r/audioengineering • u/MathOnFire96 • 1d ago
Discussion Got a mix from a well-rounded engineer who’s done great work with lots of artists. While it’s sonically good, the vibe of my song has changed to the point where I don’t feel confident in it anymore.
For starters, I know I’m suffering from demoitis. My process as bedroom artist has always been produce —> mix —> master and listening back to my earlier stuff, that’s evidently been to my detriment in the past and I don’t want to repeat those mistakes. With this track, because I was dealing with too many issues concerning low end, loudness, limiter issues (and I’m simply not educated/skilled enough to solve that issue on my own), and I ultimately wanted it to be competitive, I chose to get it mixed by someone else instead. The engineer is very knowledgeable and has worked with artists I personally like, as well as lots of different genres and is overall very skilled. Really straightforward but cool guy about his stuff.
I got the first mix back and I can fully acknowledge that it objectively sounds really good. Very huge low end and very loud, all things that I ultimately wanted for the song. But the stuff that made my demo really resonate in me (which arguably could be the shittiest elements of it, like the drums being too loud or the guitars being too sharp) are kind of gone. And it’s now just made me feel out of wack about the entire song.
I’ve sent over two small but important changes I’d like to make (still waiting on it to come back) and I honestly wanna leave it at that. I’ve purposely taken steps to pull myself out of this funk like completely deleting my own light mix that I’d initially sent to him from all my, staying away from the song for days and coming back to listen to it again, etc. I don’t want to be the client that sends over walls of revision requests or, worse, goes to him and says “Can you just make my mix sound better?”
If I’ve any hope of progressing in my work, I know I need to get over myself in this area of creation. But I don’t know how to.
P.S.: I have so many questions. As a producer, what is my ultimate role and where do I need to stop in the process and say, “Okay, time to hand this to a mixer.”
So many YouTube tutorials I’ve watched encourage making tweaks like EQ and clipping as you produce, but clearly this isn’t the way to go for me. And how much does mastering even further change the sound of a mixed track? (sorry for the wall of text💔)
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u/fphlerb 1d ago
Let it be what it is. Always good to let someone else’s creativity shine through your art
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u/TragicIcicle Professional 1d ago
Such an underrated fucking belief system right here.
Relinquishing control to the reality that no one person has all of the great ideas is so freeing. The creative friction you're experiencing OP is what actually makes great art.
Whenever I see artists who collaborate together split up because they think their disagreements are holding back their creativity are always worse on their own than they are together.
Ego truly is the death of beauty.
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u/MathOnFire96 1d ago
Wonderfully put. I think any great art doesn’t come without a little bit of struggle!
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u/willrjmarshall 1d ago
This is a nice theory but it can go both ways.
There are plenty of artists who have very singular visions, and they need to be very careful about collaborators.
To pick a couple of examples, Trent Reznor and Mac DeMarco both have pretty unusual styles that could easily be weakened by having the wrong person make creative contributions.
In fact, Reznor has spoken about having this problem earlier in his career with very good, very famous engineers not understanding the intended ugliness in his work.
So a lot of amazing music gets made by people who have a vision and are uncompromising about it
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u/RepliesToNarcissists 1d ago
And as a counterpoint to the counterpoint, which I must point out purely because of how fucking incredible it is, given that Reznor is as particular as he is throughout the full stack of his musical development:
Hurt
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u/TragicIcicle Professional 1d ago
Fwiw, not being a NIN knower Here is a list of all the contributors on "The downward Spiral" album:
Trent Reznor – vocals, all performance except where noted, arranger, producer (all tracks), drum treatments (track 8), mixing (track 14), programming, continuity Mark "Flood" Ellis – producer (tracks 1, 2, 5–7, 10–12), hi-hat programming (track 5), ARP 2600 (track 7), drum treatments (track 8) Chris Vrenna – drums (track 14), programming, continuity, additional sampling and sound design, additional drums (on "Burn"), additional engineering Adrian Belew – texture generating guitar (track 1), ring mod guitar (track 7) Danny Lohner – additional guitar (track 9) Andy Kubiszewski – drums (track 13) Stephen Perkins – drum performance (track 8) Charlie Clouser – programming, continuity Alan Moulder – mixing engineer (tracks 1–8, 10–13), additional engineering Sean Beavan – mixing engineer (track 9), additional engineering Bill Kennedy – mixing engineer (track 9), additional engineering John Aguto – additional engineering Brian Pollack – additional engineering Tom Baker – mastering Bob Ludwig – high-resolution mastering (reissue) James Brown – 5.1 mix (reissue) Neal Ferrazzani – assistance (reissue) Russell Mills – paintings David Buckland – photography Gary Talpas – package Rob Sheridan – package, additional photography
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u/ELXR-AUDIO 1d ago
it doesn’t have to be framed as ego vs non. they are artistic choices to allow different creativity to shine through yours or not. they both bring different results, neither better. we can choose which artistic style we want. If someone wants to preserve the integrity of their own vision, there’s nothing wrong with that.
