u/jkoseattle

Back in college days, a composition instructor once told me "You don't have to love every piece you put out there." That's always stuck with me, primarily because I've never been able to adhere to it. I have to have a mad crush on any piece of music I compose that anyone else ever hears.

All these years later, and it occurs to me that I've always suffered from that. I hold myself up to lofty standards every bloomin' time. So if anyone ever hears anything of mine, they can be certain I once, (and possibly still do), wildly adored that piece.

It's certainly a big part of my lack of interest in going commercial. The last thing I want is to have to half-ass some piece of music because there was a deadline and a budget and a customer that wanted something I didn't want. That sounds like hell, and I'm coming to think that might be my downfall and not all that common.

On the numerous occasions where I was writing a score for theatre, film, etc., I was able to do it, but I agonized over all of it the entire time. This sort of never ending "OMG, something that isn't note perfect has to go into the world! I can't let that happen, I must work overtime to ensure I love it before the deadline."

So I only do what I want to do, and work it until I love it, finishing maybe 25% of the projects I start. And other people only ever hear maybe 2/3 of that.

So I thought I'd post the question here: Do you madly love everything you finish, or do you work on and finish pieces you aren't very happy with? I'm excluding all those who do work for hire for someone else's project. I'm talking mostly about people who write whatever they want.

So I spent most of 2024 writing and producing a suite for orchestra and 2 pianos which I released at the end of that year. It was almost entirely Midi, with some sound effects and one or two live solos. It was a big undertaking that took me the whole year.

(Link removed because apparently that means I'm required to supply a written score. Which doesn't exist and is not relevant to the topic of this post. You can find it on YouTube, called Carkeek Park Suite.)

Until the other day, I had not listened to any of it since I released it. (Just couldn't bring myself to, it would feel like calling up an old girlfriend, you know how that is with music you were so close to for so long.) Haven't even hummed the tunes to myself.

But then the other day a project came my way and it occurred to me some bits from that suite might be appropriate to adapt for this new thing. Which is neither here nor there, but assessing that required I actually listen to the original album again. Yikes.

So I summoned the courage to listen to some parts of it again. I'm so-so with the compositional choices, (was shocked how little I remember of it), but more than anything else, immediately despised my mix.

I'm not a professional audio engineer, but I know my way around a plugin. I've always done my own mixing, but this was the first fully orchestral thing I've had to engineer. I've always heard one should never mix their own work, but I didn't have any other options and this was a labor of love anyway, so I went ahead. I was clearly too close to it at the time and realize now I really should have farmed out the audio production. Now, I would love to get the whole thing remastered and re-release it.

It's about 45 minutes long, full orchestra, two pianos and sound effects (birds and stuff), I've never had to hire out a job like that. How would I go about finding someone to re-mix and re-master it and how much should I expect to spend? I would give them all the stems, with or without their own track-level effects on them depending on what they wanted.

(P.S. I do this for the love of the game, not fame or fortune. There would certainly be little to no income after the for-hire fee was paid. I do like the composition though, and have been asked to write a piano 4 hands version of it, which I may eventually do and get recorded live.)