Imagine someone is starting learning mixing or mastering today. What's the one piece of advice you'd give them to help them succeed faster?

Hello everyone. When we say, “I’ll make a song,” it actually means a huge list of things that need to be completed. From the initial idea and arrangement all the way to recording, mixing, mastering, artwork, and release. Do you have some kind of project management system for your music projects? Life gets in the way. We step away from a project for a few days or weeks, and when we finally come back to it, do we really remember where we left off, what decisions we made, what still needs to be done, and what we were planning to do next? I’m starting to realize that making music is also about managing the project itself. Don't we have to become a professional project manager for our own projects? That's another hat to wear on top of being songwriter, producer, mixing and mastering engineer. But how do you manage your music project? "I'll make a song" and we discover: - maybe I should change the chorus - maybe I should add strings - maybe I should design the bass - maybe I should change the kick - maybe I should rewrite verse two - maybe I should add guitar - maybe I should have another version of mixing - maybe I should have three versions of masters Suddenly one month turns into six months. What's behind "I'll make a song": 1. Demo production: key, tempo, melody, lyrics, structure, arrangement, groove, mood. 2. Vocal recording and editing: comping takes, removing unwanted noises and frequencies, timing correction, pitch correction, sibilance control, breaths, gain consistency. 3. Auditioning sounds/sound design: kick and bass relationship, other instrumentation. 4. Mixing and mastering: foundation first, final limiter for foundation, vocal processing and spatial effects, other instrumentation around vocal. Just to capture a few... It turns out we make thousands of decisions, so how to manage such complex music production project? What really helps here? Due date? Braking down the whole project by manageable deliverables? Scheduling? And how about for growth like tracking issues, decisions made, and documenting lessons?

Another day that I genuinely don’t feel like making music and it feels like something that I have to do like a job. however, I still can’t shake this feeling that I belong in a Music world; is it just because I’ve been doing it for so long that I can’t shake this internal habit or do I have a calling? I don’t know!! just thinking out loud.

@Nick Allegro @Anthony S @Chris Georgiou With Nicks talented adjustment Input and Chris's input for the song and Anthony's Overdrive from Gateway has me back on track. The Gateway OD has that sweet spot I was looking for. Reminds me of what I was actually writing the song. Not perfect yet but now usable. Thanks all and always talk with your mentors and team members.

a few people asked for this recording, it's long so i'd probably start at 45 min in as that's about the time I figure out the melody/chords i'm using, then it builds quicker from there. also sorry for the bad audio quality, this was using Skool's "live meeting" feature which unfortunately doesn't sound as good as zoom replays. in the future for this stuff I'll be using zoom. let me know if you have any questions if you watch parts of it and want to dive deeper. also, I really like how this turned out, so I posted it on my instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dan7vcvvHYU/ If you share your music on socials, let's stay connected over there too - peace!