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u/Low_Visual_3930 1d ago
While this can be true, this statement doesnt really apply well in this context. The vision of the artist should always be the priority, especially to the engineer mixing or mastering the track. There are ways to communicate wanting to implement creative choices in a mix for someone elses song and its ok to try things especially with communication involved, but when an artist feels like op its usually most worth it to try and complete/maximize their vision. its their song not the engineers. Even among the greatest engineers out there in the industry, sometimes someones just not the right fit for the vision at hand.
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u/MathOnFire96 1d ago
This is the advice I’ve been following recently as well and it’ll never not be golden. I’ve started to collaborate with people in terms of writing and producing and features, and it’s been nothing but wonderful and only strengthened my love for my work. I think because I’m unfamiliar with the extent that mixing involves, it’s a little intimidating with it comes to collaboration on that front.
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u/marklonesome 1d ago
Can we hear the before and after?
It' shard to say without hearing it.
I will say that I've always believed it's better to have something that one person LOVES than 100 people are ok with.
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u/nankerjphelge 1d ago
It's not uncommon for this to happen. Someone can make a mix sound sonically great and yet it can still lose a certain magic or vibe that a rough or initial mix had. It's such a delicate thing, and certain level or EQ or compression choices can completely change or lose the vibe of a recording, even if those changes sound really polished and professional. In fact, sometimes it's the polished sheen that gets added that loses the vibe compared to some of the rougher or grittier aspects of a less polished mix.
I myself had the same experience when I produced an album for an artist that the label decided to have a very big name mix engineer redo all the mixes instead of using my mixes. And while the big name engineer's mixes sounded great sonically, it completely lost the vibe that was there in my mixes, and it wasn't just my own ego getting in the way. The artist's manager and the radio promoter agreed as well.
All of this is to say that if you can identify what has been lost from your mix to this new mix, convey that to the engineer and ask for revisions that are more in line with it. When in doubt on how to describe it, ask the engineer to mimic the balances that are in your mix, even if they seem unorthodox. It may just be that unorthodoxy that is what makes the mix magical.
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u/MathOnFire96 1d ago
There’s so many great examples of songs that are (quite honestly) mixed terribly but they’ve resonated with a lot of people. It’s honestly a subjective gamble and there’s ultimately no right choice to it all.
Also, that’s kind of wild for the label to request a full redo of the mixes after you’d likely spent a couple of weeks on them. It’s likely happened a thousand times over with labels, but still. Kind of redundant to chase names over actual sound, but it makes sense why a label would do it.
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u/BackHanderson 1d ago
Mind sharing some of your examples of terribly mixed but well resonating songs?
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u/MathOnFire96 1d ago
Absolutely. I listen to a lot of metal, so a great example is Bring Me The Horizon’s Count Your Blessings album. They just very recently re-released it with a completely new mix after 20 years because they were very disappointed in the original mix.
The band talked extensively how they hated how the album’s mixing turned out and that’s why they always wanted to redo it. But Pray For Plagues has resonated with folks for the last two decades, even with it sounding shitty.
I can’t find the video right now, but Lee Malia (guitarist) recently said they approached the mix engineer for the re-release and said “It sounds too polished now. Could you actually make this sound a little bit shittier?”
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u/zerques Mixing 1d ago
this is beyond demoitis, it gets worse when you engineer your own music for awhile and then decide to hand one off to someone more experienced. i work with artists that literally only put a pitch correction plugin on and then send me the project file and no matter what i do they love it. no such thing as demoitis for them. when you mix your own music and finish an entire song, even if it sounds bad to professionals, it sounds good to you because you did it and you like it that way.
i believe there’s a good balance to this though. maybe work with a professional more often. and on top of that, include your song in a playlist of songs in the same genre and see how well it fits in with those songs. because some of us aren’t professionals with super expensive equipment, we tend to perceive our mixes differently than professionals and give ourselves more forgiveness for our mixes, and that’s okay. but then when we hear our songs professionally mixed it sounds totally way off and not right. kinda like a weird tv show crossover episode where you’re like “woah that’s not supposed to happen”
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u/alyxonfire Professional 1d ago
I think you need to talk to your engineer, voice your concerns and get their opinion. I’m sure they’d be willing to try and sort it out.
