There is also being able to comprehend what is even being told. I have seen many videos and still do that go right over my head, but my level of understanding what Im being shown has grown greatly over time and experience. There is no better teacher than just getting stuck in, making the mistakes that you need to make in order to learn the valuable lesson that came from realising the mistake.
That can be accelerated by watching videos when you are ready to absorb what they are teaching, but watching things that you dont quite comprehend can give you a pointer on to where to take your journey of learning, or it can confuse and be misleading, drawing the wrong conclusions.
There are many ways to skin a cat, and different ways to achieve the same result. Some are easier than others, some people prefer one way over another as it suits their workflow or they have a particular vst or hardware to do a particular job, like a compressor for example. Ultimately we can only work with what we have, and the more we work with what we have, the better we get at making the most of it.
Just keep making music, good and bad. Its not really about the destination, its about learning how to get there and taking the journey in the first place. Unless the destination is financial stability, the best route to that would be study hard at school, get good grades and or if your arent academically gifted then get into a trade like plumbing and worry about a lifelong career and forget about making a fortune from music. Fame is fleeting, a career can be for life.
This!
Ha the one that used to get me is "it's subtle, but listen to the difference this makes..." NO MR YOUTUBE ENGINEER, I CANNOT FUCKING HEAR IT. Lately though, I've been able to hear that stuff. And it's crazy, because when you realise how subtle a lot of the stuff pro engineers do is, even when you used to be aware of 'make small changes', you're like damn. So newcomers, who aren't yet adept at hearing the subtleties, that's why they (and we when we started) were doing absolute madnesses even when we thought we were being subtle.
That being said, there is still a few times recently where I really just can't hear the difference, but could be down to YouTube audio and the engineers have also mentioned it being ultra subtle. But the fact I'm now hearing a bunch of stuff (with the same monitors I've used since day) is interesting progression.
And that's a good point tbf... You and myself advise a lot of illiens here about 'using their ears' to actually hear what needs to be done, and catch 22, maybe they can't yet 'hear' what needs to be done, which, ironically is why they need to just keep listening until they hear it.
And that's the thing, some will see the advice of compression to achieve 'punch', then do some heavy handed compression to achieve this --- but they have to learn first, does it actually need that punch? What does that 'punch' actually sound like? and the fact that you probably only need to hit like 1db of GR to achieve that difference in the sound; where let's say the sound DID need punch, they may hit it with like 6db GR and ruin the sound, but they didn't know how to hear that subtle difference.
STILL though, the sooner you focus on listening and questioning, the sooner you'll be able to 'hear' and apply all this.
My biggest turning point in my mixing, evidenced here on the ill, is when I stopped touching any EQ or Compression in my mixes. I started getting praise for my mixes, and eventually was able to start adding those processes back in. Informed from the real learning offered to me simply by listening and questioning my mixes.
