Don't automatically edit audio tracks

When I first started getting projects to mix, the first thing I would do was to go into headphones, solo each track of audio in the song one by one, and edit the hell out of it. I would take hours on this, and I wouldn’t stop until every phrase’s beginning and ending was edited tightly and naturally.

It seemed like a smart thing to do! Like I was doing my due diligence, really working as hard as I possibly could on the project at hand!

Then in 2015 I started getting really busy, and I was super crunched for time. So, one day, I just started mixing a song, without first editing it.

And, you know what? It came out great. And I had saved a couple of hours! So that was one data point.

And then, a little while after that, I had a random situation happen where I had screwed something up with the waveforms on a guitar track and I had to re-import it. And two things happened: I lost all my edits, and the vibe of the song improved.

So I went back and forth between the previous edited version of the track and the new unedited version, trying to figure it out. And what I realized was that the low-level amp noise in the spaces between the phrases was acting both as a sort of glue and also as a sort of mood-setter. The background noise was providing an important context and atmospheric environment for the rest of the song!

And from that eureka moment forward, I abandoned my practice of compulsively and automatically editing the audio tracks in a song before mixing. Now I just start working on the mix, and if a track needs some editing or noise removal, I’ll address that on a per-track basis.

It’s great to be able to edit when it’s necessary — but, as with any audio tool, I shouldn’t be using it blindly or automatically, without consideration as to whether it’s an appropriate tool for the task at hand.

Never on autopilot — jamie