How to Overcome Your Audio Fears

Some of you readers might have remembered when my MacBook broke a while back.

Man, some of you even

But what you don’t know is that I bought 8 GB of additional RAM when I ordered it back in June. That extra RAM was lying on my desk for the last 4 months because I was too afraid to install it myself but too cheap to pay someone to do it.

I didn’t really know how to destatic myself so I wasn’t really sure if I would fry the RAM when installing it. But in the end I just got on with.

A task I had pushed back for months I finished in five minutes. It was that simple. Why didn’t I just push myself to do it before?

Face Your Fears

Fear can manifest itself in everything we do. In audio and music, overcoming your fears mean facing the things that you’ve been putting off. I remember reading that every guitarist has a place on the fretboard that he avoids.

It’s where you don’t know how to solo because the scale is in a weird position.
Or it’s the place where you can’t figure out the chord shapes fast enough.
Or maybe it’s just the whole area above the 12th fret, because you don’t know how to solo at all.

Similarly, there are plenty of audio production fears.

The fear of filtering

Not knowing how to use the multiband compressor

Not understanding

Not understanding the relationship between compression and EQ

Or maybe you have a specific frequency range that you never really know how to EQ, similar to the fretboard problem of the guitarist?

Regardless of what your fears are, whether you’re a guitarist or an engineer, you need to overcome them to get better.

There is NO reason why you shouldn’t know how to do all these things. With all the information available to you, it’s easier than ever to learn new techniques and overcome your issues with EQ, compression or whatever it is that you’re afraid of.

My Audio Fears?

When I’m not scared shitless of frying my new computer, I’m also very intimidated by stereo widening plug-ins. I’m always scared that I’ll accidentally throw everything out of phase. I’m worried that my mix will just disappear on some systems because I was overly enthusiastic about piling on the stereo widening. It’s a process to get through, but it also teaches me to be careful.

Don’t throw caution to the wind and just blindly fiddle with the knobs. That’s not the best way to learn to work out your problems.

Instead, learn to understand the things you’re intimidated by, know what they do and how you can control them. Learn to work the processors that scare you and they in turn will teach you new tricks and help you discover new sounds.

What’s Your Biggest Obstacle in Audio Production? Let us know in the comments!

Image by: phill.d

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About Audio Issues and Björgvin Benediktsson

We help musicians transform their recordings into radio-ready and release-worthy records they’re proud to release.

We do this by offering simple and practical music production and success skills they can use immediately to level themselves up – while rejecting negativity and gear-shaming from the industry. A rising tide floats all boats and the ocean is big enough for all of us to surf the sound waves.

Björgvin’s step-by-step mixing process has helped thousands of musicians confidently mix their music from their home studios. If you’d like to join them, check out the best-selling book Step By Step Mixing: How To Create Great Mixes Using Only 5 Plug-ins right here.