Making a project that involves music and visuals, let alone promotion, is already overwhelming for an established artist ; how could a new artist without an extensive address index and resources possibly achieve it?

Of course, music or art in general is relative to the artist's talent and way of seeing the world, but in a world where art has more of an entertainment value, being able to make your project seen by the public you aim for requires efforts that are not expected at first.

Now, if you're self-taught about composing, song-writing and mixing like me, you can probably understand the hassle it is to make your songs even listenable in the first place: everything is a parameter that is inextricably linked to one another and one song is a proper ecosystem that needs to be fed accordingly. When you are the only one working on a project, you have to be lucid enough to have the high ground on your tracks to understand what is wrong with them.

While it is relatively simple to blame everything on the lack of hard and software resources, actually mastering the basics of mixing instead of only getting a grasp of it is something that can take months or years, depending on the time you put in the task. Seeing people make hits on a shabby laptop is always frustrating, even more when you work on one and you can't even manage to produce the right sounds: these people aren't always reinventing the wheel, they are simply conjugating a good to perfect mastering of the basics and applicating a formula that works (that can be a catchy chord progression or a redundant effect on the vocals, or anything that grasps the intention of the intended public for it).

In the everyday life, money is the center of everything, want it or not. Of course you will have better chances of making the right sounds with top notch studio equipment, of course the price of the microphone you use will influence the final result, or will it?
Even if you get a Telefunken U-47 or a Neumann U87, you won't be able to make it sound good if you don't know how to use it: the highest the price, the more you have to spend because this kind of microphones will require a good pre-amp, and while you're at it, you might as well get a nice hardware compressor and channel strip, which will require more sends on your interface, which you will only get with more pricey hardware.
I'm not saying that a low-end microphone like a Audio-Technica AT2020 will sound as good, as a matter of fact, it won't: we use these microphones because of their ability to transcribe a voice clearly with a detailed sound of the throat and clear top-end or the entirety of a piano's spectrum while still keeping details like the hammers' sound. I'm saying that a Rode NT-1 with a Focusrite Scarlett Solo can sound good with enough time spent trying to understand the strengths and flaws of the microphone (I have personally been using that pair for 2+ years and have been surprised by how versatile it is for only around 200€).
Same with the device you're recording on, if you know the limits of what you can do with it, you can work it around by bouncing tracks that you won't touch anymore, optimizing every bit so it runs fine, or at least not too bad. I have seen people recording on mobile phones or tablets: an old low-end PC can at least run 8 tracks with a bit of processing if you treat it right.

You have been recording your vocals or a guitar or whatever, and now is the time to mix it to make it sound good all together. The only problem is that it is way too crowded on the low-end and now it's saturating: anyone experienced enough would just tell you to use an equalizer, but you don't know about it yet or don't quite understand what it does. PLEASE ASK YOUTUBE OR GOOGLE: you can teach yourself every bit of the making of a song, it is only a matter of time ; having someone to follow your steps or to follow the steps of is a luxury a lot of people including myself didn't have.

Also, try contacting sound engineers that you like the work of, if they're not too busy with projects, they will certainly be alright with answering a few questions ; the Mix with the Masters channel is also a gold mine to know how huge hits have been mixed (the Tom Elmhirst and Finneas videos are my favorite).

When you spend that much time working on a project after having spent even more time experiencing frustration from all the parameters and problems you couldn't solve, it is absolutely normal, if not mandatory, to experience perfectionism on the way to the finished product. You won't give up on "making it even better" while you might ruin it by over-processing it and you will always say "remember that it's a demo" on the rare occasions you will show your project to someone from outside your creative process.

Remember that the little tweaks you will make by thinking it's not quite perfect won't be heard or cared about by most people because most people aren't producers or sound engineers that listen your project in the studio: the majority hears songs in their car, in a headset or earbuds. Also remember that you music is not (only) a way to promote yourself but should primarily be a way to exteriorize feelings, because art is the embodiment of feelings and that is why AI can't make better art than you, and that if they, one day, manage to make images that make you feel other feelings than an oppressive sense of soullessness or emptiness, it will begin to be dangerous.

