music: The Hackensaw Boys- Love What You Do
A while back I answered an ad on craigslist for a guitarist needed. Turns out the ad was for someone to do some studio work up in Billerica, which I wasn’t aware of when I answered it. I went ahead with it anyway when he finally responded. About a month ago I went up to Billerica with my rig and jammed with a bassist and drummer. The whole thing was recorded in 16 track digital with separate channels for each instrument. By my ears the session was not all that great; I set up too close to my amp and had problems with feedback all night. Several of our jams were messy, distorted affairs closer to bands like Tool than the standard whitebread rock/funk I usally produce. But he seemed to dig it. A bunch of time went by before the guy got back to me and I sort of wrote it off so when he did I was pretty surprised. He wanted me back up to do some studio overdubs and rework some sections. I haven’t ever really been interested in doing anything like this, but that could in part be due to the fact that I haven’t had the opportunity.
Hearing the tracks from last time really surprised me. It sounded a lot better than I remembered, plus he had a keyboard player come in and do overdubs on some of the stuff we recorded. It was a strange phenomenon listening to a jam you remember as mediocre at best with a keyboard track that was not originally there. All told it came together quite nicely, but something didn’t sit well.
Studio work is an exercise in detail, and an endless stretch towards perfection. Over the course of three hours I probably added about 30 seconds of sound to the existing tracks, along with splashes of chords here and there. I’m not sure that the tiny changes amounted to all that much but the guy seemed to be pretty happy about it. I kept thinking that you could keep tweaking and punching in and overdubing forever and never be satisfied with the outcome. I was glad for the experience, but left thinking about how much I prefer to play with people who are actually there. And moreover, I like the blemishes, those little honest moments, that you can only get by playing live. It’s a lot messier at points, risky too, but it’s also a lot more revealing and cathartic to put yourself out there with no chance for post-production, editing, or mixdowns.
Musicians can be placed on a continuum according to their focus as related to this issue; on one end is the studio and on the other end is the live show. I think I’ve always been drawn to bands that tend towards the live side of the spectrum, even before I started playing myself. There’s an energy to the live music experience that you don’t get on an album, and there are moments of brilliance and humanity that somehow don’t translate to the studio. Live music reminds us that this sound is the creation of humans, real humans right there in front of you playing instruments, and that somehow puts the music in a different perspective. Of course there is some life-changing studio music out there. I love certain albums and will always love them. And I know the importance of studio work, how you can do things in the studio that you can’t reproduce live, that the most important rock band in history is almost completely a studio band. But studio sessions are sometimes so squeaky clean, the composition’s delivery so prototypical, that something vital is lost. There’s the other issue of packaging music and the problems in the industry with doing this now that people have the internet at their disposal, and how live music is the way for musicans to make a living without having to worry about people sharing their music. But that’s a rant for a different time.
It’s really a matter of medium, which brush auditory artists choose to paint with. And all else being equal, I’d rather go live. That might change now that I have almost an album’s worth of originals, but the thrill is not listening to a stitched-together piece of music in a soundproof booth and throwing in your part; the thrill is plugging in and sharing a desparate moment with other musicians, even if it doesn’t come out perfectly. You won’t find moments in a box, they say.
I think that this particular situation was a strange one because we had no preconceived compositions to track out in the studio; it was essentially a live jam recorded in the studio. Things might be different if I went into the studio with a band, people I have been playing and writing with. But here was a situation with two strangers, and some I’ve never met adding parts at later times. The illusion is quite convincing, but something doesn’t sit right with me about the whole setup. It’s a strange enough thing to collaborate on a creative improvisation with other people, but to put your piece down and then find that someone else has come along and thrown something on top of that calls the whole project into question. You never hear about four painters working on one canvas, even painters who know and respect each others’ work.
I came away from the studio experience intruiged, glad to have done it, but excited for band practice the next night. Band practice turned out to be the worst one we’ve ever had, but despite not clicking at all and quitting an hour early there were still moments where I was thought to myself, oh, this is why I do this. Something I could not get in the studio.
Posted by davidtaus at March 8, 2006 10:34 PM | TrackBack