A story about the effects of imposter syndrome and sunk cost fallacy in my music production endeavors.

Introduction

I’ve had an interest in music production for a while now. Getting into the flow of creating melodies and note progressions, and having those all come together is certainly an experience. I enjoyed being able to evoke certain emotions through sound and listening to my own work allowed me to feel something at least.

Apart from creating music for myself to listen to, in more recent times, I create music to contribute to my visual novel games’ soundtracks. Audio is a key element in my projects to get that mood just right.

Oh, and also, I’ve been completely terrible at it. I’ve ruined countless mixes and composed completely nonsensical melodies. And induced quite a bit of pain in me while doing so.

“Learning” To Play The Piano

My first experience with music was probably when I was in my single digits of age. Every couple of days, I’d whip out the old keyboard piano from 2007 and try playing a song. Even then, I was already doing things wrong and trying to take shortcuts in learning the instrument.

Instead of actually trying to actually learn the proper notes of more complex songs by memorizing the sheet music, I simply tried out notes until I found the right one in the song. Because I wanted to be able to “play” it as soon as possible.

That worked okay, but single notes don’t make for much of a song. There are underlying chords that add depth and complexity to the sound. But learning all those combinations and remembering them was such a hassle, so I tried to shortcut my way through it.

Instead of memorizing the chords in a song I wanted to play, I would just play the same combinations of notes over and over.

Every time a treble C, E, or G was played. I would play a C-E-and-G “chord”. With a treble D, I’d play a bass D-and-G. Treble F, bass C-and-F. And so on. There were some exceptions to these rules of course, but for the most part, they held. Simple rules for my simple mind.

Of course, what this led to was pretty much just monotony and a lack of progression when playing a song. But it worked for me, and I was proud of myself for being able to play… something. I was playing the piano technically, but deep down I certainly didn’t feel like a “real” piano player.

Despite that feeling, that’s how I continued to try and replicate playing songs. Even after graduating from grade school to middle school, then middle school to high school. I was committed to doing things this way.

Because I looked at others more talented than myself and wanted to be a “real” piano player. But I didn’t know how to get to that point.

Or perhaps, I just wasn’t confident enough to try.

Getting Into Digital Music Production

Fast forward to nearly a decade later in 2017, and that’s when I found out about digital audio workstations. FL Studio in specific was the one I was looking to get.

However, at that age, a couple of hundred bucks to goof around with software I might not use afterward wasn’t an easy purchase. Thankfully, a family member found a DVD copy for sale at a much cheaper price.

In hindsight, it was probably an illegitimate copy considering all the plugins were already included, and I ended up buying an actual license years later for peace of mind. So I actually ended up spending more money in the end.

Regardless, I had no idea what any of the knobs and interfaces did. The very first song I made involved zero processing other than volume leveling.

The synths were made by literally tweaking VST knobs at random until it sounded okay. The bass was definitely way too loud, and the melody basically repeated the same 8 notes for like six minutes straight.

Don’t get me wrong, I thought it sounded pretty “dope as heck” at the time. But while I wasn’t conscious of any of these issues, I still wasn’t satisfied either.

I took time to listen to productions from “real” producers of music and compared them to mine. Obviously, my work came nowhere close to their quality of theirs.

That’s when I made a fatal mistake. I started to study the art of mixing.

By following tips on the internet blindly. A desperate act.

Press Button To Music

Once again, I lacked the confidence that I would be able to learn how to be a “real” music producer. So I read countless articles on EQ, compression, saturation, panning charts, and all the rest. These offered a multitude of easy-to-follow steps to improve music mixes. Stuff that the professionals did, like…

High-pass everything above 60hz to clear up the low end.

Always mono your bass and drums, and mono frequencies below 200hz for a cleaner mix.

Pan this instrument 30% to the left, and pan this one 50% to the right to widen the stereo field.

These weren’t necessarily wrong. The tips technically did what they said they would, from what my ears could tell at least. But unbeknownst to me, I was quickly hurdling down a slippery slope.

Having no idea what I was doing and no reference to compare to, I was very rapidly killing the phase of my mixes with every additional bit of processing.

Cutting out fundamental frequencies in the low end, simply because some website said to always do so. Taking the stereo of the bass and collapsing it, and ruining the dynamics with excessive compression, because it said to.

While I was unable to detect the rampant phase issues I was introducing, I could certainly hear that the mix was feeling less crowded when high-passing bass frequencies from certain instruments. And so, to my untrained ears, it certainly felt better. But it probably wasn’t.

Eventually, it got to a point where it was introducing headaches. It was uncomfortable to listen to. No, beyond that. It was painful. And I had finally figured out the reason why my mixes sounded so bad…

Clearly, it was just ear fatigue. Give it a week.

