The never-released song

A few months ago I was approached by an artist for mixing 3 of his songs. The demos sounded great, the production sounded amazing and it seemed like a straightforward job, so of course, I jumped right on it. 

I did mix V1 for the songs and received a few notes for revisions, nothing out of the ordinary. Or so I thought… The revision requests came piling in, with more and more minute adjustments in parts of songs I thought we were long done with. I am sure most mixers are familiar with this. “Can we please raise the hihat at 1:30 by 1dB?” “Can you please check my voice tuning at 2:55?” The artist seemed extremely concerned about his voice, but clearly, there was very little for me to tweak there as it was already autotuned beyond recognition (not that he needed it, to be honest).

Anyway, after about 8-10 revisions per song, and about 3 (mind-numbing) weeks later, the mixes were done and I congratulated the artist and wished him well for the releases. Job done, I thought. 

3 weeks later the artist comes back to me asking for pitch correction and a volume adjustment of one word in one song…. Are… you… sh*tting… me…. Why is the song not out yet??? What is the point of all of this??? He is a super talented, great songwriter, he should be bashing out songs on a monthly basis to get some traction. At this point, of course, I have to tell him that he is overcomplicating the whole thing for himself and I tell him that further revisions will cost $50 extra, as it is clearly a waste of everyone’s time. But ok… Well, I made an additional $150-200 on revisions in the coming days. 

But hey, surely, after this the song is done, no??

No.

2 months later, he contacts me for yet another pitch correction and volume adjustment in a prechorus… OMG :D This was 3 months ago, I still don’t know whether the songs have been released and I wonder when his next email comes in :D



By Martin Merenyi
martinmixing.com