Does anyone else suffer from perfectionism?

D

DAS19

New member
I havent recorded any of my music for about 2 or 3 years. I play probably every night and every night I go to sleep thinking about my songs. I am afraid of recording my songs for fear of them not being the best that they can be. I want to be able to bring to life what I hear in my head but that can be hard to do especially when I am not the most expierenced audio engineer. I am currently in my second year of college minoring in audio recording technology and record bands constantly. I find it much easier to record other peoples music.

Does anyone else have a similar problem? Any words of wisdom to get my out of this. I really need to just bite my tongue or maybe push the button is a better analogy.
 
About 3-4 of my homies rap and one of them always takes hours and hours to write and record his shit and if he can't get it "just right" he says its going to be perfect or nothing at all and he will quit. At this point he has about 2 songs and everyone else has dozens. So he gets more and more obsessed with perfection and ends up losing focus on what he's actually trying to do, which is make good music. No matter how good of equipment you have you can't get better without practice and experience.

Just record some shit and go with the flow. If you don't like how something sounds, rewrite it, tweak it a bit, do what you gotta do. I bet all of your tracks that you thought were awful, other people would be interested in. Use the songs as motivation, inspiration and as reflection of to the improvements you will make along the way.

make it happen
 
DAS19 said:
I havent recorded any of my music for about 2 or 3 years. I play probably every night and every night I go to sleep thinking about my songs. I am afraid of recording my songs for fear of them not being the best that they can be. I want to be able to bring to life what I hear in my head but that can be hard to do especially when I am not the most expierenced audio engineer. I am currently in my second year of college minoring in audio recording technology and record bands constantly. I find it much easier to record other peoples music.

Does anyone else have a similar problem? Any words of wisdom to get my out of this. I really need to just bite my tongue or maybe push the button is a better analogy.
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You know, I've been thinking the same thing. My band is halfway through recording in a decent studio with a great engineer and is sounding really good, imo at least haha.

The weird thing is, the songs we know the best and have the most solid vision for what they should be, are not really doing it for me. They are pretty much note perfect, in time, well recorded, great sounds, but meh; it's not what I had in mind for some reason I can't express.

But the songs that we just wrote to record and didn't really have any idea what we were doing (lots of it was changed on the fly and I ended up playing parts for the first time to tape more often than not) - they sound awesome. It's like we never knew they could sound so good.

Perhaps there is a problem where you construct too vivid a concept of what you "need" to hear, it clouds your thinking to all other possibilities. It's like a lot of things, like golf even, where if you're thinking too much about all the little aspects of your swing, making sure you don't slice it, making sure your head is down, blah blah blah, all these little rules and things you should do and things you shouldn't do, and you lose sight of the fact you're supposed to get the ball in the hole.

Maybe just record your songs as best you can. Listen back, if they aren't good enough, identify what you don't like, re-record it? And again, and again.
 
DAS19 said:
I am not the most expierenced audio engineer.
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That's simple enough to fix. Just practice. Record your stuff. Maybe post it in the mp3 mixing clinic here or other similar places to get feedback, and you'll get better with time.

You don't even need to let anyone else hear the songs, just so long as you're practicing your engineering, you'll improve.

Granted, that won't fix your perfectionism. :D but it ought to help with your confidence in your recording abilities. And once you're more confident in you abilities, you may be more confident in the recordings themselves.
 
Perfection

Yeah I think a lot of people have a problem with that in various degrees. The other posts have really good ideas. Here's how I've managed to get stuff done:

I typically dont like anything I initially put down.:eek: Sometimes I'm able to finish through a song in a few sessions and be done with it but sometimes I can spend months on an entire part. What helps me is to realize that I have plenty of other music I can work on. I can break away from what's bogging me down on one song, by working on another. By the time I know it I have scratch work done for 10 songs. By the time I go back and listen to the first song I tried getting right, enough time has passed by that I can almost look at it again with a fresh perspective. Sometimes stuff that bothered me before doesnt at all now. Sometimes new ideas come rushing in after taking some time off. The main thing that gets me though it is thinking that they are always works in progress and me putting it down doesnt mean thats my final version. But simply getting down the idea gives you a framework to work with. Anyways, thats my 2 cents. Good luck.:D
 
I keep working....

....on a song until I am sick of it. Then I stop and call it done. I am NEVER completely happy :mad: with anything I record. Funny though, I listen to stuff I did long ago and haven't heard for a long time and it sounds pretty good. Recording is definately a sword with two edges. :confused: But it is WAY better than not recording.:o

Dave's Blog
 
Recording is humbling as it exposes all my playing inadequecies and Im forever redoing to try and make it sound better, on the flip side the enforce practice steepens the learning curve for both playing and recording
 
Thanks for the words everyone im slowly getting motivated to fire up the recording equipment. It just so happens my interface broke a couple of days ago and I will say that I dont recommend buying anything from tascam I expected my fw1082 to last more then four years it was 700 hundred dollars and within the fire year was experiencing problems. I turned it out a couple of days ago and its totally gone. The outputs are buzzing and I couldnt get any signal to the board. Life sucks sometimes.
 
...

Its human nature to be unsure about anything. It keeps us from walking off cliffs just to see if we can fly. Remember that a bad song or riff or piece of music will not kill you.

