if you're a bedroom/small time producer, should you

really care about trying to get your music to sound high quality/radio ready, etc.? this has been something that i personally have struggling with for awhile now and i feel like its killing my creativity to make more music.

i sit on one track until i get it sounding as close as i can to the way i want the final sound to be, knowing that it still wont sound as good as if it was professionally mastered.

i've been listening to a lot of dilla beats and he made tons of beats, there is no way he focused on each single one like this...to make it perfect. seems like he just arranged it and put it out.

how do you break the idea of wanting your stuff to sound top quality, rather than just sitting down and banging out beats? i think i spend more time looking up gear and info about quality, than i do actually working on beats...

hell. dilla stuff doesn't sound "high quality/radio ready" AT ALLLLL.
don't sweat it. make good beats first, worry about your less-cool mixing/mastering skills 2nd.

use what you got, find yer groove, and roll with it.

I have over the year built up some rules to give me a generally nice sounding mix, aside from that i focus on the beat and thats about it. I make everything on my monitors learn/trust them and that really helps.

I personally like my stuff just as it is, not sounding professionally produced or anything, so getting a mix absolutely perfect is not one of my major concerns.

DPM wrote:really care about trying to get your music to sound high quality/radio ready, etc.? this has been something that i personally have struggling with for awhile now and i feel like its killing my creativity to make more music.

i sit on one track until i get it sounding as close as i can to the way i want the final sound to be, knowing that it still wont sound as good as if it was professionally mastered.

i've been listening to a lot of dilla beats and he made tons of beats, there is no way he focused on each single one like this...to make it perfect. seems like he just arranged it and put it out.

how do you break the idea of wanting your stuff to sound top quality, rather than just sitting down and banging out beats? i think i spend more time looking up gear and info about quality, than i do actually working on beats...

Is your room treated acoustically?

As far as getting the same sound as professionally mastered stuff... you probably won't get there without either spending lots of money on gear and/or devoting years of studying and practice in mixing/mastering.

It should be possible to achieve very good results ITB without spending money on hardware, but you at least need some pretty decent converters/preamps.

And to get that final (maybe not so big) difference to professionally mastered stuff, well... you have to keep in mind that something will sound different if you run it through a neve or ssl console, record to an A800 tape machine, etc., and i'm pretty sure the albums from J Dilla were not mastered in someones bedroom studio with cheap hardware.

I tend to get caught up in these things as well. Nevertheless there's good advice in this thread... focusing on making music should be the first priority.

I don't worry about that, I keep it rough, gritty and raw. If my vinyl samples pop, crackle and hiss then so be. Find it sounds better then trying to make it radio ready, gives the track I'm making more character. Just find your style and do your thing!

If you get your stuff sequenced the way you want it, and you really think it's a hot track(and of course you are trying to either use it on a beat tape or just want to have some HQ stuff to show people), then have someone else mix it. Beat making/production/mixing/and mastering are ALL different crafts that take a life time to master. If you try to do it all, you will never be truly great at one(at least in my opinion). You can find people to mix your stuff for a really good price. If you do this for every beat it wouldn't be very economical, though. Otherwise, just get it sounding out and put it up, move onto the next beat. It can always be mixed if someone wants it.

DPM wrote:i sit on one track until i get it sounding as close as i can to the way i want the final sound to be, knowing that it still wont sound as good as if it was professionally mastered.

A good mastering engineer will be able to take your finished mix and balance it out more effectively than yourself, probably using better gear than you have, but more importantly their ears are in tune with how a master recording should sound.

Does this mean you shouldn't strive to get pro results? Definitely not! I believe as bedroom/hobbyist producers we should all be working hard to get the sound we want. Some of my favourite artists/bands mix and master their own stuff, so **** it, I'm gonna do the same!

DPM wrote:how do you break the idea of wanting your stuff to sound top quality, rather than just sitting down and banging out beats?

It sounds like you're locked into a similar mind state to me. I had a conversation with one of my producer friends about 10 years ago, and to paraphrase what he said to me...

"You will NEVER be 100% satisfied with what you do, so you have to accept that 90% is good enough"

I've been neglecting this advice recently but I'm aiming to get back on track with it. What I would also suggest is splitting the process into creating, mixing and mastering, so you can get busy during the creation stage without being bogged down by the more scientific aspects. Putting a time limit on how long you spend on each track might also work well.

depends.. if you plan to release or get things mastered, then you should aim to get the mix as good as you can.. and aiming for a pro sound, even if comparing to stuff that has been released, is a good thing.. the mastering engineer's job isnt really to "fix" things, so if you missed something, you may find that you might have to go back or start over.. the best mastering is when you barely have to touch the track.. and with that, you as an artist has more control of the sound... nothign worse than sending off a track and then getting back something that has changed the sound and idea you had.. and this can easily happen with poor mixing, as then the ME has to be more drastic with his tweaks

then it can completely depend on the sound you want too.. sometimes its better to let things be very raw. but then it is good to know what is going to happen to the sound in the final processes


personally i just mix as i go a long, from the very start to the finish, and it doesnt hinder me and takes very little time.. and since the sounds are part of the ideas, the voice that carries those ideas.. then to leave things is worse IMO.. so sloppyness or leaving things a bit raw is usually a concious decision based on what kind of sound i want

i wouldnt leave stuff in the hopes a mastering engineer could fix it, or leave it just because its more fun to do something else... i used to be like that, but since i started to mix as i go, i no longer have to think like that, it has become a part of the music making itself and so it is better balanced i think

you really need to bear in mind that when you listen to released music its been through the mastering process. And if its on fm radio its been through a bit more processing. I think in a lot of cases if you heard the orginal tapes/dats/cdrs of artists studio masters and compared to the final release you're familiar with, you'd be shocked. A lot of people underestimate mastering as to the layman in the street, the changes they make are not obvious.
Small time producers are best using their energy on making good tracks. Whack the mix through some basic mastering settings if you want to hand out demos or stick up on a music site but leave your masters raw so that you can hand over to old guys with beards and collections of vintage electronics with strange names to work their magic when the time comes.

mpcidiot wrote:Whack the mix through some basic mastering settings if you want to hand out demos or stick up on a music site but leave your masters raw so that you can hand over to old guys with beards and collections of vintage electronics with strange names to work their magic when the time comes.

That's a dope way of putting it, and so true...

wow, everybody here makes some good points. i think for me it was the fact i use software a lot and it gives me TONS of ways to make a beat and sculpt it, limitless vst's, workflow is incredibly fast but at the same time it is easy to use more effects than what is needed...you get in over your head if you're not careful.

i guess its better to just make music and everything else will just fall into place. when the time REALLY comes to make the song sound perfect (in terms of mastering/quality) i'll deal with it then, but i guess for now...ill just focus on the beats

it will take some time though to change the thought process..

I think that depends on your mixing skills, your equipment and the market. You could be a bedroom producer owning a good pair of monitors and proper sound treatment in your room.If not,i think you should try and deliver the best sound depending on what you are capable to do.The best your demo sounds, the better the impression you give to the record company/ or your client.