Dealing With Revisions

Dealing with revisions will always be difficult, but there's a few things you can do to minimize the stress. Here's the things that have worked for me.

1) I tell the artist up front that they get 3 mix revisions only. After that they get charged for each revision. More than anything this makes the artist think harder about what they want, organize their thoughts a little better and takes the "experimentation" aspect out of the equation.

2) All mix revisions have to be in writting (email), and come from one person only. It's fine if they call me, text me, or talk in person, but they have to follow that up with an email. Partly because I might forget a detail that seems trivial to me, but is huge to them, and partly to make them more organized and thoughtful with their wants/needs too.

3) I constantly have to remind myself that much of the stress with revisions comes from communication issues. The artist may not know how to tell you what it is they really want. They rarely have the vocabulary or understanding of the production process to clearly articulate what it is they really want. You need to spend a lot of time translation what they said into what they really want, which is often two different things.

4) There are two types of revisions, those that deal with actual mix issues (having a balanced mix, translation across different platforms, good solid low end, clarity, glue etc), and those that are purely stylistic/artistic (arraignment, timbre, mood/feel). Trying to decipher which is which is key.

5) I have to always check my own ego, because at some point I always feel like the artist asks for something stupid, I comply, and holy shit they were right! Seriously, about 50% of the time I find that artists requests actually make me dig deeper, do something out of left field I wouldn't have thought of and the song ends up stronger for it. The other 50% I am, most likely, right.

6) I think it was in that mixerman book where he said something like "the best defense against artists complaining, and asking for endless revisions is a great mix". I think about that alot. At some point you do have say and accept that turning out a really killer mix solves most problems.


Anyway, food for thought. Hope some of that helps. Remember that we all feel that same frustration, its part of the game. Hang in there because its worth it when you end up with a great finished product.

Hourly. The only way. You can be in your own space.  Why not?

Or....do a flat fee for the mix, and hourly for revisions.

There's no way I'm doing revisions for "free" - cause that actually encourages dumb, meaningless changes ad infinitum....

There are two types of clients. Those who trust your mix decisions and have small fixes to make - sometimes it takes 3 changes, which I’m happy to do.

Then you have the clients that consistently second guess themselves, which translates to them second guessing you, and they will pretty much never be happy.

So, for me, you get 3 mix revisions built into the price. After that you pay hourly.

I don’t give critiques on a clients mix revisions. My answer to “what do you think of the changes we made?” Is - I liked what I sent you as my mix. You can go hog wild and pay me to sit there and tweak away as much as you want. Doesn’t really matter to me at that point.

I’ve on 1 occasion basically had to tell the client I wasn’t their guy for a mix that was just NEVER going to be right to them. The type of client that would hand Bob Clearmountain a 2 page list of fixes. ...no thanks.

If as the engineer, you see things going south, and especially if you see the probability of a train wreck ahead, you should probably cut your loses before it goes off the tracks.  At some point, the quality of the product and your reputation have to come into play, no?

Looking at it from the client's POV. If you can create 2 pages of revisions - you've got the wrong guy mixing your stuff.

I really don’t like the sound of mix revisions.

But really hate when I have to “produce it all over again” at the mix stage, when you are the only one in the room making the decisions, one “rough mix” at a time, for a group of people. I’m all for getting my mixes right, with the artists and producers, but a lot of these things people ask for are just super small tweaks...some large, less so - but the thing is....Changing one thing in a mix, even the finest detail, also changes something else along with it. That’s why I just “mix it again” until they get what they want. I fix what they ask and make all the tweaks around it in order to satisfy myself. Just doing their tweak usually sounds bad to me.

While it might sound like great advice to charge by the hour or by the revision, it's career limiting unless you're working with top tier clients/producers who've understood this to be the norm. 

If you're in the trenches like the majority of us, saying you're not going to do something, or you're going to charge(more) for something that the next guy will do for free essentially guarantees that the client will go somewhere else or DIY next time, and probably bad mouth you all the way there.

you're stuck doing these things until you can break into the market with better clientele, or until musicians start to value your time as much as they value their money (never).

As for me, I request that the client be as nitpicky as possible.  I want tweaks and changes written down to the second.  As mentioned before, it's our job to make what the client has given us better than the sum of the parts.  If I can get the most detailed information, I can usually pinpoint what the client actually wants, and that's usually different than what they are requesting.

Say the client says they want "more high frequencies across the whole mix" or "make everything brighter", it usually means that the mids and low mids are too cluttered, not that they actually want you to boost everything on top.  They just want things more intelligible and less cluttered.. and so forth.  

But I also see every revision as practice for my skills and for my ears.  I generally find a better mix hidden in what I've done if I have some things to focus on.

It’s important to protect the artist from themselves judiciously while making sure you’re honoring their artistic vision.

Sounds easy, but it’s anything but.

Add to which, there are so many bad experiences waiting in the wings out there (live sound anyone?) unfortunately a lot of bands come through the door already wary. When there’s no trust, you’re already on your back foot.

It’s soooo much easier if the band likes your work, or was referred by someone they trust, or just likes you.

I had one where the songwriter was miffed that I was going to deliver my mix as stereo files rather than a complete session file he could revise at home in his terrible monitoring environment. It actually got heated, first time ever. And then, I just thought eff it, and instead of spending time dialing in mixes I spent it printing effects and getting things balanced ITB by his “deadline.” Not as good as my actual mixes, but not bad. Then he took the project to another joint and, naturally, it’s still not done.

This job necessarily involves you in people’s dreams. It can be a fraught space to operate in.

Ditto on that.

But it probably matters that I'm working with clients that are aware of my skill set, and trust me.  If you don't have that, I can certainly see how a fixed rate is alluring to clients.  But in my experience, with a fixed rate, SOMEone is going to get the short end of the stick.  And of course clients don't want that to be them so.....who gets screwed??

Hourly is the only fair way.

I would love to work in whatever city you're in because here in the ATL there's ten thousand studios.  I've literally been told by potential clients that they liked my work more, but won't be using me due to previously charging by the hour.  I recorded for 10 years like that, then I started charging by the session and got a few more clients.  My competitors started charging by the track and I lost clients.  I started charging by the track and gained clients again..  

I would LOVE to charge by the hour but it's not happening if I expect to keep up workload in a city with a "studio" on every corner and every joe you meet is an "engineer".   

You can say that cream rises to the top or that what works for you MUST work for everyone else without considering situations, but there's a never ending supply of new musicians here who find the cheapest guy with a scarlett interface and a mic who ultimately become jaded and distrustful of "studios" after they get poor results, and then decide to go DIY and then open their own studio which gives bad results, etc, etc, etc..  I hear about it all the time. 

You ever try to talk someone into using your services who started off telling you that studios are "a waste of money"?   You ever been to a show to try to drum up business and after the show there's a line of 4 people waiting to talk to the band and you overhear every single one of them shilling their studios too?  Or how about going to a show to talk to the band you're digging and they shill their own studio during the set?

Or that some of the biggest studios here have either closed up shop or have themselves switched to bulk rates because they can't keep enough people coming in?

Yeah that's the ATL scene, and why the hourly thing doesn't work.

I see how it can vary by location and especially by what music scene/genre you're in. Here in The Bay Area there are lots of studios. What I've seen is that the ones who compete for those lowest budget clients are in a race to the bottom. It's a path that leads downward. Point yourself in the direction you want to go at least. Upwards!

I know it's easier said than done, but still...

Yup, there are 6 different Bay Area recording schools that pop up in a quick google search. Constantly churning out swarms of aspiring engineers. There's no competing with them at the entry level. Gotta be something else. Higher...