The Art Of Embracing Imperfections In Your Recordings

When I got into digital recording I was hooked for one really weird reason: I could finally make a perfect recording!

With tools like Beat Detective, Elastic Audio, and even simple cut, copy, and paste I was finally working in an environment where I could perfect my songs and recordings. Huzzah!

For a Type 1 on the Enneagram (that’s a perfectionist if you care to know) the advent of the DAW was gift to me straight from Heaven.

But over the years I began noticing an interesting paradox: the better I got at perfecting my audio the more I felt something was missing. Some might say I was killing the “vibe” or “soul” of my music. All I knew was that after getting good at creating technically “perfect” recordings, I wasn’t happy with the results.

Today I’m much more loose with both recording and mixing and my music is sounding better than ever. I’m beginning to embrace the imperfections, and in fact come to love and appreciate them.

I believe that if you learn this subtle art, you too will see improvement in your recordings, while ironically they might be less perfect.

Photo by Matt Gibson

My Best Bad Habit: Over-Editing

The other day I was doing a live Q&A with some students and a question came up about audio bad habits. This person wanted to know what was one of the biggest bad habits I’ve had to break in music production over the years.

The answer was immediately clear: over-editing.

My obsession with making music perfect began with the editing features of my DAW.

I was the guy who would quantize drums 100% to the grid, perfectly every time. I would tune every vocal 100% to the pitch center. I was relentless in cutting out any and all breaths in the vocal. I could sniff out imperfections from a mile away and then obliterate them in seconds.

The results of this hardcore over-editing? Lifeless tracks.

I remember one day when I used to do a lot of vocal tuning for a cappella groups, I had a track sent back because it sounded too thin after I tuned it. I was perplexed.

I hadn’t changed anything tone wise. I simply tuned all the vocals to perfection.

Turns out – that was the problem.

By removing all the imperfections of slight pitch variance from track to track, I lost the subtle chorusing and thickening effect that happens. I had perfectly in-tune vocals that now were perceived as small and thin.

No Bueno.

I don’t know about you, but the editing tools available to us today are SO awesome that they are tempting to overuse (and use every time). I’ve had to develop the discipline to “see” the forest for the trees when editing.

Nowadays, I only edit what I hear as a problem or distraction. Not what COULD be better.

But embracing imperfections actually should start WAY before the editing phase. Ideally you keep imperfections in on recording day.

Perfect Recording? No Such Thing.

I recently filmed a simple mini series on how to record your acoustic guitar and vocals at the same time.

Obviously when it comes to using two mics in this situation the issue of bleed comes up.

Ideally you want as little acoustic guitar spilling into the vocal mic and as little vocal spilling into the acoustic guitar mic. The reason being, you want to be have as much control over the tracks later on in the mix phase.

Isolation is very helpful in this type of situation. And I showed people how to do this strategically with mic choice and angle.

But it’s easy to miss the point here.

The goal of recording this way is NOT to minimize bleed and get as much separation as possible. Rather the goal is go get a great sounding performance!

Big difference.

While isolating the two mics can give you more options to help aid your goal of a great sounding recording, it does not directly lead to it.

In the end, no music fan or listener will “hear” the bleed. They will only hear a guitar and a vocal. And it better sound awesome!

Bleed is a natural part of recording. It’s normal. It’s musical. It’s some times advantageous!

Of course, it can make mixing difficult. And I love control as much as the next weirdo. But it’s easy to get uptight over the wrong thing.

Minimizing bleed and getting perfectly isolated tracks is a means to an end. Not the end in itself.

Focus on putting the microphones where everything sounds good together and you’ll be on the right track.

The Mix Isn’t Done Until It’s “Perfect”?

Really briefly I want to address this issue of perfection in the mixing phase, because I think this is where many of us get tripped up.

Too many home studio owners are spending way too long on their mixes all in hopes of edging their tracks as close to perfection as possible.

I’ve got two things to say to this:

One, mixing longer generally doesn’t help – it only hurts. And two, there’s no such thing as a perfect mix. So why bother?!

Clearly we all want great sounding mixes. That’s why you’re reading my material in the first place is it not? To make your music sound as good as possible?

That’s a good thing.

But aiming at something that doesn’t exist is a fool’s errand.

Every great mix out there sounds different. Just open up Spotify or your favorite playlist of music and listen to 20 seconds of 10 different songs.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…

What did you notice? While they all sound good, they all have wildly different tones, balances, and even dynamics.

There is no standard of “good” or “perfect”. There’s just variety.

And that makes sense if you think about it. This is a piece of art we’re creating here. Not some math equation or science experiment.

As long as the song shines through, and the mix isn’t getting in the way of that, you’re done.

Now, I know you might want more concrete advice than that – so you can use this 4 step listening check process to zero in on what final tweaks your mix needs.

But you get the idea – every mix is imperfect in some way.

Being able to embrace those imperfections will allow you to deliver better art and move on with your life!

Imperfections Are Unavoidable (So Embrace Them)

The simple truth is this: all of music is about subtle and pleasing imperfections.

From piano strings, to guitar distortion, to tape emulation plugins, to reverb. It’s all imperfect and it’s all so cool.

Obviously we want to create quality stuff – professional stuff even. But it won’t be perfect. And you don’t want it to be.

You want it to sound good. That’s a very different thing.

So let me ask you: what is one area in the music making process that you are battling for perfection? Where do you need to loosen up a bit and embrace the art of imperfections in order to make a better sounding song?

Leave a comment below!