Is Mix Tip YouTube Sabotaging Your Potential?

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I'm just going to say it. You don't need any more mixtapes. Nobody needs any

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more mixtapes. Don't. Cl. Don't. Hey, do not click that mixtape.

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What's up, y'all? Welcome back to Progressions. My name is Travis Farance. I'm an engineer

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and mixer based here in Los angeles with nearly 20 years of experience. Got

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some Grammy noms and number ones and all that accolade bs. But what's important to

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know for this video is I'm kind of old, like almost pre

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Internet old. And why that's important is that I learned to

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do this job before mixtape, YouTube and before social

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media. The access to information that is available today is

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amazing and should be empowering to all of us to learn

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basically everything. But there's one problem, actually,

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let's not call it a problem, let's call it a feature. There's one feature of

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this current era and I think we all need to be aware of so that

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it doesn't hold us back. So when I came to LA, it was 2006. I

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still bought CDs. The Internet was for shreds videos and

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social media was in its infancy. I think you still needed a college email to

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be on Facebook. So if you wanted to be a recording engineer, you basically had

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two choices. Go get a job in a studio or go to an audio

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school and then go get a job in a studio where you relearn everything you

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just paid to learn. So outside of some industry magazines like Sound

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on Sound, Mix or Tape, up there just wasn't a lot of access

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to knowledge about the craft without working in a studio and learning it from a

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person who learned it from another person who learned it from another person. I was

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fortunate in that I started my career at the legendary Capitol Studios in Hollywood. The

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people that I was learning from were some of the best that ever sat behind

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a recording console. I'll never forget the first time I walked into Studio A while

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a session was going. It blew my mind what it sounded like. It

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sounded like what I thought was a final mix, but it was just the

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band live off the floor during tracking and watching those

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guys and listening to what they were doing. Those were my mix tips.

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It's not actually that different from watching some tutorials on YouTube. I would just be

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off in the corner watching how the session went down, the same way that you're

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watching a video right now. The difference was that there was no voiceover describing

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the process or, you know, zoom ins on the computer screen or anything like that.

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But in some ways it was better, right, because you had to listen to try

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to understand why people were making the choices that they were making. Then after

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the session, if it felt appropriate, you could ask a few questions to the engineer,

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producer, look at the racks to see what kind of compression was going on, check

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out the EQ on the console, go in the live room, see where the mics

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ended up, and then you go home. And it's what happened when you got

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home. That's the big difference between when I started and today.

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Once I got home, there was no content to watch. Sure,

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there were some blogs and books, but really what you did when you went home

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was you opened up whatever daw you had and you just messed

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around, which wasn't always that exciting if you didn't have anything fun

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to play with, right? So we just never went home. We'd stay at the

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studio and play with gear all night. Everybody I knew

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in town who worked at a studio was always at that studio, whether

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you were getting paid or not. Because if you weren't at the studio,

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you probably weren't learning anything new. So you'd just

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always be there because you knew one day you would get thrown

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into the hot seat and have to put into practice everything that you'd just been

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watching up until that point. There's a great story about Jimmy Iovine, who is probably

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best known at this point as the Interscope Records label head who started

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Beats with Dr. Dre, which they ultimately sold to Apple

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for $3 billion. But in the 1970s, he was just a young

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assistant engineer at Record Plant in New York, and he got a huge

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break when he was called in last minute on Easter Sunday to

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engineer because nobody else was available. He showed up at

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the studio to find out that the artist he was recording was John Lennon.

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And successfully making it through that session while also leaving an impression on

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John, would set him on the course to work with everybody from Springsteen to

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U2. And that's a super common story on how so many engineers and

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producers got their start. They were suddenly thrust into a

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situation that mattered and had to go from observing and

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learning to doing. And usually at a very

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high level. Studio managers generally have a great read on who's

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ready and who isn't. And the good ones, they'll push

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those into a situation where they know that they can grow. So if you're asking

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yourself what this has to do with mixtapes, that's fair.

