If you do anything long enough you tend to gain a proficiency that, after enough time, belies the struggles you had to overcome while learning and honing your skills. It’s easy for people to assume you have always been “good at it,” and that you never struggled through the early stages of learning as they do. The flip side of the proficiency that comes with experience is that you can easily forget that all those instincts you have honed were not always there, and what might be obvious to you now was not always obvious.

A good friend of mine phrased it beautifully when he said, “anything that seems like to comes naturally is the result of years of practice.” I’ve also heard it put as a riddle: Do you know the difference between a master and an apprentice? The master has failed more times than the apprentice has tried.

Here are 5 things that might be comforting and helpful to younger engineers who are still getting started.

Your Brain Will Understand It Before Your Ears Will Be Able To Hear It

So let’s be honest and lay this one out right up front. Intellectually understanding a concept, like compression or EQ, is not the same as having experienced it enough to instantly recognize it. Our ears are powerful instruments that, when trained, can be extremely exacting and sensitive, but the key phrase there is “when trained”. We have to spend hours upon hours listening to examples to train our ears to hear subtle differences and small changes. This is not a deficiency of your ears or hearing, but a natural progression through developing critical listening skills.

Just Because You Can’t Hear A Difference Doesn’t Mean There Isn’t One

This one piggybacks on the previous point. Until you develop those critical listening skills, you can safely assume you are missing differences that more experienced engineers are easily hearing. Yes, this is frustrating and almost feels like a cruel joke to make you second guess everything you think you might be hearing. We all start here, and it does get better. The important take away is that if a more experienced engineer is telling you there’s a difference, but you’re not hearing it, there is a high likelihood that it’s you, not them. Sorry.

Be Bold

The big mistake I see young engineers make is that they are too subtle. They move a fader a millimeter or change the gain on an EQ band 1dB expecting to hear a difference. Stop. Go re-read points #1 and #2 again and then be bold. Have the confidence to go for it and be bold. It’s in being bold that you will learn how to be subtle. In the words of the poet William Blake “how can you know what is enough until you know what is too much?”. 

Focus On Learning A Few Tools Really Well

I’m a big believer in keeping things simple. Invest in a few tools and learn them really well. A good channel strip with EQ & compression, a good “problem solving” EQ, like Pro-Q or Kirchhoff, and maybe 2 specialty compressors (like an 1176 & an LA2A, or a Distressor & an SSL Bus Compressor, et al.). In limiting your tools you will be focusing on learning to solving problems. Problems you will likely face time and again in your career. Truth be told, 99% of my mixes are a channel strip & an SSL bus compressor. I may use a specialty compressor on my drum bus, but that’s typically it.

Be Comfortable With Failure

I hate to even call it failure, because we have loaded that term with so much negativity. Let things go off the rails. Pump out messy mixes, but then evaluate, improve, and use them as stepping stones. No one ever sat down to mix early in their career and nailed it on the first time. Get comfortable with the process of slow & steady refinement. See each opportunity as a learning experience, and be proactive in your own improvement.

In the words of Thomas Edison “I have not failed! I have simply found 100 ways in which it will not work.” Get at it, and find all the ways it won’t work. I assure you it’s time well spent. You walk away learning much more by having to struggle to get things to work than you do by stumbling into the answer on your first try. 

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