Dealing with artists while mixing on your monitors

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Nick Sevilla
on a wing and a prayer
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Post by Nick Sevilla » Sun May 11, 2008 12:36 pm

shaneoconnor wrote:i seriously ignore these people. and then play them the same mix on a car stereo or a home stereo. if they are still freaking out, well they arent actually listening.
They might one day seriously ignore you. but that's your choice.

If a client of mine is not happy, or wants to make changes to their music, I always do what they want.

No if's ands or buts.
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

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fossiltooth
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Post by fossiltooth » Sun May 11, 2008 2:29 pm

noeqplease wrote:
shaneoconnor wrote:i seriously ignore these people. and then play them the same mix on a car stereo or a home stereo. if they are still freaking out, well they arent actually listening.
They might one day seriously ignore you. but that's your choice.

If a client of mine is not happy, or wants to make changes to their music, I always do what they want.

No if's ands or buts.
I don't know.. I think both these statements are kind of on the right track.. but each are a bit too extreme.

We can't discount the artist's opinion, but we can't give in to incessant nitpicking and neurotic over-tweaking either.

Sometimes your interpretation is awesome and the client just doesn't get it at first. Sometimes the client's just got to sleep on a mix. If it's any good, and we can handle their ego well enough, they'll come around and see the light.

If not... then hey... Maybe there is something wrong with mix... or with the way that we're justifying ourselves...

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Nick Sevilla
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Post by Nick Sevilla » Sun May 11, 2008 2:39 pm

fossiltooth wrote:
noeqplease wrote:
shaneoconnor wrote:i seriously ignore these people. and then play them the same mix on a car stereo or a home stereo. if they are still freaking out, well they arent actually listening.
They might one day seriously ignore you. but that's your choice.

If a client of mine is not happy, or wants to make changes to their music, I always do what they want.

No if's ands or buts.
I don't know.. I think both these statements are kind of on the right track.. but each are a bit too extreme.

We can't discount the artist's opinion, but we can't give in to incessant nitpicking and neurotic over-tweaking either.

Sometimes your interpretation is awesome and the client just doesn't get it at first. Sometimes the client's just got to sleep on a mix. If it's any good, and we can handle their ego well enough, they'll come around and see the light.

If not... then hey... Maybe there is something wrong with mix... or with the way that we're justifying ourselves...
They might seem extreme... but I did keep them simple.

Incessant nitpicking is for the editing stage. Otherwise as long as the artist keeps paying, keep nitpicking away with them. But I agree that if the artist is only wankering about, cut it off.

And yes, sometimes they do come around. As an example, I recently got together with a guitarist that had discounted my mixes about three years ago.

He went and remixed the songs, spending about 10K USD on this venture, only to compare them to mine, and chose mine IMMEDIATELY over whatever he had done. He cried, as he exclaimed that he ahd wasted so much time and money. Hey it's not my fault he had done this.

I did not get offended when he did not originally like my mixes. In fact a mix is an interpretation of the song, just like an instrument, it can make or break the song. When an artist does not like what I do, I can either do a different approach, or if the artist wants a different type of mix, I can always suggest they go try someone else.

Cheers
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

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