live_tv
Livestream Starting Soon
00
Hours
:
00
Minutes
:
00
Seconds
Up next in 10
++ SONG-FINISHING CHECKLIST ++ (Finish more songs, faster!)
https://www.orpheusaudioacademy.com/mixingchecklist/
✏️ SHOW NOTES ✏️
As Leonardo da Vinci once said, "Art is never finished, only abandoned," and I couldn't agree more.
As both a novelist and a music artist, the struggle is real when it comes to finally deciding that your creation is "done", and releasing it into the world.
When it comes to music, you can always add or re-do a section, or tweak your EQ and compression settings until you can't even hear what you're changing (or did you accidentally hit bypass?)
That said...
What is the basic framework for knowing if your song is finished?
I cover that in this video.
⛓️ LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO ⛓️
🔗 Song-finishing checklist: https://www.orpheusaudioacademy.com/mixingchecklist/
🔗 Article version of this video: https://www.orpheusaudioacademy.com/song-finished/
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
Hey, so how do you know when your song is actually finished and ready to be released
0:11
Hey, I'm Regan Ram with Orpheus Audio Academy dot com, helping you make better music and grow your fan base online
0:18
Now, this is a big struggle for indie artists. I know it was for myself as well and still is to a certain extent
0:23
It's knowing when to finally let go of that song you've been working on and actually release it into the wild
0:29
There's always more you can do. There's always more you can tweak. You can always, you know
0:33
write a whole new course, write a whole new verse, or keep working on tweaking those drums a little
0:38
bit until they sound just perfect, right? And this is a common problem for artists really in any field
0:45
In fact, Leonardo da Vinci once said that art is never finished, only abandoned. And I'm sure you
0:52
can feel this way too. So you have to kind of have that mindset that the song, the music release
0:58
it's never going to be as maybe finished as you would like. There's always more you could do
1:05
but that doesn't mean that your song isn't finished and shouldn't be released. So with
1:08
that being said, let's dive into the five different ways or the five different checks
1:12
that you can achieve to know that your song is finished and ready to be released. So number one
1:18
your song is free from cringe inducing distractions. So distractions and just anything
1:24
that sounds bad or annoying is going to be the biggest barrier to actually having your
1:30
song finished. These need to be cleaned up for sure. So this could be harsh sibilance
1:33
like S sounds. It could be popping plosives like P and B sounds. This could also be digital
1:40
clipping or annoying breath noises from the singer or even incorrect timing with different tracks or even wrong notes being played So you want to make sure those are all cleaned up first And so when you listen to the song does anything like jump out
1:54
at you as being annoying or distracting? So you can perform the cringe test. And this is where
1:59
you listen to every second of your song. And every time you cringe, you fix it until you stop cringing
2:05
and start smiling. All right. The second check is listening for a well-balanced track. Is your song
2:12
well balanced. So this involves using a reference track. Make sure that you listen to other
2:18
commercially produced songs that are in the same genre as yours. So you can hear how well does my
2:23
song stack up with what's out there? How balanced is it with that other song? How does my low end
2:29
compare to its low end? How does my high end compare to its low end? And also just listening
2:33
to all your different instruments within your mix itself. And does every instrument have a place in
2:39
the spectrum? Can you hear every instrument or do certain sounds get lost at different times or
2:45
certain sounds getting too loud at certain points? So these are what you want to listen to and make sure this is all well balanced so that you know you have a finished track. All right, the third
2:53
check, this is a simple one, just is your song enjoyable to listen to? Do you find yourself head
2:58
bobbing while listening back to your track and is it making you feel the emotions and the feelings
3:04
that your song is designed to make people feel. If so, that is another check
3:10
A fourth check is feedback. So maybe consider having like a small group of friends or family
3:17
or just listeners that you know will give you honest feedback. The keyword being there is honest
3:22
And you send your track to them and you see what is their feedback. Is there anything that stood out to them as not being great and needing fix
3:29
This is kind of a great test, especially if these are people who are just like kind of regular listeners because they not going to have like kind of the trained ear that maybe you have not be as critical listeners but they will know if a song just doesn quite feel right they won be
3:44
able to quite describe it necessarily but you can kind of deduce from their feedback what maybe needs
3:50
fixed so getting feedback from people and if your feedback is great and people love the song that's
3:55
obviously another great check that your song is ready to be released now the fifth check the fifth
4:00
sign that you need to release your song is the deadline has arrived so obviously if you've set a
4:06
deadline for yourself and you've hit that deadline that probably means you need to release that song
4:11
and uh but more likely than not if you're an indie artist you probably don't have deadlines for
4:16
yourself and this is a big mistake because then you can just carry on working on the same song
4:22
or songs indefinitely and never actually releasing anything and sometimes oftentimes when you do this
4:29
you can edit a song to death and not really understand what you're hearing anymore you can
4:35
actually make your songs worse over time by over editing them this happened to me with one of my
4:39
albums i just worked on it over and over and over until everything just kind of sounded like noise
4:44
to me and i couldn't really distinguish anything and so i ended up just having to release the album
4:48
because i i kind of just was feeling like it was i was making it worse and part of me didn't want
4:54
to release it at all because i thought it sounded like trash but i released it anyway and it's
4:58
definitely not the greatest album in the world but um it's at least passable i think so it's out
5:02
there now and that's kind of a big achievement and one one of my songs is actually pretty popular
5:08
from that album at least one of the most popular songs for my fans so that's kind of a lesson is
5:14
just you need to release songs to progress and in the professional um commercial mixing producing
5:21
world you have deadlines that you have to work with and once that deadline you know you hit that deadline you kind of just have to release the song I saw this firsthand when my mentor was recording the band Hollis Brown and his studio I think they
5:35
had like just one week to record and mix and finalize their entire album just one
5:41
whole week so they were working all day into the night recording this album and
5:46
then mixing the album getting it done in just one week so the great thing about
5:50
having those short deadlines you don't really have time to lose your objectivity you can stay
5:54
objective and your ears don't get tired because you've everything's so fresh you get everything
5:59
done you get it released and you learn you learn as you go you keep improving over time so those
6:05
are my five checks for knowing if your song is finished and ready to be released now if you want
6:11
to finish more mixes faster then i highly recommend you grab my rapid song finishing checklist below
6:17
in the description of this video this will kind of walk you through a mixing and mastering and
6:23
checklist so that you know when your song is finished and ready to be released
6:31
now if you're wanting to finish more tracks faster then be sure to grab my rapid song
6:35
finishing checklist in the description below this video otherwise if you found this video helpful
6:40
feel free to drop a like and subscribe if you want to be sure not to miss out on any new videos
6:45
that I release on this channel. Otherwise, let me know in the comments below, what is the biggest
6:49
thing stopping you from releasing and publishing more music? All right, have a great day, and I'll
6:54
see you in a future video. Thank you
#Music Education & Instruction