Confucious say:
"Better to play the wrong note at the right time, than to play the right note at the wrong time."

Show us the recording, then we can judge for ourselves.

Things that are not "perfect" makes for great music. On "Dark Side Of The Moon" the intonation on the guitar is slightly off and one of the notes on the Rhodes piano is out of tune. You can hear all kinds of the minor "flaws" in the great R&B recordings of the 60's, and you can hear all kinds of small "errors" in Beatles recordings.

Art is supposed to be about emotion, and the quest for perfection strips away the human aspect of it.

UncleBob58 wrote: Things that are not "perfect" makes for great music. On "Dark Side Of The Moon" the intonation on the guitar is slightly off and one of the notes on the Rhodes piano is out of tune. You can hear all kinds of the minor "flaws" in the great R&B recordings of the 60's, and you can hear all kinds of small "errors" in Beatles recordings.

Art is supposed to be about emotion, and the quest for perfection strips away the human aspect of it.

Art is subjective, therefore it's pretty darn impossible to define the term 'perfect'...

(What is the 'perfect' guitar tone?)

This is why we have words in our dictionary such as Great, Awesome, Excellent, Killer, Rockin', Bad-ass...

UncleBob58 wrote: Things that are not "perfect" makes for great music. On "Dark Side Of The Moon" the intonation on the guitar is slightly off and one of the notes on the Rhodes piano is out of tune. You can hear all kinds of the minor "flaws" in the great R&B recordings of the 60's, and you can hear all kinds of small "errors" in Beatles recordings.

Art is supposed to be about emotion, and the quest for perfection strips away the human aspect of it.

In other words, if you've recorded the next Beatles, Pink Floyd or Marvin Gaye, don't worry about it. 8)

While I wholeheartedly agree with the above statement it really depends on the root of the 'mistake'. If Mr. Gaye flubbed a note in the ending of the second bridge, no one would really care, because he still had sooo much SOUL. With the Floyd, you we're too busy getting immersed in the moment to listen to that one out-of-tune note on the rhodes... If it's your little cousin's metal band, he's gonna need ALL the help you can give him... :D See what I mean?

Here's what I do... Try to listen to the track in a "big picture" mindset. Put it on, but don't concentrate on it. Look away, clean up the studio, put it on your ipod or car stereo while driving... Distract yourself. If the mistake jumps out, FIX it. If you don't even hear it or notice it, you probably don't need to.

It also helps if you make an estimate of how much time it would actually take to fix it. Most of the time, you can fix it much faster, than contemplating whether or not you should. :)

I agree with the last post. In deciding what stays, what goes, and what needs fixin in a recording, I ALWAYS listen to a mix in the perspective of "What distracts me from the experience".....If its the drums fill coming in late or sloppy and it jars the mood at that moment, it needs to be fixed.

On the other foot, you can go about this repair business all day and never get down to the basic reason you recorded the stuff in the first place, and that is to complete it as a project and move on to the next thing.

Its these two things all by themselves that require some people to hire a Producer. Someone else who is put in charge of the project and though may be invested, is not so invested as to not be able to say "enough is enough'......PRINT IT Danno!"

I like a lot of what Dave and mark had to say. I'll just say that there is a huge difference between a fill that is sloppy internally and one that starts early or ends late, etc. The fill itself is usually not that important. The basic groove is vital.