Conventional wisdom would have it that we should all take whatever measures we can to make the best tunes possible. It's a reasonable starting point, but of course the meaning of this changes depending on what kind of tunes you're writing. If you're working on clinical techy D&B then the goal will be highly polished mixdowns, space-age effects and searing bass. Artists like Teebee or Reso famously spend weeks on every tune, finely tweaking every detail until the mix shimmers. If you're writing loose, jazzy beats then the mixdown will be much further down the list of priorities - but you'll need to be pretty solid with the harmonies and chords, for instance. Someone like Hyetal, known for his more lo-fi approach, spends hours perfecting his aesthetic; making sure it's lo-fi but interesting. The hiss and grunge in his tracks is by no means accidental, or a result of poor technique. It too has been slaved over, layered, re-sampled, EQ'ed and filtered.
This much may seem obvious. But in fact it's something you need to keep in mind at all times - what is the point of the track?
So, we should spend ages on every track to achieve perfection, right? Well, this is where it gets complicated. Of course, if you can see an obvious flaw in your track, then fix it - a breakdown that doesn't really grab the attention like it should, a groove that just doesn't flow nicely, a click that shouldn't be there. But it doesn't always help to go looking for things to tinker with. Some tracks simply don't benefit from endless tweaking - if it's not a great track to begin with then the world's best mixdown won't cover that up. Equally, some tracks are simply beautiful in their simplicity, and trying to overproduce, or embellish the basic idea, just makes it worse.
Many producers and songwriters will insist that their best tracks came together in a day. It's true that inspiration can strike quickly but it doesn't negate hard work! Most of these producers will go on to say that they then spent another two days trying to add to the track before deciding - and this is the crucial point - that it was best in the original incarnation. So in these cases, perfectionism is manifested in knowing how to spot when a track is at its best, and knowing when to stop adding more parts.
One last aspect of perfectionism is not in the melodies or mixdowns, but simply in the methods you use to produce. Legend has it that Burial took only a fortnight to write his iconic second album. But he didn't just sit down with a blank canvas and wonder what to do; over the preceding three years he had perfected his methods of production, so that he could write quickly within certain parameters. The layers of hiss, the pitched-down R&B vocal samples, the atmospheres, the garage swing, the unquantised beats - these were developed over a long time and contributed as much to the unique ambience of the album as the melodies and basslines themselves.