If you do not know how to handle criticism, music is not the hobby or business to B in, because someone wont like your whole GENRE of music, one girl will not like your dressing style, one guy will think your music is "too commercial". *shrugs*

put an MP3 on th einternet, and take criticism on the chin, then either work on it some more, or make another one. I personally thrive on criticism. I like to post my classical *attempts* on what are primarily hip-hop sites. WHy? Because if I get several, begrudging, "aw, that aint that bad..." responses, I figure thats pretty high praise.

If I wantd someone to rubber stamp everything and tell me how wonderful I am, I'd only let my mother and my old lady listen, LMAO

You gotta gt something "out the door", and you gotta do it constantly. get the criticisms, and then go right back and do it again.

I find myself working more and more on fewer and fewer tracks now. There's nothing perfect yet, thats not even an option, LMAO, but every couple of tracks, it takes another small notch up. Some times I am making "the same thing" even though each is different, then I get a jump. Then I stagnate again, then I get another jump up. *shrugs*

make as many things as you can, and look back and see your progress. Its inspiring. I have heard it said that some actors cant watch their own blockbuster movies until many years later. many musicians hate to listen to their own CD's. SOmeone once told me that directors only exist so someone can tell the actor "no", and that producers only exist to tell the musicians "yes".

I dont think any artist of any genre (acting, musician, sculptor, painter...) is ever really "satisfied" with ANYthing they have created.

*shrugs* post Mp3's all the time ANYways. Or your not moving forward, if only baby steps. Every so many baby steps, you take without knowing it, a larger than normal step, and get off of one plateau... which of course puts you right onto another plateau. Its the nature of anything.

I know I am a benchrest reloader, and we all joke about having OCD! We HAVE to, or we wouldn;t be any good at it. But... here and there, you find a guy spending a whole night on each round of ammo he makes. If he's not cutting holes, someone explains to him to get out and just SHOOT MORE.

I dont care if your reloading ammunition for target competitions, or painting portraits, or obsessing about an acting part, or making music tracks... there always comes a point where you get *diminishing returns* for the time you are spending.

One musician said his producer just "grabs" or "steals" songs without warning, LMAO. He said it makes him "queasy"... but, nothing would ever be "done" if it didnt happen.

Its ironic... many people in the hobby, wont spend any time on anything, they just keep making stuff, every day a new thing, but it never gets much better. Other people, will spend months obsessing over every aspect of every track, to th extent they dont get to do more stuff and grow.

The proper amount is somwhere inbetween, I guess.

A little or even a LOT of perfectionism is necessary... too much of the elixir is a poison, though. SOme writers spend their whole LIVES working on one masterpiece. Others are very prolific and make dozens or even hundreds of saleable works in their life.

*shrugs* its all about what your "musical OCD" can tolerate, I guess

make it, record it, play it out, let people on the internet or in real life check it out, take criticisms and try to put it all to good use on the next piece. SOMEone has to get a record deal SOMEtime, right? Its a lottery. each track you make is another "sweepstakes entry". You can enter as many times as you like, LMAO
 
perfectionism: ... all the time

It's all about accepting your ability and skill as your own.

I know i still have a song or two that need lyrics but I don't want to add them yet for fear or not being good enough.
 
I don't think I've been really satisfied with anything I've ever recorded (too much bass on this song, guitar tone on that song, etc. etc.). Other people who hear my recordings (and who's opinions I respect) think my body of work is decent.......so I suspect I'm overly critical of my own work.

However, it is better to write, record, critique and try to improve than to do nothing. Fear or self doubt can paralyze.......but the ability to break through is a challenge every musician (every person) must achieve.

I think any artist worth his/her salt should be critical.......but should also be realistic and learn to work within thier limitations. Any person should set high but achieveable expectations on themselves..........but should never be afraid to fail. Often the best art (or work in general) is the end result of experiance and gradual improvements learned from past errors.

So......just do it!!!! Each time you write, record, engineer, etc. you will likely learn something and the next efforts will be a little better.......repeat often enough, and you will learn where your strenghs and weaknesses truly are - and then you can use that knowlege to improve your art!
 
I'm new, but I'll add my 2 cents because I tend to be a perfectionist.

I'm not the greatest guitar player, and certainly not the greatest singer. I'll record things again and again until I can get them as close to perfect as I can. Perfect for ME that is. And as someone already said, I can go back to songs I've previously recorded and realize now that they're not as bad as I thought they were.

So I say, just do it. Record it, have fun and let it roll!
 
I seem to share a lot of similar experiences.

My concept of a song changes a lot as it is produced. I have this image set out in my head of how I want it to sound. If its not met to at least 80% then I am not happy. If its close, then I will send it round my friends/post it on the net, etc. There are only 1 or 2 tracks I have produced that I am genuinely 100% proud of. The others are good, and I am happy to release, but still have something missing.

It took me a while to get to the point where I could output something that I was happy with. I think it got to a point where I knew my equipment really well, so knew its limitations. From there, there is no point trying to make it better, and I cant afford better kit (yet).
 
I think someone up there hit the nail on the head. Most artist arent happy with their work but other people may view as perfect. In their eyes its far from perfect.

Im not sure if this really helps me or not but its still a nice thought.
 
I don't know if perfectionism is my problem, but I definitely suffer from the snowball effect. I'll do something, won't quite like it, then I will go out and spend $$$ to get the equipment to do it right, which never happens because there's always a better piece of equipment. Then I say to hell with it.
 
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