Striving for Perfection

Those of us who are suitably obsessive aim high. We try to create songs where both the music and the mix will knock our listener's socks off. Songs where we've held nothing back, where every decision we made improved the song and led to perfection.

As long as we have a good relationship with “perfection”, this mindset is very desirable and helpful. We want our listeners (as well as ourselves) to enjoy our music as much as possible.

However, when our relationship with perfection causes us to never share our music, to feel bad when we fail to meet our high expectations, it stops being useful and can ultimately lead to us withdrawing from creating music.

The thing is, perfection can't be measured. We can listen to a song and appreciate how beautiful the music is, and recognize how great the production is. But there's nothing in the song which we can point to and say “that's perfect”. Or, to look at it another way, there are many things we can point to as examples of perfection, but none of them couldn't be replaced by something else which is just as, or even more, “perfect”.

Perfection is a direction, not an endpoint. When I create music, I do it to the best of my ability, then I let it go. Could I come back a year later, with more experience under my belt, and adjust the reverb on my lead, or nudge the kick drum up slightly and end up with something which sounds better? Absolutely. I doubt there's a song in the world which can't be improved upon in some way. We can listen to a song with a great mix of sounds and see it as something set in stone – which it is, by the time it reaches us as listeners. However, the stone could have been set quite differently and we'd be none the wiser. Perfection has many forms (or none!)

What's true for the song is true for individual instruments or sounds. When I started mixing I obsessed about finding “perfect sounds” - I wanted to have the “perfect kick”, the “perfect bass”, and so on. Maybe I thought that once I'd found all these sounds, I'd simply slot them together and have “the perfect song”. I never ended up finding them all, and in any case, this line of thinking is nonsense. Finding “the best” sounds in isolation practically guarantees an impressive mess when we try to somehow mash them together into a song.

Sounds in a mix only have meaning in relation to each other. An instrument is loud because other instruments are quiet. A sound is hard because other sounds are soft. An arbitrarily unexciting kick drum can sound fantastic in the right context. A snare which stands out can sound great, as can a snare which blends in. Basses with clear, defined high end can work well, as can basses which occupy only the bottom end. I've sometimes been surprised to discover that two very different sounding kicks in two of my songs are in fact the same sample. Because of the other sounds, one comes across in a more defined, hard-hitting way, the other in a smoother way which blends into the mix more. Sounds only have meaning in relation to each other.

Perfection is a great motivating force. It feels exhilarating to put in the effort and end up with a great sounding song. As long as we allow ourselves to do our best, as long as we don't second guess our decisions and always hold our options open because we feel “the perfect lead sound is just around the corner”, striving for perfection will keep us improving every day.

Keep making great music!

Fabian