Knowing When To Make A U-Turn

Tool Thursday with Jed Hackett.

I just recently edited a track for a client... drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals, etc. As I worked, everything seemed to be falling into place quite nicely as usual. However, when I finished with the track something just wasn’t settling with me about it. Usually when I get that settled feeling I know everything is right. With this track I just couldn’t get to that point. Each part individually seemed to groove but the whole picture just seemed a bit off. When I went back to the original playlist I realized that even though it had problems, the underlying groove felt better to me. I knew I couldn’t just leave the track in it’s original state because it did have a jerky feeling to it that the producer wanted to fix, but there was something that had gotten lost in all of my tweaking.
I started comparing the two versions closely and decided to switch back to the original playlists on the electrics in the choruses, let some of the lead instruments and vocals rush a bit more and pushed some of drums fills. I ended up with a compromise between the original and the tweaked track. Once I did that I finally got that settled feeling and knew it was right.
When we dive into editing, or tuning for that matter, it is easy to lose perspective, even when we are aware that it can happen. When I finish a track I always go back to the original playlists and compare it to my tweaked version just to make sure I did the song justice. I usually find a few things that I like more about the original and incorporate them into the final product. I think the hardest thing to do as an engineer is to know when to turn around. There are plenty of times when we can use technology to enhance the music we work on, but we have to possess enough humility to know when we’re just messing things up.

See you next week,
Jed