all day, but I’ve done hardly any work. There’s probably nothing wrong with the performance, it probably sounds okay, but take after take I find something wrong with it and delete it and start again.

Perhaps it will sound okay once it is mixed properly with the other tracks. My confidence is fading and my rut is getting deeper.

Does anybody else suffer from this perfectionist syndrome?
How do you deal with it? How do you know when enough is enough and move on? How perfected does it really need to be?

Cheers!

You need to take regular breaks. Change to a different session - get some fresh air - leave it overnight - come back the next day and it will sound completely different. I've been guilty of over recording/over tweaking guitars, vox, bass, you name it. What I find best is to come back with fresh ears. If everything is perfect the track can start to sound sterile, it loses the human feel and you forget what sound you were trying to achieve in the first place. Also, listen to the guitars in the track - nobodys gonna hear them soloed but you. If they sit well in the track then they're done. If you've been tracking guitars all day you could be suffering from listening fatigue - TAKE A BREAK.:-)

Dorian Green
07-31-2009, 03:32 PM
Yeah, everything said above is very true.
Also there's a time you have to STOP.Even Big Mixing Eng would like to do and redo their mixes, but you can't really!
Beside you noone will notice the little mistakes....Human after all!

Fastermouse
07-31-2009, 06:56 PM
Read this. It will help. If it sucks, it sucks, But... better done than perfect. Just listen.

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=29283&highlight=box

Herkimer
08-01-2009, 02:44 PM
Assuming your issue is performance/execution and not tone, you can rely on digital editing to move this process along. Lay your track down and don't stop no matter what. Keep going if you make a mistake. Keep going even if you screw up the form. Just get through the darn thing.

Now have a listen back and analyze the track as a whole. If there are more things done correctly on it that not, keep it. If you totally screwed up the second verse transition but nailed everything else -that's a keeper for now. If you played the wrong chord in the bridge but nailed a really technical section - that's a keeper. Otherwise, record it again and don't stop just like before.

Once you've hit a keeper (and it should only take 2-3 passes) start to use you DAW to correct mistakes. This could be as simple as punching in to fix a bad chord. If could be a little more complex like copying and pasting a good verse from somewhere else in the song over a bad verse. It could be something more complex like pitch shifting a bad chord that has good timing. You could even employ elastic audio to correct minor timing issues.

The point is to get it down and then spend a little time fixing things rather than try to record the perfect take. In my experience, I've never nailed the perfect take - but I've cobbled together some really nice tracks with overdubs, TCE, elastic audio, copy and paste, and pitch shifting.

I think you'll find it's faster to overdub a 6 second transition break than re-record and entire 4 minute song. It's even faster to copy that transition break from somewhere else in the song and paste it over the one you screwed up. You just need to have nailed it once somewhere in the song.

I don't think the perfect take exists, does it?

peppertree
08-01-2009, 07:34 PM
I think this is all wrapped up in your quest for acceptance, especially self-acceptance.

I don't think music is a particularly fruitful medium to apply towards that specific quest, because it is far too easy to compare our work to the very best in history.

Maybe try cooking or something which is fairly hard to duplicate the best of en masse.

Otherwise find some way to get over yourself and enjoy what you can do.

Murt
08-02-2009, 03:30 AM
Maybe try cooking or something

:confused::eek:True, but you could still end up in a situation where you have to comp all the best bits together. If you're trying to create the perfect casserole in one go it could end up being very messy and expensive and in the end you could still suffer from over-cooking fatigue.:D

peppertree
08-02-2009, 10:45 AM
The nice thing about cooking as your medium for self-acceptance is that pure hunger alone forces you to finish something daily. :-)

joshman86
08-05-2009, 09:16 AM
A true artist is never "done" with a project. They have to abandon it. lol :-)

sw rec
08-05-2009, 09:30 AM
There is, in fact, a fine line between going for the best and thinking it to death. I can't tell you how many mixes I thought were fine, but listened to them a year later and wondered what I was thinking!!! This is how we are constantly getting better.
But another case in point....my favorite studio guitarist is AMAZING. His FIRST take always blows me away, but he'll always want to do a few more. I would guess that 8 out of 10 times, I end up using the first thing he did. It was spontaneous, and not thought to death!
You can also over-do "perfect" and turn it into "Sterile" if you're not careful....

obiwan177
08-05-2009, 12:05 PM
But isn't almost everything in commercial music autotuned and quantized? For example, if you listen to the newest Green Day song (whether or not you like it), everything sounds "perfect" but it doesn't sound sterile (except that its the same part over and over). It sure sounds like they quantized everything down to a T.

