?The people involved in the music world have grossly different attitudes, opinions, and aspirations for their music. I know people who simply want to “make a cd”. To them this is the pinnacle and they are 100% satisfied by letting a few friends and family members hear their music. Other's are dominated by ambition and won't stop until they are playing their music for 30,000 people per night and hanging out at the Playboy mansion. Personally, I see the value in both mentalities and everywhere in between. The problems arise when you, as a musician, forget these goals.

For example, let's just say you've got your 9-5 job which pays the rent just fine and you have no intention of going for it in the music business. Let's just say you do this whole music thing because you enjoy it. Great! Playing music is 1000x better than watching TV!!

Now, with this “just for fun” attitude comes certain stipulations. When most bands say they just want to be play music for fun, it means they aren't concerned with selling a million copies. In fact, they usually aren't' even concerned with selling 1,000 copies. Again, there is nothing wrong with that. However, when it comes down to it , if you are only making a record for 10 friends and 5 family members, the audience for your cd is obviously relatively smaller than the rock stars.

Unless you are just wanting to do it for yourself, taking the time to make a proper major label recording doesn't usually make sense in this setting. Most people aren't going to fly to LA or Nashville and spend $10,000 on a recording just so grandma can hear it.

In that same light, most people aren't going take an enormous amount of time recording a record that has intended audience of 15 people. When I'm working with bands who have far more ambition for their music, one of the only things that keeps us going after weeks of grueling sessions is the fact that many people are going to hear the cd.

The point here is you should consider how much time, money, and energy should put into your record before you start making it based on you goals for your music. I've seen many bands, who just wanted to make a “quick demo” and kept drums they weren't happy with. Then, in the middle of the record, we ended up spending ENORMOUS amounts of time on trivial details that are nothing compared to the fact that the drums weren't right on. It seams this random analness occurs when people lose site of their goals or change their goals midstream. What started out as a “quick demo” is turning into a “big deal”. Of course, the goal of selling 50 copies hasn't changed, but now the band has suddenly decided to spend a month on guitar parts even with drums that were done in 1-2 takes.

This is just one example.