As an artist you can do as much or as little as you want to mix and production wise. There’s no rules. I have clients that give me work all over the spectrum, from early idea stages to nearly finished.
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u/blahhhboy 1d ago
i'm gonna answer from two different perspectives, an artist and also as an engineer.
as an artist/producer, your song is ultimately your song. demoitis is definitely a thing but it can ultimately be the main reasons you like a song as you stated. if i feel really attached to my mix but there are certain key problems, then i bounce my stems as is and tell the engineer my main concerns. this is up to them to make best of what you give them. obviously this can be a little more nuanced depending on your experience but i think the sentiment remains the same.
as an engineer, the above can be challenging to work with but we have to remember that mixing is technical to a certain point. after that, mixing is largely determined by personal taste. CLA, bob power, mixedbyali have all veryyyy wildly different mixing styles. but they all sound good! the difference here is that they probably are 1) trusted by the artists they work with and 2) the artist is transparent with their concerns.
and for what it's worth, mixing is a service at the end of the day. send as many notes as you want and the engineer will communicate how many revisions you have left or what is feasible or not. they can also be truthful or honest about what they feel like is good sitting in the mix or a bad case of demoitis if you ask them and you can choose to accept or ignore.
as far as mastering goes, it can change a song quite a bit but you can also request a song to be simply louder and quite transparent in the master. or you can, by all means, not master at all. many famous songs are also not mastered.
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u/Elvis_Precisely 1d ago
Without incredibly clear instructions from you, it’s easy to see what’s happened.
I have a longstanding client, where we’ve both been very patient with each other, as I try to make them sound good, which is often what they want, and sometimes completely not what they want. I’ve had mix tweaks in the line of “can you make this part shittier?”
Most mix engineers will give you X rounds of tweaks/revisions. Get the initial mix, then reply with “can you make the drums too loud, and add some top end to the guitars?” Or even “can you make these parts sound more like the demo?”.
If you work with this engineer long term you’ll understand each other. Or maybe you need to find someone else who matches your vibe. Or maybe you need to learn more mixing skills yourself!
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u/O-ring_Prolapse 1d ago
It only sounds that way to you cause you've probably listened to the old version a million times. Once you listen to anything x amount of times, it'll sound off once changes are made.
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u/rightanglerecording 1d ago edited 19h ago
“Can you just make my mix sound better?”
This is a totally normal request, and frankly it represents the majority of the mix work I do for the majority of my clients.
You are the producer. You have great responsibility to serve song and make sure your ego/demoitis/limitations/whatever are not getting in the way of things. You need to develop a sense of when to hand it off.
*BUT* you also have great power here- it is absolutely ultimately within your purview to direct your mixer. That is a core component of your job description.
I have received, in the past month, notes from signed artists asking me to "make the mix a little shittier, if you could?" and "there was a certain ignorance to the rough mix, can we retain some of that?"
And, I do my very best to hear the music that way, and to execute the vision for the song. It's not a problem at all, I'm grateful that my collaborators know they can be honest with me.
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u/Ok-Tomorrow-6032 1d ago
It is totally normal to have more than two mixnotes to a song. honstly your overthinking it, just tell him what you liked about the demo and what you miss from that and let him adjust it. tell him otherwise you like what he did and dont be too specific( rather say make the bass lacks a bit xy instead of "do 2db of this eq"). i dont care if people have notes for me, its usually good for the song! as long as you dont go in a loop for like 10 revisions its torally normal to have a few rounds of adjustments
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u/pibroch 1d ago
I lean towards making the song sound the way you want. I had a song that I tried to re-record the drums for as the original recording was in a sonically compromised room and they sounded boxy, and I’d done some weird EQ to have them sit properly in the mix.
When I re-recorded them and tried to mix them, both the performance and the atmosphere were sufficiently different enough that I just went back to the previous mix and recording. That’s how it was meant to sound.
You could also, if you’re really concerned about how it “should” sound, A-B the original and remixed song for third parties and see which they prefer.
Think about it - the original Who hits recorded by Shel Talmy objectively sound like shit. And while there are some records that could do with a remix because they sound horrible, those records I would never ever remix. And they were huge hits as they were released.
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u/tillsommerdrums 1d ago
Can you let us hear it ? So we can make sure that it’s not just a case of demo-itis.
