So you’ve finished making the beat and mixed it to juust about where you want it to be. The bulk of the work is done but now you’ve gotten to the dreaded tweaking zone.

Now this is the part where the average producer gets in their head and either takes apart the perfectly fine previous mix entirely with “minor tweaks” or drives themselves crazy trying to get that one frequency on that one group of instruments to pop out. Or maybe not pop out. Or maybe it’s just a matter of a little EQing. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that. Shit, is that being compressed enough? Or too much?

How do you as a producer navigate the tweaking stage to get to that final product you envision in your head? Are there any specific rules you follow when at this point? How can others get through this final stretch without getting bogged down in the sonic details? And lastly, at what point do you find that you’re really “done?”