I wrote this song years ago.

I ended up calling it "Beat Up and Broken."

It's a more intense title than the song sounds like and the title is derived from the bridge lyrics, which is unusual.

But anyway, I wrote this song in a hotel room in Yuma, Arizona. (Hotel Room in Yuma is another title for a song idea of mine incidentally...)

My wife had to go on a work trip to Yuma so I thought I'd tag along and get a change of scenery.

Turns out (and to be honest I knew this before I went there), there's not a lot going on in Yuma.

It was about 108° Fahrenheit so taking a walk in the desert was a surefire suicide mission so I ended up hanging out in the hotel room drinking beer, listening to Tom Petty and writing songs.

And at the end of the day I had a rough sketch of this song.

Emphasis is on ROUGH.

It was me singing through the laptop mic into Logic, with some drum loops to keep time.

But still, I thought there was something there so I kept it.

A few weeks later I introduced it to the band and once we had practiced it a few times, arranged all the different parts and ironed out the dynamics the song really came together.

Something that was a rough sketch of a song with just a guitar, vocals and some lyrics became something greater than the sum of its parts when you added a drum beat, a bass line, a lead guitar and harmonies.

That's why having a rough sketch, whether it's a song or a mix, is great progress.

If you've spent an hour on your mix and you've only gotten a rough mix going you shouldn't feel discouraged because it doesn't sound "professional" yet.

It's still a LOT better than it was an hour ago wasn't it?

You've gotten to the rough stage.

That's half the battle. You've made progress and things are starting to shape up.

If you've gotten that far with your mix you've probably heard something in there that you like. So even though it's not sounding like a Grammy Winning Record it doesn't mean you should abandon it.

Keep at it. That's my lesson for you today.

Björgvin.

P.S.

If you want to mix a version of "Beat Up and Broken" by yourself, (it's the fourth track on The Long Wait's debut album), you can get the multitracks inside the Mixing With 5 Plug-ins course where you learn to use EQ, compression, reverb, delay and saturation to make rough mixes sound even better than you ever thought possible.

Click here to check it out.