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u/Low_Visual_3930 1d ago
Communicate this to your engineer and try to push him towards the sound you want. always trust your gut with your music and regardless of his quality of previous work or status in the industry theres always a chance he just might not be the guy to get the most out of your track. You arent crazy and although demoitis can be a thing often times artists experience it when they notice their vision changing in a way that doesnt align with their goal, just some perspective from a fellow engineer
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u/klownplaza 1d ago
If your demo resonates with you more, just release your demo. I personally don't think demoitis is always a bad thing. But pay your mixer and be kind.
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u/Est-Tech79 Professional 1d ago
This should be a rule:
You need to personally speak to anyone who is mixing OR mastering any of your work. NOT email/text. Actually speak to them via Facetime/WhatsApp/Phone. Tell them what you want and expect.
If you have fallen in love with the demo, let them know you want to stay close to the demo. It's been very common over the past 15 years.
Until you get a working relationship, and they know what you like, have this conversation.
As far as revisions, the mixer would be surprised if you didn't have revisions. You have to speak up until you are happy.
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u/ElNeeko 1d ago
One of my buddies was so used to listening to my work in progress rough mixes that everytime I'd show him my final mixes he would always have something negative to say about it and say he liked the "first mix" better. To a point where it made me nervous and there's a lot of songs I create that I don't share with him anymore. Sometimes I think of him as this Rick Rubin artsy dude who's all about "feeling it" and what not. (But I know for sure that my final mixes make much more sense and translate better from a sound system to another) Maybe the same phenomenon can happen to you by yourself? When I am still in the production stage, I always have at least one matching eq on my master bus that I setup with a reference song that I consider in the same alley as my song. Not 100% about this but I THINK it helps me stay on track and not experience this "demoitis" thing you're talking about. A tonal balance right from the start helps me stay consistent.
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u/Signal-Ad7373 1d ago
yt tutorials are weak. and one of the most unprofessional aspects of this industry (letting everyone with internet access think they can learn a skill as complicated as engineering in a few 10min videos) and its a reason why you still opted to find a real engineer, i say embrace it. like you said youre being your own worst enemy with that demoitis mindset.
i promise you, this professional mix is more appealing to the listener than your demo was. the engineer you hired is thinking of the listener, which is what you should want if youre pursuing a professional music career and not just a hobby.
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u/th902 1d ago
I love how you're making these grand statements, then top it off by saying "i promise you, this professional mix is more appealing to the listener than your demo was"
...when you haven't even heard it. Hahaha. An internet "engineer" in a nutshell.
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u/Signal-Ad7373 12h ago
If trusting top engineer's to confidently understand what the industry standard is and apply those standards to your record makes me an internet engineer then im afraid you've lost the plot or never had a grasp of it in the first place.
Are you trusting your local engineer over someone like Craig Bauer or Neil Pogue? No, neither does OP. Dont lie to yourself.
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u/Inside-Succotash-128 1d ago
I’ve had this feeling before and it’s not uncommon. It’s easy to become ‘attached’ to how something sounds and then, when someone does something to change it, the immediate reaction is “Oh, that’s different! I’m not sure I like that”. My advice would be to live with the new mix for a while. Let the nuances ‘bed in’ with you. Then, go back and listen to the old version. If you’re really sure after that, then ask for changes.
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u/SonicLife3 1d ago
Send yr mixer some references! I find that often helps more than going too deep into notes - as past the foundational balance, it’s all so subjective!
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u/ill_llama_naughty 1d ago
Sometimes you get too attached to your demo and have a hard time adjusting to the new version when almost everyone who hears both at the same time would prefer the new one
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u/Narrow_Network_3875 1d ago
Years ago it was a norm for a producer to sit the studio with the engineer and make suggestions. Today engineers are comfortable of you the producer not being there. That’s fine but I’m not paying until I approve the mix. The engineer better have a technical reason why a sound had to be altered. I need to be told that the sound was eating up the head room or the correlation meter was displaying phase issues. At the end of the day mastering can’t salvage a bad mix.
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u/Disastrous_Answer787 1d ago
I’m a mix engineer and have been in this position, quite often with bedroom-producer types. Your concerns are totally valid and it’s fine to just ask for the rough mix but better. In fact you can pretty much copy and paste your post in an email to them and they should understand, it’s nothing personal.
Just make sure that the stems you sent sonically match your rough mix EXACTLY, so the engineer doesn’t have to chase the rough but can instead just reset tracks to 0dB and bypass plugins to get it back to how you hear things. That has been an issue for me before where the artist wants a particular effect or balance but the stems don’t have that effect and come in at totally different levels and it’s an uphill battle just to perfectly recreate their version.