One way to deal with perfectionism is defining deadlines, which is difficult to hold onto just by yourself: show other people your tracks so they ask you about your project here and there. That will, one, force you to go forward to not deceive yourself and two, show you how people like your songs and, if they don't, what they don't like about it. It is important to have different people's opinion because it will show you if they all hate or love that one song you're making ; if some like it and some don't, you've made a great job because you have your own identity as an artist, that some like and others don't.

Releasing songs is also a good but painful way to deal with perfectionism because it forces you to show your songs as a finished product (because what people hear is supposed to be the finished product, always) ; you will be able to show it to more people and the more you make music, the more you will improve by taking feedback in and wanting to be better tomorrow, compared to yesterday ('cause you wouldn't like to wake up less talented than before, right?).

I've had projects since I was 11 or 12 ; now being nearly 18, I may have a few things to say about it, and the first one being "don't stress yourself about releasing something at a young age to show the grown-ups that you can do something even at your age". This is a ridiculously long sentence to say that age doesn't really matter, even though people have a tendency to praise young people releasing projects: this is not a sprint but a marathon, take the time to make it good.

School is also a vector of discouragement by eating up your motivation and energy (in France, high-school is from 8am to 5pm: you're out of energy at the time you get home and even more if you live in the countryside and have to take a bus or whatever for a long time) ; I am absolutely not saying that school is bad for you, I actually enjoy being in school most days. I am just saying that it is a reason more to not have time or motivation for music. Having a job is like that too (depends of your job, you'll say), but it's more repetitive for most cases and you're with older people that are less extenuating than high or middle school pupils (again, older people can be extenuating too but you get the point).

As a young person, you might also not have the funds for equipment or distribution (that can be done free with SoundCloud if platforms aren't that interesting for you, and websites like CDBaby can distribute an album for 10€) ; if you are the required age, you can apply for a job but it might also take the rest of the precious time you could give to music outside of school (or just work during holidays). Free solutions for music like Bandlab and such will be great to start but when it gets serious, you'll have to choose a "real" DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) like FL Studio, Ableton, Logic, etc... and it can get pricey. Once you have your DAW, you get base plugins with it that are useful, but will maybe need plugins to do more, a little further in time: don't underestimate the amount of things you need to make professional sounding music.

You could also make music like artists as Ichiko Aoba on tracks like 'Asleep among endives', that is relying on an excessive amount of reverb and that doesn't require a high-end microphone to make. It is a track that could be recorded off of a phone microphone and it still sounds good because Ichiko has a wonderful voice.

Speaking about voice, it might be difficult for you to trust yourself and publishing music means others will see it and see you through it, which can be overwhelming when you are not comfortable with mockery or people seeing your true and honest colors through something as personal as your music. The years you spend in school are also useful to build yourself, my vision of music have been really solitary for a long time because I was the only one to work on my music in my circle. Then I met people online and IRL with whom I could make great things and if you have friends to learn music with, the journey will certainly be less overwhelming.

Collaboration is a game of trust before all because you are sharing personal things with someone you know well or not and that has or not a vision of music that is close to yours. Don't push yourself too much, just think about the positive reasons to make music with someone else: first, you get an additional value on our tracks by extending your universe, second, you have someone with you that also has an opinion on the music you are both making, so you can be one another's critic in real time. That is why, on most the mainstream tracks' credits, you will see a ridiculously large list of people in the studio doing different things: some are writing the lyrics, some are mixing, some are composing and everyone likes different things, so it has a huge value to work together.

Thank you for reading this article through, I hope it will bring you a different vision of your journey in music making and that you will be able to go even further. If you liked it, please let me know on Instagram (@meimarceau) or just shoot me a mail!