how do you quality control your tracks?

how do you quality control your tracks?

do you just put them on your mp3 player and listen to them and then change stuff if they need to be fixed in a way?

This is something that continually bugs me.

The simplest answer to this is to overplay the fuck out of the damn things. I'll rip a rough mix to MP3 and listen to it 10 to 20 times. If I still like the track the next day, it's a keeper. (I'm often quite disappointed at things that just don't even make that simple cut.) If I still like it a week later, I'll go back and make the tweaks needed to finish it.

After that, I used to hand them over to friends/bandmates/record company people to decide. Because an artist is never the best judge of their own work. I am constantly surprised by what people love and what they're indifferent to. (People will pick out utter throwaway tracks as their favourites and ignore the tracks I spent AGES working on.)

It's such a hard balance to strike, as you *have* to involve other people in the selection process or it just becomes too self indulgent - but at the same time, you can't write songs by committee, and if you try to write songs to please people, you'll dillute your own vision in a way that will ultimately hurt you.

Get a really crappy pair of speakers/headphones. If your track sounds how you want it to on these then it's well produced. As for tweaks and stuff I constantly revisit tracks even months after I've made them and tweak little bits and bobs.

i don't bother

  On 2/3/2010 at 9:59 PM, BCM said:

i don't bother

If you have 4 tracks and one sounds kinda shitty, people will just assume its supposed to sound like that.

If anyone questions you, insist its supposed to sound like that.

during the writing process, every little flaw is just screamingly apparent to me, but i don't really know how the track is holding as a whole.

a week and a joint later, i can play it back and decide how it is overall

at the end of each day i allocate all my new songs and bits of songs a number each

then i write all the numbers on the wall in felt tip pen

the numbers of the songs that i think are probably the best i write at the top of the wall

and the worse the song or bit of song, the lower down the wall i write the number for it

then i take off my trousers and pants and socks and get on all fours at the other side of the room and

start crawling on all fours, backwards as fast as i can.

when i get to a line that i have made in chalk on the floor about 2 feet away from the number wall

i stop to defecate at the wall, which sometimes happens straight away but normally i have to wait for a little while

sometimes a few hours but sometimes it's not so long

which ever number the poo goes nearest to is the song that i keep for that day

all other songs i delete or tape over immediately

  On 2/3/2010 at 10:18 PM, LUDD said:

at the end of each day i allocate all my new songs and bits of songs a number each

then i write all the numbers on the wall in felt tip pen

the numbers of the songs that i think are probably the best i write at the top of the wall

and the worse the song or bit of song, the lower down the wall i write the number for it

then i take off my trousers and pants and socks and get on all fours at the other side of the room and

start crawling on all fours, backwards as fast as i can.

when i get to a line that i have made in chalk on the floor about 2 feet away from the number wall

i stop to defecate at the wall, which sometimes happens straight away but normally i have to wait for a little while

sometimes a few hours but sometimes it's not so long

which ever number the poo goes nearest to is the song that i keep for that day

all other songs i delete or tape over immediately

.....2 metres from wall

I personally think making art should very selfish and that you should only worry about making sure you are 111% satisfied with your creation. Without going into length and detail of all the reasoning why I believe you shouldn't really care about who will listen to it and the way they will interpret it. That's not to say you shouldn't be aware that other people may or may not listen to your output.

So that's what I try to do is make sure I'm 111% satisfied(I've currently only hit about 99.99% contraceptive ratio satisfaction) in reaching the maximum potential of given projects. I've tried pretty hard to be able to flip the switch whenever I want to try and interpret music as the listener and the creator which is completely different perspective.

If I'm not loving something I'm working on I don't even think about considering it even a rough draft until I'm satisfied so I rarely go back and listen to a near completed track where I don't like the idea's. (but production quality and making sure the performance's are giving the ideas its full potential are a different story and:Sometimes it's very difficult if near impossible to complete something to its full potential without taking sometime to disconnect((in situation's were you have to completely re haul/recreate a project))

I don't think it's actually humanly possible to *ever* be more than 99% content with anything you've created.

It's the nature of seeking perfection that one only ever ends up hearing flaws.

what about 99.2%?

  On 2/3/2010 at 10:32 PM, BCM said:

what about 99.2%?

Stop with this Pitchforkian decimalisation of everything. It's not natural.

I basically just make demos all the time, really quickly to get the idea out. Then I wait four months or so & listen to them again. If one of those quick half-arsed sketches stands out as sounding good to me, I assume that means it has potential to be a really good full length track, so I go back to it & give it some quality & tenderness. Or something like that.

  On 2/3/2010 at 10:38 PM, Masonic Boom said:

Pitchforkian decimalisation of everything.

new snares album?

i used to smoke tobacco while listening and that worked well.

bobbing yer head to the beat, the whole way through can help i think

yeah it's been going on for a while

what i mean is a track needs a beat or just momentum the whole way through and head bobbing slash banging can help understand it

There's nothing worse than going back and changing shit.

  On 2/4/2010 at 1:20 AM, The Dark Lord said:

There's nothing worse than going back and changing shit.

waaaaaaaaaa?

  On 2/4/2010 at 1:40 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

  On 2/4/2010 at 1:20 AM, The Dark Lord said:

There's nothing worse than realising you need to go back and change shit.

fixed. especially relevant after you've spend ages and ages on your track.

to me that's part of the process, tweaking shit all the time

indeed you are a fucking lazy faggot if you are too annoyed to go back and improve your projects

  On 2/3/2010 at 10:31 PM, Masonic Boom said:

I don't think it's actually humanly possible to *ever* be more than 99% content with anything you've created.

 

It's the nature of seeking perfection that one only ever ends up hearing flaws.

Yes but also in the nature of seeking perfection is the desire to be able to look at things from different perspectives for maximum understanding. A good artist not only is never completely satisfied with his(women don't make art)((at best they sometimes are themselves art))(((you can only be half pissed off at my sexist statement))) creation.... lol.. an artist optimally should also be able to disconnect, not be an artist but a mere interpreter that can experience their output as unbiased as possible to fully learn from and appreciate their effort:in which it is possible to be 99.69% content... IMHO

Quality control ideas:

Try to bring a track to completion in one sitting. When you have a burst of creativity, only stop to gather more inspiration for moments. Turn your internet off. Turn your phone off. Just commit yourself. After you have left the zone, you will find yourself not wanting to twist anything about- but maybe go back to add adornments. Maybe you would like the track to carry out a certain section a bit more. Maybe you would like more of this synth and less of that drum. Or, just as importantly, more of this frequency and less of that one.

Do not waste too much time dillydallying with automation, reverbs, etc when you are in the studio. You are probably just pissing it up. If your track sounds cool when you're stoned and listening with headphones but intangible when you try to show your buddy on your laptop or in an upload, desaturate it. What might sound good in your synth den does not necessarily mean it's commercially prepared- much less ready to hit a club.

The biggest mistake you can make is to feel anxious in the studio. Remember that you have (hopefully) put countless hours into researching sound, equipment, technique all for the cause of your creative vision. Love that vision and chase that bastard!