Blog #2 - Why You Shouldn't Worry About Having a Perfect Mix

There are many different factors that go into making a professional sounding beat. Although there are no set rules for how one should sound, as art doesn't have rules, there are certainly standards and guidelines. Having a good melody for a melodic beat and loud and aggressive drums for a more contemporary and "ignorant" style are what many producers strive for to make a good sounding beat. 

However, good mixing is the universal feature of all beats. If the drums are too quiet too distorted or if the bass clashes with lower frequencies of the melody, the beat may not sound as professional and will likely not be used or purchased. Different kinds of mixing works for different beats, but upholding the standards is important. Despite this, perfecting the mix is not an essential, even for experienced producers. Here are a few reasons why.

Most Listeners Won't Even Notice

As a producer, your ear is trained to hear all of the little things that most people wouldn't notice themselves. This causes many producers to overdo or over-perfect their projects. You need to keep in mind that most listeners will not notice these slight imperfections. To them, the finished work is what is correct, and even if they notice some slight distortion or clipping in the audio, this won't bother them. 

There are plenty of popular songs released by big artists that have crackling in certain parts of the melody or sections of the song. It sometimes isn't possible to fix everything, and even if it is, it is frequently not worth it. As creators, we judge our own work harsher than we judge the work of others. Sometimes, it is important to shift our focus to other avenues that can be improved that would actually make a difference. Slight mix imperfections are not detrimental to the overall quality of the product.

Most Beats Will Be Remixed Later Anyway

In many cases, the mix that you have created will end up being modified, adjusted, or just flat out redone later on. When artists work at studios, they have professional audio engineers work on the mixes of songs. It is very unlikely that your mix will end up being final.

Often, beats are rearranged or remixed due to a differing opinion of what sounds good, or simply because the artist's vocals don't sit as well with the mix you have created. Once the individual sound files of each sound used in the beat, or "stems," are imported with the vocals, the sounds are readjusted by professional mixing engineers.

As for beats that are sold online through a lease and don't come with the sound files split up, the mix will end up being final due to the fact that the buyer has no way of changing it. However, if a beat is leased, the artist is unlikely to be a professional in the industry, as a big artist would have purchased the full rights to the beat. Leases are usually taken advantage of by small artists who are likely to be less picky about the sound of their music anyway, so the mix won't be the biggest factor.

Music Has No Rules

As previously mentioned, there is no set rule for what sounds "good." There are guidelines and trends based on what is commonly done, but there are frequent cases in art when the guidelines are broken. The purpose of art is to create without boundaries. In fact, some songs are purposely mixed poorly, with crunchy drums and loud, distorted basslines. Create what you want with purpose and build off of what is considered the norm.