Murt
08-05-2009, 01:19 PM
But isn't almost everything in commercial music autotuned and quantized? For example, if you listen to the newest Green Day song (whether or not you like it), everything sounds "perfect" but it doesn't sound sterile (except that its the same part over and over). It sure sounds like they quantized everything down to a T.

With Commercial music, i.e Radio friendly, I have to agree I'm beginning to see more of a pattern with lots of compression, tuning etc.. and yes I do like that Green Day song but then again I grew up on Stiff Little Fingers who Green Day acknowledge for their success, so I'm more inclined to like it. I don't know, just listen to some of the stuff from the '70's, Pink Floyd, Led Zep, not necessarily for the music but for what the engineer had at his/her disposal, no EZDrummer, No BFD no VI's etc...and the sound they got was exquisite. I was so perfectionist for so long with the possibilities of modern DAWs that I've started going the other way, let's hear some fret noise and laid back timing for christsake., I've started to become anti-perfectionist. But how can you NOT use elastic audio, I love it, it's just crying out to be used.:rolleyes:

peppertree
08-05-2009, 02:37 PM
I think editing and mastering are the two opportunities for perfectionism in audio. Writing, performing, and mixing should be all balls.

Murt
08-05-2009, 02:51 PM
Absolutely right, in a traditional world where engineers engineer, musicians create and mastering engineers master.
How many duc'ers are musicians,songwriters, performers as well as engineers, producers, have-a-go mastering engineers and perfectionists?
The Engineer who plays an instrument, writes music, creates something, captures it, edits it, processes it and mixes it, is torn between balls, beauty, accuracy and art. Jack of all trades?:rolleyes:

daeron80
08-05-2009, 04:15 PM
The Engineer who plays an instrument, writes music, creates something, captures it, edits it, processes it and mixes it, is torn between balls, beauty, accuracy and art.

Is that why I'm so tired? :p

albee1952
08-05-2009, 06:50 PM
Regarding the '70's and the likes of Floyd and Zep, they were rather imperfect. But perfectly glorious! I for one think perfection is highly over-rated.

sw rec
08-05-2009, 08:28 PM
"Regarding the '70's and the likes of Floyd and Zep, they were rather imperfect. But perfectly glorious"
Agreed, you can make stuff so "perfect" that it has no soul. At which point it ain't perfect........

tha]-[acksaw
08-05-2009, 08:30 PM
LOL I think all you guys in this thread hit the nail on the head. Maybe its a bit different for each of us, but I think we all strive to make great music.

I've been there man! Reaching for that one part that will make a song. Take after take, just not getting it right. I think Murt was the one who said take breaks. I think this has been a saving grace for me. I find that I'm a "second day" kinda guy. If I arranging a finger picked acoustic guitar part for a song, I find that if I'm not getting what I want almost right away, and I leave it for the next day, I can really capture a little more of what I'm looking for.

I've been listening to LOADS of country music over the last 3 months. More of the modern, new artists. Hate it or love it but its to the same point as the comments about Green Day. The music is amazingly perfect. I guess for that matter country always has been. But there is something to be said for Nashville studio musicians. It's amazing to watch a band come into a studio, with nothing more then chord notation and a little "know how", and really add life to a song. Take after take, 8 or 10 guys just delivering amazing performances.

Experiencing something like that made me realize that my job as a producer is secondary to my job as a musician. I need to spend more time really honing the instruments that I play and the music that I write/arrange. Spend just as much time playing as producting. This is, of course from a prospective of a person who plays 70% of the instruments on my productions. This thought process might be useless for a guy who doesn't play. But regardless, I've found over the last year that the more time I spend playing, the better I'm able to create "magic" (:eek: HAHA!) when I'm recording.

