"Do or do not, there is no try"

Published: Tue, 08/04/15

I'm working with a very small group of people inside a group community called "Mixing With 5 Plug-ins."

The first assignment I gave them was to take 30 minutes to get a rough balance on their multi-tracks.

At MOST 30 minutes to get a rough mix going with volume faders and pans.

And I gave them a week to do so.

One of the students uploaded his rough mix in the nick of time to get feedback and said:

It was hard for me to find the 30 minutes this week. There is just not enough time in the day

To which I replied:

Dude that's no excuse. Finding 30 minutes in 168 hours should be simple. Did you watch 30 minutes of TV? Did you sleep 30 minutes longer than you needed? Did you scroll Facebook 30 minutes in the last week? Did you go out for 30 minutes this weekend?

Tough love is a b!***#

There's way more time in the day if you just focus on the tasks at hand and get them completed. I bet you waste hours thinking about mixing instead of actually mixing.

You wouldn't believe how much you can get done in 30 minutes if you just blocked out all distractions and focused on only mixing.

Of course, there's also another reason people don't put themselves out there.

Fear.

Putting your work out there is pretty terrifying. But not putting anything out ever is even worse.

It’s the people that take action and put their stuff out in the world that succeed. Everybody else just talks about what they could’ve done but didn’t.

That’s useless.

Things don’t have to be perfect every time. It just has to be made.

My philosophy of just putting it out there is incredibly well summarized by Ira Glass in this video.

If there's one thing you do today it should be to watch this video:

On Being Creative

I know my first recordings weren't good. I know my writing wasn't very good either when I started this blog years ago.

I totally know my mixes weren't any good.

But I knew what was good. And I kept putting things out there and they gradually improved.

My writing got better because I didn't stop writing.

My recordings got better because I learned from doing.

My mixes got better because I spent more time mixing.

So as long as I kept going and did what I really liked, I improved.

That's why I put all that stuff in the Recording & Mixing Strategies training materials.

That's the stuff I learned along the way and what I can give to help you out.

If you want ideas on what to do in your next productions to keep you going, hit the link below to check them out:

www.audio-issues.com/strategies

P.S.

I know I quoted Yoda in the headline but then didn't talk about Yoda at all. I hope you Star Wars geek will forgive me but I believe it summarized perfectly what this post was all about.