If you’re like me, you want to get better at recording and producing music. Most of us truly desire to increase in skill and ability and thereby produce music of high quality. So what do we do to accomplish that end? We buy more “professional” gear, join online recording debates, and watch a lot of tutorial videos on YouTube. The videos hopefully are helping (heck, I hope MY videos are helping you), but the first two are usually a waste of time. I have a better way for you…finish your projects.
Via Andrew Hurley Flickr
Unfinished Business
If you never complete a recording or mixing project it becomes very hard to improve your skill as an engineer. Let me explain. Because of the freedom of time and money afforded us by powerful computer recording we aren’t ever under any real deadlines. Therefore our tendency is to work on projects, never pronounce them complete, and then fiddle with something else. We’ll then come back to the original project and tweak some more. Sessions become a continuous work in progress.
However, if you instead force yourself to do your best with what you have and what you know, print a mix or master and call it a day, then you create a unique opportunity for yourself. You now have something tangible, that you created, that is complete, which you can evaluate and learn from. You can listen back and highlight what you think you did well (and would like to recreate in future projects) and what you did poorly (and how you would like to do things better the next time). This process of evaluation is so critical to growth as an audio engineer. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you will somehow improve without it.
Always Your Best Work
My wife is always hearing what ever projects I’m working as I tend to use her for feedback on mixes a lot. And if you ask her, she’ll attest to the fact that I’m always saying that the most current project I’m working is “my best work yet.” This should be the case! It may not always be, but really if you are completing projects and setting them aside, whether it is your own music or a client’s record, you have something to compare it to. You can look at your history of work and see how you have improved and what specifically has gotten better. This acts as a barometer for your ever improving skill as a producer.
Don’t Plateau
Whatever you do, don’t be “normal.” Normal home studio people buy a bunch of stuff, read a lot of other people’s opinions on forums (or blogs like this one), play around in their DAWs, are either overly confident in their skill or never feel like their stuff will get any good, and then they plateau. They never go anywhere from there! I don’t want that to be you. I want you to give every project all that you have, finish it, and then move on. The next time you produce music, look back at your most recent work and try to improve from where you left off. This, my friends, is the key to becoming a better engineer.
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
Ohhhh My Goodness!!!! I feel like you just stepped all over my toes with steel toe boots!!!! Man this is me! I am trying to do better, I really am. But I will buy gear like it aint nobody’s business!!!!! But never finishing a project. I am going to make myself finish something!!!! Thanks man, good post!!! Ahhh!!!
Dude, I know, it hurts sometimes. But you can do it bro!
Being fairly new to the DAW stuff, prior to finding your web-site I was ready to trash this software, the 1200 page pdf so-called manual did not explain a thing about how to operate any of the many functions and tools, so to go from making a bunch of jam sessions, to creating and finishing a 2-3 min. arrangement using the info from your tutorials, has been a total turn around for me. The great part is you offer advice to those of us on low budgets that we do not need all the high tech stuff to make descent recordings. So thanks for the info.
Dan – Thanks for the comment, so glad you found my site. I’m encouraged that I could help get you on your way to making music in your studio. You can do this!
Just wanted to say, I love just hanging out on the site and watching the vids !!!!
Thanks for this great, easy to understand information.
Gale – Glad you’re a part of what we’re doing here!
Mmmh… yeah… looks like you’re talking to me. It always takes me a lot to finish a song, from composing to seudo master, that most of the time I leave it before finishing, because somehow, in my head, with time piling up, my work starts feeling old and the original feeling is lost. I guess I need to be more disciplined.
Right now I have to record the voice on my last song. It has been like that for some weeks.
But then the fact of living in a small apartment where there’s never enough silence to record my voices doesn’t help…
Hi Graham,
I was just browsing (as you do ! ) and came accross your site,as a songwriter I’m always looking for ways to improve the way i record and mix my music,it was wonderful to see in your first article( The best spent $100 , was your Behringer B1) ,i purchased the very same and have been thrilled with the results.
I have a very basic set up ,Cubase SX , an E-MU 1212m soundcard ,Behringer Ms20 monitors ,Roland keyboard and various VST plugins.
I follow your ideal of finishing projects, but i tend to finish mine put them in the cupboard let them cool off then revisit a few weeks later(also get my good lady to have a listen ),sometimes i tweek a few things here and there ,mainly I’m happy with the result and just leave well alone.
I try to follow a set routine when mixing ,that mainly seems to work , for me that is !, it’s taken quite a while and a fair ammount of discipline but i enjoy what i do and get fair reults. I hope i have’nt rambled to much!
The best , Geoff.
Geoff, glad to have you on the site. Thanks for the comment!
I’ve been struggeling with some heavy procrastination this week, so reading this column has come just at the right time 😉
Thank you,
Tom