To varying degrees, many of us are holed up in our studios for significant amounts of time. We can achieve a lot by ourselves – developing our mixing and listening skills, maybe playing a few instruments, creating great sounding music.
At times, though, we're too close to our music and can lose objectivity. After we've set the room reverb for our drums and have listened to the mix a number of times while we're working on other areas, the reverb can simply become part of the way the song sounds – it's easy to not reflect on it further if it's not really pushing for attention. This is where a fresh set of ears can come in handy – another person may comment that the reverb is too bright, may provide a perspective we hadn't considered. Of course, they may not comment on the drum reverb, which could well mean it sounds fine (depending on who the feedback is coming from).
As with many things, clarity is important. Which aspects of your song(s) do you want input on? Who is going to provide this input? The ideal person to provide feedback on your mix is:
A very experienced producer/ mix engineer
Someone who is very familiar with your specific sub-genre
Someone who cares more about great sounding music than tending your ego
Someone who, in addition to criticizing, will suggest specific techniques to improve the mix
Friends and family, even if they're “easily accessible”, are often not the best sources for self-improvement, since many times they don't fulfill many of the above criteria. There's not much you can do with comments like “Wow, it sounds like real music” or “that's a cool guitar sound!”
Music Forums can be a good source of feedback, though there are drawbacks. Sometimes nobody may bother to provide feedback. Sometimes the only feedback you'll get is of the “friends and family” variety. Some forums are too broad – it's rare to find a forum dedicated solely to a single sub-genre. This means that you may be aiming for a particular type of, say, Death Metal, but get feedback from people who are into a different type of Death Metal. This can make it hard to work out whether their feedback is relevant to your song, or whether it reflects their personal biases. It would be great if every “feedbacker” provided examples of their own work so this could be taken into account. This would certainly help to find out which people are only just beginning to create and mix their own music, who have a lot of development ahead of them before they begin to make halfway listenable music. Frequently these people have no qualms about providing a lot of feedback about many aspects of your mix, as well as suggestions as to how things could be improved. Taken at face value, this feedback can be downright dangerous and actually set us back in our progress. In the end, it's up to each of us to decide what to do with the feedback we receive. If a consistent pattern of feedback emerges, it's more likely there's an issue there (though not necessarily, some people will only comment on something when someone else has already mentioned it). If only one person singles out an aspect, potentially it's not so serious (though again, not necessarily – maybe this one person just took more time to listen to your song in detail).
As important as the person providing us with feedback is the way we ask for this information. Sometimes it may be fine to say “Here's my new song – any comments?” People may reply along the lines of “Cool Hendrix wah on that guitar, dude” or “wtf is up with those lyrics, lolz”. Those comments may well be helpful (and may well stop us from writing lyrics for a while if we were already a bit insecure about them) but if we actually wanted to find out whether our bass sounds okay, since we're a bit unsure about it, then we should be more specific. We could either ask directly about the bass, or (if we feel that shining a spotlight on it before people actually hear the song may lead to skewed opinions) ask if there are any instruments which don't fit quite right and see if the bass gets mentioned. Maybe we'll find out our bass is fine, and it's just our dreadful kick drum which is making it sound like that.
In terms of getting specific, there are a few main areas we could be seeking feedback on:
Engineering (how the mix sounds – relative instrument levels, panning, EQ)
Arrangement (whether the song is too cluttered, or too bare)
Structure (the flow of the song, how it transitions from one section to the next)
Production (Instrument selection/ sound design, automation, special effects)
Composition (Melodies, chord progressions)
Playing technique (where relevant)
Maybe we want feedback on all of these, in which case a broad request for feedback may well suffice. But it pays to think about which aspects of our song we're most unsure about and direct our feedbacker's limited attention there.
Hopefully the above information is also helpful when it comes to providing feedback. All the same concepts apply, just from the other side of the equation. We should be aware of our own biases, the kinds of sounds we prefer. We should refrain from providing extensive feedback in sub-genres with which we're unfamiliar. When we are unfamiliar, we should admit this, to give our feedback some perspective. The same goes for when we have limited experience in mixing a particular genre, or we're aware that our own music has serious limitations. When we criticize a song, we should be able to offer suggestions as to how the song could be improved. This is much more helpful than simply criticizing. It should rarely happen that we say something like “those background vocals just sound odd, but I can't really think how to improve them, or what they could be replaced with”.
I hope that in time a number of skilled producers and engineers offer feedback services on www.InsideMixes.com. This should alleviate some of the drawbacks of anonymous, free forum feedback. We will be able to specify exactly who we want our feedback from (after listening to examples of their work), within what time frame, what they should focus on, and to what level of detail. In short, ideal feedback!
Keep making great music!
Fabian
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