What Doing the Dishes Can Teach You About Audio Editing

Cooking is great. Doing the dishes afterwards is terrible.

And it’s even worse when you leave them in the sink until the next time you have to cook.

Then you not only have to do the dishes before you cook, but you ALSO have to do them afterwards!

Terrible right?

I like cooking, so I begrudgingly do the dishes because the hassle of doing them doesn’t outweigh the pleasure I get from cooking.

Similarly, I love mixing, but I hate having to edit all the tracks before I start. But mixing is much more enjoyable when you have nicely edited tracks that don’t bother you when you’re in the groove.

With clean dishes, I know where everything is and I can grab it immediately. If I leave the dirty dishes in the sink, I’ll inevitably have to scourge through the dirty dishes in the search for the one utensil I specifically need for my cooking.

If you don’t edit your tracks first, you’ll run into similar problems.

You’ll notice an annoying click somewhere, a misaligned drum hit or background noise you should have edited out. This hinders your workflow because you’re constantly going back and forth between the mixing and the editing phase.

If you’re always changing hats then you’ll never fully focus on one aspect of your production. Edit first, then focus on the mixing.

It’s better to cook with a clean kitchen. Having a full sink of plates and me of the pleasure of making my meal.

The same goes for editing. You’ll rob yourself of the joys of mixing if the editing phase is constantly nagging at you in the back of your mind. 

Like dishwashing, editing is pretty boring. It’s tedious and usually pretty uncreative. But if you gloss over it and ignore it, you’ll be left with a sub par production.

Clean up your session. Edit your tracks. Only then can you focus on the fun part.

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Image by: qousqous

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