I also laid down several more instrumental tracks for the Orange album. Because of the rapid work style, I plan to organize that project on the shotgun approach. I will create 3 or 4 times as many tracks as I need, and then pick the best ones for the album. I love that I have a whole music production studio in my pockets right now. Granted, I'm wearing cargo pants, but still, I can really make music anywhere, lol.
One thing I noticed working on the retro project is, it's going to be almost impossible to record without making any noticeable mistakes. Not because I couldn't do it, I mean play the song without noticeable mistakes, but you can quickly get to a point of demising returns, literally. Each time you record and erase the tape, the quality is suffering a little bit, so, you want to record and erase as few times as possible. Eighth inch cassette tape is much less forgiving than half inch reel to reel, so I don't feel like I have the luxury of doing as many takes as I want. Obviously, if I lose my way in the course of recording the song, and can't remember what to play next, that take is shot. Similarly, if I make some glaringly bad note strike, I have to start over. But there are at least three mistakes in each track I've laid down so far for the retro project and I'm okay with them. They are not glaring and I worry if I try to go back and make a better take, I'll never get one as good as the ones I have already. So I rest with what I have.
I've heard it said that South American Blanket weavers always insert at least one mistake in their work, so as not to offend the gods by trying to replicate the gods' "perfection". I can't say I'd ever consciously insert a mistake in my work, but I do like a loose and gritty feel. Perfectionists might call this kind of loose style "mistake riddled". But to me, it just seems more human, which reminds me again of those blanket weavers, being consciously human and consciously not god-like.
In these digital days, it's so easy to produce a "mistake free" performance. When I say easy, I mean, you don't really have to know how to play at all to deliver something that sounds "perfectly played", depending on your level of patience and dedication. Of course, things that seem perfect also sound robotic (to these ears). Overwrought is another way of putting it.
And I like plenty of music and art I'd put in this category, Boston and Beethoven for example, pretty tight stuff.
I'll even go so far as to say I can be as guilty of it as the next person. It's kind of easy, if you don't know what to do, to work really hard at making indecision look intentional by making it nearly machine like in its precision (try saying that three times quickly). In fact, getting "loose" has been very hard for me for most of my life. I was always very tight knit, when it came to my endeavors, and had to be broken of my "perfectionista" ways, become less anal retentive, more free to fail.
I'm not a perfectionist - and have not referred to myself as one anytime in my memory. I don't think I've ever produced anything where I couldn't point out a bunch of mistakes, going all the way back to high school and further. I do my best to incorporate those mistakes or gloss them into unobtrusiveness, but I'm usually aware of them. In my experience, "perfectionism", as practiced, is usually not anything like "perfection", because I can often detect mistakes or in-congruencies in the work of "perfectionists", which seem very imperfect to me. But, maybe I'm misunderstanding the term "perfectionist".
My own attitude is that imperfections are unavoidable, so better to discover an acceptable level of them and keep working, than live in denial. Working too hard to smooth all of them over can suck the life out of art. Because life is a messy affair and art, to me, should be more like life and less like a robot.*
*with a few exceptions. Take Kraftwerk, where the intention seems to be for robotic perfection. I have a hard time finding any thing in Kraftwerk that seems out of place. Those guys seem "perfect", in terms of their art.
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