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Tech Sessions #3

Knowing When To Say When A Track Is Done
Whether you know it or not, if you are producing just about any form of popular black music (i.e. jazz and blues excluded), you are wearing more hats than most of your rock peers.

Where rock cats do their thing by more or less orchestrating an entire band of musicians towards a common goal, we not only handle orchestration of the vocal but we are in many cases, the band.

My situation is cool for today's topic because I am part of a production duo. Most of our solo tendencies to push the envelope too hard sometimes are sliced by the push and pull between us because we really are two dudes who think very differently from each other.

Certain arrangements or sonic colors can get yanked from either side because the other dude may see or hear something differently than the person that's trying to make it work. But that only applies to teams.

Two questions that we get asked a lot by solo producers are 'why don't people hear my vision enough to take a chance on me?' or 'how come people keep telling me that my stuff is too busy?'

Most of the time, these two questions are really the same question just asked two different ways. Ultimately, it's 'when is it time to say a track is done?' There is no cut and dry answers across the board but, most of the time, if somebody can't hear your vision it's because you did not complete your vision. The beat maybe hot and you may have a serious melody going but ask yourself this 'does the track sound exactly like it does in my head?'

If you are honest with yourself and the answer is yes and you still end up with the same results, no amount of asking the listener usually can help you unless they are an artist or a producer themselves. I left out the business side of the industry purposely because seriously speaking, they don't give a fuck about potential; they care about completed tracks that are either singles or strong album tracks that hold up the artist's public image.

It's not the listener's job to get into your world. It's your job to drag the listener into your world. There is a big difference between the two.

Now on the other hand, if you hear the word busy as much as your grandparents did before the days of call waiting, then you probably need to trim some fat.

Let that heater sit for two days and come back to it. You will be surprised how much extra shit you have laying on top of the song that doesn't need to be there.

A lot of us put down beats or tracks without vocals and that makes it very easy to cross the line between a track being too bare for people to "get it" and there literally be no room for a MC or a singer to come through and do their thing.

So when is enough… enough? If you are still excited and snapping your neck …keep going. If you have the basic elements down pat and you can't get that one certain thing to either sound good or sit right in the mix…let it go; and as quickly as possible.

When your ears get muddy and you start convincing yourself that something that had you jumping up and down four hours ago now sucks… leave it alone.

There really isn't a concrete answer because everybody has their own fine line. So let your feelings walk you through the process until you find yours.

Glover is one half of the Atlanta, GA based production squad The Audio Assassins which are founding members of The Elements. You can find them both at Audioassassins.com and theelementsinc.com

Message Glover and tell him when you know a track is done!

Glover

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