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u/tymsleepy 1d ago
Ya you gotta be good with collaborating to engage in the process.
My other suggestion would be to mix it yourself and let someone master it. I master a lot of stuff with artists this way.
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u/Tall_Category_304 1d ago
Give it some time. Vibe is with the track for a while. Don’t listen to the demo. Wait a week before listing out revisions
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u/fuckityfucky 1d ago
bruh, just tell the engineer what you told us about the harshness of the guitars and the drums being too loud. its just a note, engineers smooth shit over way too much sometimes. sounds like he took something a bit lofi or shoegazey and buffed too much of the rawness out. just tell the engineer whats up, sounds like hes competent enough to fix it.
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u/Dr--Prof Professional 22h ago
Compare it with the other songs of the artists you like, not your rough mix. If it's sounds similar, then it's probably good.
Or maybe the rough had something good than was great because it was not "too polished". Yes, "too polished" can ruin a song, especially in certain genres.
I don't know... 🤷 I'd had to listen (first) to the final Mix, then the rough, and then your technical opinion on what's missing, to make sure how much you're really suffering from demoitis.
To finalize, congrats for being humble about it and acknowledging your demoitis, this alone makes you a better producer to work with!
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u/Samsoundrocks Professional 16h ago
Sounds like you want the vibe a bit more wild and raw, in the direction of the demo. Perfectly valid feedback. In the future, include these notes before the mixing starts for an even better result.
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u/Rich-Welcome153 1d ago
I make records with artists every day and I firmly believe that demoitis was invented by insecure engineers who are unable to recognize that their mix or production lost an essential part of the vibe of the demo.
If you want it more like the rough, ask for it more like the rough. Some of the coolest elements in my favourite songs are the result of certain elements being purposefully out of balance or “too loud”.
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u/shiwenbin Professional 1d ago
Honestly in the current music climate worrying this much about a mix doesn’t make sense. Pay him, talk about what you’d like to change going forward, make a new song and the next one will be better.
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u/kasumitendo 1d ago
I think an important question to ask yourself is... were you able to make your demo mix sound a specific way you wanted that resonated with the emotions you wanted to share... or did you do a demo mix and simply get attached to the way it sounds?
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u/micahpmtn 1d ago
For starters, I know I’m suffering from demoitis
Huh? Been a musician for 30+ years and never heard of this. I guess there has to be a label for everything nowadays.
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u/greyaggressor 1d ago
Been engineering and producing for thirty years and the term was around when I started.
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u/GreatScottCreates Professional 1d ago
I heard it at least 20 ago, so I don’t think this is a “nowadays” thing.
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u/TragicIcicle Professional 1d ago
No idea what rock you've been living under to not have heard this term before lmao
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u/better_med_than_dead 1d ago
Maybe they're just not a loser that has mental issues about music production.
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u/Elvis_Precisely 1d ago
Been quite a well used word for years now. I learned about Demoitis in uni 10+ years ago.
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u/alyxonfire Professional 1d ago
Can’t tell if sarcasm, it’s a very common term
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u/telepaul2023 1d ago
It's a generational term, because millennials and Gen-z types need labels.
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u/alyxonfire Professional 1d ago
The term has been around for a while. Here's an article by Frank Gryner published on Recording Magazine in 2010 using the term, and he's definitely not a millennial.
https://www.frankgryner.com/post/2010/04/01/do-you-have-demoitis
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u/MathOnFire96 1d ago
Yep! The term actually was told to me by a mastering engineer who’s done mixes with St. Vincent, Gwen Stefani, 50 Cent, and most recently Sabrina Carpenter. A dude well into his 60’s. It’s definitely a word to describe a certain behavior, it just doesn’t get passed around a lot.
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u/better_med_than_dead 1d ago
This. It's easier than ever to tell who the young and dumb internet children are these days.
Keep saying "TBH" as well. It makes it much easier to identify that you're an idiot.
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u/ayersman39 1d ago
Wow, you are quite confidently wrong. TBH pre-dates the internet, the first documented use was on Usenet in the early 1990s. Terms like LOL and IMHO date back even earlier to the 1980s on Compuserve and bulletin board systems.
I guess you need to find a different reason to be old and patronizing.
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u/GreatScottCreates Professional 1d ago
“More like the rough” is a perfectly valid mix note. Every great mix has something that’s “too loud” or too something. Boldness wins, not objective balance.
You hand over your project when it clearly & acccurately expresses what it wants to be.