…Nope.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

You see, at this point, I had been doing this over the course of a few years now. Continuing to “learn” more about techniques to clear up the mix and make it “better”.

Yet despite that, I was unwilling to even consider the fact that everything I had learned up until that point may have been completely wrong. Or at the very least not applicable in the cases I was using them for.

That’s what the professionals did, right? That’s what they said to always do, and it always worked for them. Why is it not working for me?

I listened to tracks from other people, and theirs sounded much, much better than mine to me. Obviously, because they hadn’t completely demolished the phase of their mix. Their mixes weren’t the equivalent of a sonic torture weapon like mine.

But I still just couldn’t figure out that the invisible mix-killer, phase, was the dominating problem. And so I continued blindly following more tips to fix the issues caused… by following the previous tips.

I thought it just had to be something wrong with the frequency balance, so I’d cut some more frequencies. It sounded muddy and muted, so maybe more compression to keep that at bay would do the trick…

It still sounded off, so I cut some more frequencies someplace else. Maybe if I switched the order of these processors around, it would do something…

The song overall doesn’t sound dynamic and fast-paced despite being at 300 BPM, let’s add even more random notes in between… it can’t be a composition problem…

No matter what I did, the issues weren’t being resolved, because I was never even considering the idea that all the processing I was doing was not only for nothing but actually counterproductive.

But that couldn’t be it… because that’s what the professionals did, right?

This conundrum was, to put it lightly, infuriating. Why was it that no matter how much I did, all of my work was still causing me a migraine?

Did I need an even longer break? Was I just going deaf?

Maybe it was my monitors? Or was it psychological?

I continued to make change after change. Sometimes, a change would make me feel that warm, fuzziness you’re supposed to feel when music is actually mixed properly.

And for a moment, I would rejoice at finally having found the problem after months and months, and an exact solution to follow when it came up again. At least until I started realizing that the mix was still giving me major headaches, and dipping back down into that frustration again.

If I were to admit that I was playing the piano the wrong way back then, that would be admitting that everything I had been doing was for nothing. And in the same way, realizing that everything I’ve been doing was completely wrong in music production, would mean the invalidation of all that time spent.

Subconsciously, I just couldn’t accept that. And so this went on for…

Five years' worth of mixes.

If you believe I am a complete moron after reading that, you are probably right in thinking so. But to be fair, five years’ worth isn’t as much as you may think when taking into account multiple months of recovery from “ear fatigue”.

The True Problem

It was only very recently that I finally made the decision to break out of that relentless cycle.

I made the decision that for the next composition, I would do minimal if any processing. Not even EQ.

Instead, I simply changed the levels of the instruments’ channels, did some panning only if absolutely necessary, and slapped a completely automated mastering plugin on the master bus to handle the EQ and compression.

The results were probably better than anything I’ve made in the past five years. No more giant headaches. No more agonizing pain.

All of that struggle stemmed from wanting to be a “real producer”. It was to the point where I had long refused to even download many samples online, let alone full drum loops.

It felt like having that already done for me was cheating. Yet, apparently, using a complex computational machine to do everything else wasn’t.

What does it even mean to be a faker versus real? Does the process matter if the results are the same, and is there even an objective standard for those results? If the piano is played incorrectly, but it still invokes joy for the player and sounds okay, is it still a failure?

Don’t get me wrong, I still consider my mixes to be subpar. Some of them feel muddy and not as clear as they could be. But by dispelling my desire to reach some arbitrary status of legitimacy… and my fears of never being able to reach that height… I feel I’m finally able to focus on what really matters.

There was never a “right” way to achieve that arbitrary status of legitimacy. In fact, the idea of being legitimate should have never been a consideration for me.

What it should have really been about was creating something I could be satisfied with despite its flaws. To gain meaningful experiences from doing so, and to use them to improve further.

That’s what should’ve happened, rather than obsessing over shortcomings until they became all I could see, and as a result, self-imposing a limit on all I could see and do.

So now, I use loops. I skip processing steps. I do the bare minimum by volume leveling and sometimes panning. I’m still a complete amateur who doesn’t know much if anything, but I’m having a much more enjoyable time doing it.

This isn’t just about music production, really. This has come up many times before in different areas of my life. As a college student. As a programmer. As a game developer. And I’m sure there will be much, much more.

I first experienced that feeling of wrongness over 15 years ago now. And it still comes up almost every day. The thought of not being good enough. That feeling that I’m always doing things the wrong way.

But if that wrongness is moving me closer to my destination, then maybe it is the right way for me.

And I did learn to play the proper notes of a song on the piano eventually.

Though I still played the guitar with the strings facing up on my lap.