I do find that tools like Elastic Audio do a great job of putting thing in the pocket. Maybe I just can't get a part of it right. I'm thankful on a daily basis for the editing magic that can happen within ProTools. And I don't feel bad doing it. Getting back to those Nashville cats, I've heard several songs that while are amazingly perfect, there are parts that ooze "edited", to a trained ear. Jamey Johnson has this amazing song call "In Color". The intro is finger picked acoustic guitar with a Rhodes piano to match. You can tell that the acoustic guitar was cut up and moved to really groove with the piano. I sound a bit off to me. Still a great song. And that new album by Darius Rucker (Hootie and the Blowfish) has botched acoustic guitar parts all over it. Each one edited nicely into place.

It's nice to hear even the Pros need a little fixing from time to time. Makes me not feel so bad when I can't get something "just right". I do think this quote was right on though. Very well put!

A true artist is never "done" with a project. They have to abandon it. lol :-)

daeron80
08-06-2009, 08:19 AM
Part of the problem is that, too often, perfection is defined as conformity to some arbitrary, artificial, and/or abstract ideal. There's nothing musical about a simple mathematical grid, whether it's a division of time or pitch. For instance, 12-tone equal temperament, which is what auto-tune type plug-ins use by default, is a compromise tuning meant to make it easier to change keys on keyboards and guitars. It has nothing to do with good vocal pitch. The best musicians constantly adjust pitch and rhythm on the fly, within the constraints of their instrument, sensitively and playfully.

DonaldM
08-07-2009, 06:40 AM
There's nothing musical about dissonance either. Pitch is pitch.

That would depend greatly on how one defines music. If you take the broad definition that music is sound organized in time, then even dissonance can be musical. It may not suit everyone's taste, but then neither does Mozart.

Even pitch is a loose term. Does it refer to pitch as the common musical scale (C-C#-D-D#...) or a micro tuning scale? Or does it refer to sound caused by a vibrating object at a certain frequency regardless of its correspondance to some musical scale?

The predominant Western musical scale isn't the only one used across the entire globe.

It would be an interesting discussion to ask "What is music?"

peppertree
08-07-2009, 06:54 AM
I think if you can generate sound waves someone (even, and especially, yourself) wants to hear twice, you've succeeded in making music.

DJR
08-07-2009, 08:00 AM
I totally empathize, but some of my most creative junctures have been built around what I origianlly thought of as a mistake. I also purposely put a mistake in every take, just to get over my tendancy to seek "perfect"; not glaring, just there. Also, listen to early rock-n-roll and you can hear myriad mistakes, but the feel, the heart, the attitude convey so much, often more than today's overproduced and over-perfected offerings. Record the take, give it a shake, if it's real, not fake, then make no apologies...

obiwan177
08-07-2009, 06:40 PM
I agree, dissonance itself may not be wonderful, but once it resolves it adds so much. If you have a song that never resolves because there is no tension, it would be boring to listen to.

DonaldM
08-07-2009, 08:22 PM
Originally Posted by DonaldM http://duc.digidesign.com/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?p=1437706#post1437706)
That would depend greatly on how one defines music. If you take the broad definition that music is sound organized in time, then even dissonance can be musical. It may not suit everyone's taste, but then neither does Mozart.

But bad pitching or experimental chords won't get your clients song on the radio. The circle of fifths will.

Oh,I don't know, I doubt if Bob Dylan ever hit an accurate note in his life, and he made the air waves plenty! :D


It would be an interesting discussion to ask "What is music?"

That would be a good discussion for the guitar owners forum.

I thought you were going to say the drummers forum! :D:D

RiF
08-11-2009, 12:27 AM
Hi Scooby_Dooby, glad to hear that I am not alone :-)
I guess it's called the "unable to commit"-syndrome. There are songs that I am working on for like 5 years now and there is some progress but I have no clue when it will be finished... One reason is, that I don't know where the finish line is. It has to be defined up-front, so you know when you have reached it. This is easy to say, but hard to do (at least for me).
To remedy ear-fatigue and "lying" monitors, I usually record and mix in the evening and check back the mix the next morning on my way to work in my car. Usually I end up thinking after about 4 seconds into the song: "What did I think? This is crap!"... and start over...
Regarding sound commitment, I always have reference tracks of commercial songs which sound the way I want my song to sound like and A/B-them as often I can to re-calibrate my ears.
My newly purchased Axe-Fx does make commitments even harder, because it has so many options and so many sounds that all sound good to choose from. Decisions... decisions...
To sum up, I guess it's the commitment thing. You have to have a goal and if you reached it, you stop (but then you get a new plugin, guitar, amp, mic and want to start over... aaaahhhhhh...
I know that I am not of any help for you, but maybe you feel better if you know that you're not alone :-)

