Is a mix really ever finished?
How do you handle your self doubt when given a list of mix revisions?
For Shane, the same emotional sensitivity that makes him such a phenomenal mixer plagues his ability to enjoy his own work when he’s finished with it.
There are very few pieces of recorded music that I've been a part of that I've ever listened to after I was done with it.
I don't know if anybody else has that problem in the room...
...just me okay great...
But whether, and I know that it's totally psychological, but it's sort of... there's a cliche joke, there's a poet who once said that good poet good poems are never finished, only abandoned, and the reality is that recorded music is the same way.
And because of that, as the engineer, I probably picked the wrong career in terms of something to do for someone who doesn't have the most amazing self-esteem. Because a lot of your job is somebody telling you what you did wrong. Now I know that that's not necessarily how producer Andy would phrase that if he were bringing changes to me, and I openly admit and we have talked about this, I openly admit that that's not what he's saying when he says, “hey man could you try to snare up a db?”
What I hear is, “Dude you fucked up that snare, man.”
And you know, I'm being straight up honest with you, that you know, and especially in once the era of Pro Tools came and and mixing was my main job, when I'm mixing sometimes for two or three people a day, different artists whether it's actively mixing the song from from the first note or doing recalls because they've sent me an email or a text or a phone call to tell me uh what i did wrong/what needs to be changed.
However you want to look at it, so almost daily there's an onslaught of even if it's framed as nicely as it can be, there's an onslaught of what I didn't get right the first time. Now I do know that that's subjective. That there's a million ways to eq that snare drum. There's a million ways to position that vocal. There's a million ways to leave something in or take something out. I totally know that, but in the thick of it sometimes, for me most of the time, what you hear is here's what you did wrong. It makes it incredibly difficult for me to hit play and enjoy something after that.
So you know, are there records that have done really well? Yeah. Are there records that haven't done well at all that are artistically amazing? Yeah. but i couldn't honestly tell you that, “oh please go grab this because I kicked its ass because I don't honestly feel that way. And i can't hit play on most any of it.
Every once in a while, especially back when you could actually listen to the radio, you know something would come on and you'd be like four bars in, and then you’d be like, “oh shit, I did this!” That's cool, but that's few and far between.