“This too shall pass.”
— Persian adage, īn nīz bogzarad (این نیز بگذرد)
A long time ago, a Persian king asked his wise men for a ring.
He wanted a ring that would make him happy when he was sad, and sad when he was happy.
The wise men gave him a ring with four words engraved on it: “This too shall pass.”
The Starting Point
When the king won a great victory and felt proud, he looked at the ring, and the pride settled.
When the king lost something and felt crushed, he looked at the ring, and the weight lifted.
The ring never changed what happened to him; it only changed how much he trusted the feeling of the moment.
Tonight's feelings about our song or mix will pass, whether it's good or bad, and the song will still be the same song tomorrow.
The Invitation
Treat the mood of a session like the weather.
It's real, it changes how everything sounds to us, and it'll be different tomorrow.
After three or four hours, our ears are tired, and so is our judgement.
We don't have to fix the mood; we only have to stop making permanent decisions inside it.
The Test
Open the project you almost deleted last month.
Bounce it exactly as it is, and listen to the bounce tomorrow morning on your phone or in your car.
Write down every problem before changing anything.
We often find two or three small things, like a lead vocal that's too quiet or a kick drum that's too loud.
If the list is long, we still know what to fix first, and that's more than we knew last night.
The Guidepost
Three decisions can always wait until morning: deleting a project, releasing a song and buying a plugin.
A bad night makes us want to delete the project, or buy something new to fix it.
A great night makes us want to upload the song before anyone else has heard it.
If the decision still looks right after a night of sleep, go ahead and make it.
The Change
At the end of every session, bounce the song, and save the project with today's date in the name.
Write one line about where the song stands and what we want to do next.
Listen to the bounce once the next morning, before opening the DAW.
Make the big decisions then, after the feeling from the night before has passed.
Pro Tip: Use Save a Copy (Ableton Live) or Save As (any DAW) at the end of the session, so last night's version is always there to go back to.
The Return
Bad sessions keep coming after years of practice, and so do the great ones.
Neither kind lasts long, and neither kind tells us how good we are.
Songs get finished because we come back the next day and keep working.
At the end of your next session, instead of asking: “Is this song any good?”
Ask: “What will I hear tomorrow?”
Free Ableton Live Course and Music Production Resources
Song of the Week 🎧
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Listen to how slowly this song moves; nothing in it is in a hurry.
David Roback and Hope Sandoval wrote this song in one day, as an acoustic guitar part with both of them singing, and they arranged it for piano, slide guitar and drums afterwards. It went to radio in September 1993, and it took about a year to reach number 44 on the Billboard Hot 100. That's the only time Mazzy Star made that chart. In November 2025, the song passed one billion plays on Spotify.
A great song. Roback said they weren't trying to write a hit; they were just writing a song about the present.
YouTube Wisdom of the Week 📚
How to Tame Your Wandering Mind (Amishi Jha, TED)
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Peak Mind — Amishi Jha
Jha is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami, and she has tested attention training with soldiers, athletes, students and firefighters. She argues that stress, threat and a bad mood drain our attention, and that for about half of our waking moments, we aren't in the present moment. Her book says twelve minutes of mindfulness practice a day is enough to start training it. In a session, that means listening to the mix that's playing right now, instead of the one we're worried about.
Plugin of the Week 🔌
Lexicon 224 Digital Reverb (UAD)
Universal Audio's version runs the original hardware's own reverb algorithms: eight reverb programs and one chorus program, plus a model of its 12-bit converters. The hardware was used on Talking Heads' Remain in Light and U2's The Unforgettable Fire. Put a long decay on one small sound, like a rimshot or a single piano note, and listen to how long the tail takes to fade.
Free Plugin of the Week 🆓
TAL-Reverb-2 (Togu Audio Line)
A free, lush reverb with a fast build-up time. It runs in any DAW that loads VST, AU or AAX plugins.
Unsolicited life advice for music makers
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