It has all been easier back in the days, where you had to book a recording-studio for like 4 weeks and you have to be finished then, no matter what.

peppertree
08-11-2009, 01:35 AM
It has all been easier back in the days, where you had to book a recording-studio for like 4 weeks and you have to be finished then, no matter what.

Those days can still be here. :-)

(In fact, for nearly all successful artists, they are. Why is that? ;))

RiF
08-11-2009, 02:13 AM
Those days can still be here. :-)

(In fact, for nearly all successful artists, they are. Why is that? ;))

Like Guns'n'Roses, huh? :D

scooby_doobie
08-11-2009, 03:39 AM
I hope I don't end up like guns and roses!:eek: It's been really interesting to sit back a watch this thread grow. Some very good and useful ideas.

It's hard to explain, you record a track. The performance is okay, few or no mistakes, but your not done. Something in your head says "nah, you can do it better". so the cycle begins.:o

peppertree
08-11-2009, 09:55 AM
If Axl Rose had a home studio he'd be dead rather than broke.

tha]-[acksaw
08-11-2009, 05:43 PM
It's hard to explain, you record a track. The performance is okay, few or no mistakes, but your not done. Something in your head says "nah, you can do it better". so the cycle begins.:o

And this my friend is why you save EVERYTHING! With this new ProTools 8 comping feature I really just record takes until I'm sick of playing it. I set myself up to Loop Record. Highlight past the beginning and end of the song, move over to the live room and just record. Over and over and over. Sometime I play an arranged part over and over, or sometimes I just go off. Either way, I'm left was enough options to peak my creativity as well as replace bad parts.

Now I know these Nashville cats can get it in one take. But me, I'm a four + take, comp track wizard! LOL :eek: :D :eek: This is of course only for more musical stuff. If I'm HipHoping, gosh darn it if I don't just Elastic Audio everything to work the first time around. HAHA! ;)

obiwan177
08-11-2009, 09:01 PM
Do you guys all record the entire song all at once? I've just been recording the intro, then the verse, then prechorus, then chorus etc. section by section. I'd select just the verse and do a few takes, then move on, do more takes. Is this not a preferred way of doing things? I have noticed sometimes from section to the next there is a little blip, but only a few of them.

peppertree
08-12-2009, 12:50 AM
Do you guys all record the entire song all at once? I've just been recording the intro, then the verse, then prechorus, then chorus etc. section by section. I'd select just the verse and do a few takes, then move on, do more takes. Is this not a preferred way of doing things? I have noticed sometimes from section to the next there is a little blip, but only a few of them.

There is only ONE correct way to record a song! :D

RiF
08-12-2009, 04:06 AM
When I record a guitar track part by part, I have some trouble getting the transitions right (like you described). So I try to lay down a whole track in one take, but my playing skills do not always permit this ;-(. As I like tha]-[acksaw's approach, I would loop-record the whole song a few times into different alternate playlists, hoping that I can comp a good track together later. PT's comping feature is top notch and way ahead of other DAWs, so why not use it? People are editing almost every note today, so why shouldn't I? Nobody cares if you played it in one take anyways, unless it sounds like this in the end.

tha]-[acksaw
08-12-2009, 06:29 AM
Do you guys all record the entire song all at once? I've just been recording the intro, then the verse, then prechorus, then chorus etc. section by section. I'd select just the verse and do a few takes, then move on, do more takes. Is this not a preferred way of doing things? I have noticed sometimes from section to the next there is a little blip, but only a few of them.

I do this as well. But mostly when I'm doing live instrumentation for HipHop. It's really all about what you like.

obiwan177
08-12-2009, 07:49 AM
Ok awesome. I do love the comping feature as well.