GIMMIK wrote:I agree with the beer thing. Ive noticed that not only in production but mixing, playing an instrument etc etc a little buzz helps your confidence which ends of giving you a much more solid sound. Its because your brain isnt second guessing itself and its allowing the creative juices to flow freely.
Im not saying become an alcoholic but a few beers when you feel the juices runnin low definitely has helped me.
Also a good sativa helps boost your creativity.
I would disagree with mixing/production (if by any of them things you mean mixing down), when mixing you don't want to be under the influence of anything that alters your perception. You need to be able to hear what is exactly going on, and what you need to implement to fix. At the creative stage (sound design, composition) being a altered state may be beneficial, but once you get to mixing you need to be able to actually hear whats going on.
When mixing you shouldn't be second guessing your self, and you should be confident in your knowledge, equipment, and experience. Like you should listen back to the track, and be like the snare is lacking around 2khz, so I need to boast around there with this eq etc. If your not at this stage, you need to keeping working on it till you are. Though this is much easier when working on other peoples mixes, when I mix someone else track, straight away I will think it need this, and it need that, so I need to do this, and that. Then when you start listing to individual tracks you might notice a few other thing, like some weird noise that needs taking out of one of the tracks, like bleed from hihats.
With you own stuff it's harder to be like this, as you been working on it for ages in the same environment, but there are way to combat that;
1. Stem your tracks, so your now thinking like a mixing engineer .
2. Don't listen to your track for extended period before mix down.
3. Use your main monitors only to mix (do creative shit on headphones, hifi, shitty monitors)
4. Borrow your friends, uncles, colleges Monitors to mix (though you need regular access to them, and have listen to lost of reference material on them)
5. Get a second opinion from your friend, uncle, tutor, or even do the mix together, and then do their mixs with them.