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There's been a lot of setup here. The point I'm getting to is that

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today there is so much information that it's actually

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overwhelming how much you can learn. You can go deep down the

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rabbit hole and learn about how this person mixes vocals versus how that person

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mixes vocals. How this plugin compares to that plugin compares

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to the analog version. You can go on and on

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constantly learning, but never doing. And that's the

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stark difference between the pre Internet era and today.

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Twenty plus years ago, there was a ceiling to how much you could learn

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without doing it. Now you can learn

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infinitely. But learning is not the same as doing.

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Earlier, I made a subtle comment about going to audio school and then

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relearning everything when you started in the studio. I believe that

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education, formal or not, is teaching you the foundational

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skills you need to go out into the real world and follow what

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is being done. You learn the basics so you can see a session in

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real life or on a video and digest why people are

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making choices. Not ask what are they doing?

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Mixtape. YouTube is giving you the what and the how, which

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is important. But the why is going to be

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unique to each of us. And the only way to really learn that

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is to do it yourself. Example, slamming the input to a piece

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of equipment to distort it. That's the what you're doing and how

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you're doing it. But why you're doing it is your choice. Maybe

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it's because you like the tone of it. Maybe it's because it brings out an

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emotion in the part. Now let's go back to that assistant thrown into a

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session situation. There's an important thing that happens when you're pushed beyond

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your comfort zone and you pass the test. Confidence.

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And this is something that the Internet cannot give you. In fact, this is where

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the access to information actually works against us. Think about this.

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How many times have you been working on music and thought, I wonder how

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insert hit producer name here does this? And don't

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say that you haven't. I have. I've been doing this for 20 years and I

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will stop mid mix to check out how some great engineer does the same thing

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that I'm doing. And it's because knowing that we can makes us want

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to validate what we're doing. We don't always have total confidence in the things that

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we're doing inside our vacuum. Most of us are working alone.

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This wasn't the case 30, 40 or 50 years ago. Engineers did things and everybody

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in the room liked it or they didn't. There was immediate

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feedback to whether you were on the right path. And the more positive feedback you

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got, the more Confident you became in your skills. A lot of us don't have

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that anymore. So many people are writing, recording and mixing their own music, which

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is amazing. But the more isolated you are in that

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process, the more likely you are to turn to the Internet to see

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whether you're doing the right thing, completely ignoring the fact that there

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is no right thing. This is why it's important to find your version of assistant

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thrown into a session. Right? You have got to balance the ability to constantly learn

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and better yourself with taking action. Nothing will make you

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better than doing the thing. So to go all the way

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back to the beginning, this feature of mixtape YouTube that I

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mentioned earlier that we need to be aware of so that it doesn't hold us

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back. It's the same feature that makes it amazing,

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the free and essentially unlimited amount of it. Now, it's

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hard to think that learning as much as you can about something isn't a

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good idea. But if you are using that learning to avoid doing because

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of a fear of failure or a lack of confidence, then in

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fact learning is actually holding you back. No amount of

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learning will take away your fear. The only way to do that is to dive

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in and put yourself in situations to test yourself. This is a

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disadvantage of the Internet information age. It doesn't force you to test

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yourself the way that that older apprenticeship or mentorship model

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would. Which is why it's super important to recognize when you are

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avoiding taking a step outside your comfort zone. And I tell you this because

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I am fully guilty of this myself. I am no better than anyone else at

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these things. I may not do this in my audio career anymore. When it comes

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to the podcast or YouTube, the creator side of my life, I have done

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this way too many times. The things I am doing right now are the things

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I should have done three years ago. So I encourage you

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to take a look at your life and see if there is anywhere that you

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are using learning to avoid doing. So if I've convinced

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you to step away from Mixtape YouTube for a bit and you want some rapid

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fire non technical advice, check out this episode where

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I share everything I've learned over the last 18 years about how to build a

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successful career in the recording industry.