How To Prepare Revision Notes

The ultimate guide on what to listen for, deciding as a band, and assembling your notes.

The revision process can be daunting if it’s your first time. The key is to be thorough, be critical, and be specific. The good news is that most engineers will offer terms along the lines of three free rounds of revisions or unlimited revisions for 30 days but that’s only when there aren’t any labels involved. When you add a label to the mix, revision times can shrink from weeks to hours. If a quick turnaround is needed, clear your schedule and make the time to sit down and critically listen the second you get your tracks.

REVIEWING THE TRACKS

Trust your engineer - We’ve listened to your mixes on at least three different systems at two different volumes to make sure the mix translates on any system out in the real world. Your engineer has years of experience reviewing and dissecting mixes. Utilize their skills to get you the best results.

You can’t always get what you want - Studies show the brain can only keep track of three sounds at once. For most modern music, that’s going to be vocals, snare, and some kind of melodic instrument like guitars or synths. If everything is loud, nothing is loud. If everything stands out, nothing stands out. You’re better off deciding ahead of time exactly what the focus of the mix should be, before you review your tracks. Keep that in mind while you’re trying to pick out every single note on the bass guitar. It may not matter as much as you think. Sure, it matters to the bass player. But does it really help the listener make a connection with the song?

Review on your “most-used” system - Don’t listen on your phone. Unless that’s where you listen to most of your music. Only review your tracks on the playback system you know the best. If that’s your car, then so be it. I got a complaint from a band once saying “it doesn’t sound as good as I hoped on my PA system at band practice”. I asked, “how often do you listen to music through your PA?” The answer was “never”. Complete waste of everyone’s time. I also prefer to listen at two volume levels - casual listening, and full blast. I recommend you do the same. But be careful, you don’t want to get ear fatigue from listening to your mix at full volume for long periods of time. Also, don’t listen to your mix after you’ve just finished a concert or a long day of jack hammering. Your ears need rest just like your body. Fun tip: Lay down in a dark room with headphones at least once while critically listening. It kind of creates a deprivation chamber type scenario for the rest of your body while you use your ears and brain to pick apart the mix. I especially prefer headphones for this because it feels like the music is inside your brain.

Identify the problem - I know it’s hard, but try to identify the problem instead of the solution. Tell me you can’t hear the cymbals, not “turn up the cymbals”. The cymbals are probably plenty loud but they’re getting masked by something else in the mix. Turning them up doesn’t solve the problem, it just pushes them into the compressor harder and the result is quieter cymbals. Exactly the opposite of what you wanted in the first place.

How many rounds of revisions? - The goal is to do as few rounds of revisions as possible. Revisions, exports, quality control, and uploads can take up to eight hours to complete so reducing the number of rounds of revisions will make your engineer and your band mates happier. Make the most out of each revision by being thorough. Don’t “wait to see” how another revision is going to affect something you might want to change in the future. Tell me now so I can address both issues at once. If you want the vocals to stand out a bit more but you’re worried the guitars will get drowned out, tell me so I can adjust the vocals while monitoring the guitars to make sure that doesn’t happen. Just to reduce the number of rounds of revisions, some engineers will go so far as to require a 24-72 hour waiting period before submitting notes. This makes sure the band has had ample time to review, discuss, and agree upon the notes instead of a stream of consciousness of notes that come trickling in throughout the day. Of course this is completely impossible when labels are involved. In that case, an engineer may say something like “if no revision notes have been submitted within 24 hours, this mix will be sent off to the label for mastering” just so they don’t miss the label deadline.

BAND MEETING

The whole band is required - The entire band needs to participate on every single revision note. Otherwise, you’ll have your mix engineer running in circles for weeks looking for some random note in a bass guitar track that isn’t “just right” that nobody but the bassist can hear including the mix engineer. This also prevents an over abundance of revisions or rounds of revisions. Example: guitarist wants more guitars so we turn them up. Now the vocalist thinks his vocals are too quiet so we turn them up as well. Now suddenly the bass is too quiet? Can you see where this is heading? Nobody will ever think their instrument is loud enough and they can’t all be loud. Figure out what you want the focus of the song to be and make sure everything else is at a volume to support it, not compete with or outshine it. Some engineers go so far as requiring band members only submit revisions for things other than their own instrument. This makes sure that each member isn’t hyper focused on just their instrument while ignoring the rest of the mix. The entire band needs to agree that a specific revision is necessary to the benefit of the entire mix. If the drummer says the snare isn’t loud enough but nobody else in the band agrees… tough. As always, egos destroy more records than cocaine ever has or will.

PREPARING YOUR NOTES

Be specific - It’s important to be super specific about exactly what it is you’re looking for with a revision. Leaving it up to chance is a great way to waste rounds and rounds of revisions. If you say turn the bass up, you better mean the entire bass. But if you only wanted the bass highs turned up, you need to specify that it’s specifically only the bass highs that you want more of.

Timecode is a must - Even when you don’t think it matters, it still matters. I’ve spent hours trying to track down an issue a band said was at “the end of the chorus” just to find out they actually meant the issue was at the end of the riff inside the chorus that repeats four times. Give us the exact timecode and everyone will be happy. Don’t just say “the bridge”. Say “the bridge from 2:02 - 2:12.

Organize your notes - Separate your notes into two separate sections. One for changes to make to every song. Example: turn up kick, turn down vocal fx. And one list for changes to make to individual songs. Careful, if you say turn up the bass in the overall section as well as one specific song, we’ll turn it up twice. Also, when listing revisions by timecode, place them in order by timecode to save your engineer both time and energy.

SUBMITTING YOUR NOTES

Spokesperson - Each band needs to nominate one spokesperson from the band to speak on behalf of the band with the engineer. This prevents band members from directly requesting revisions from the engineer without the approval from the whole band. It can be a lot of work being the spokesperson so make sure you choose somebody that responds to messages quickly, communicates clearly and effectively, and the band can trust to relay all messages between the band and the mix engineer clearly and plainly.

One message - Every round of revision notes need to be reduced to a single message, not a screenshot, not a Google doc, not a word doc, and not a PDF. And definitely not spread out over multiple messages from multiple band members. Combine every agreed upon revision into a single message and send it over to your engineer for processing.

Turn around - Generally, most revisions can be processed, reviewed, and sent back to the band in a couple days. This depends on two things: the engineer’s availability and the band’s ability to assemble a clear and plain set of notes that are easy to read and difficult to misinterpret.

What to review - With your last revision request in hand, review the changes that have been made. Did the changes go too far, or not far enough? Or maybe they got misinterpreted or nailed on the first try. Once you’re happy with the changes and you’re no longer distracted by the larger issues, you can listen for the smaller stuff you may have missed in your last review. This is where the entire process starts again. With any luck, it shouldn’t take more than three rounds of revisions to wrap up a project.

In the end, if this doesn’t improve how your band processes revision notes, you must have already been the best at it. Again, go slow, be methodical and organized, and a well seasoned engineer will make this process a breeze. And when in doubt, ask questions! An engineer will always prefer you ask how they want you to complete a step instead of guessing wrong and slowing down the whole process.