It's like I think adding a few more tracks (instruments) will hide my weak performance on some earlier recorded track. Sometimes that works. Sometimes two shoddy performances of the same thing smooth the blemishes of each since you rarely make the same mistake twice. I'll be the first to admit, I'm not the greatest musician from a performance perspective. In fact, I have turned in some really weak performances in some of my recordings. I didn't hear it at the time, but I certainly hear it now.
More than half my life I've longed for a good editor. Someone who will tell me when I'm fucking up my creative endeavors, and help put me back on the "right" path. I usually crave my editor most in the areas where I am weaker, writing and music making.
I remember finishing my first lengthy script and asking my coworker, Heather, to edit it for me. She was an English Major, bright and witty in person. She agreed and read my script. She corrected some minor mistakes here and there, but, sadly, there was really only one part she felt could be improved:
I had a scene with a homeless man and a detective. The homeless man had a stainless steel bowl under his hat, a fact I revealed early in the scene. She suggested saving that for the end of the scene, allowing the detective to believe he was getting valuable information, only to discover later that he was talking to a crazy person.
Heather's suggestion was hilarious, and never failed to get a laugh when people saw the finished movie. Unfortunately, Heather was a senior and moved away after graduation. And I've only rarely been lucky enough to find a comparable editor in the years since.
Which means, I usually have to self edit, which sucks but brings me to the point of this post.
If you have ever watched the "Classic Albums" episode about Rumours, the seminal Fleetwood Mac album, there's a single line I really like in the episode, relating to music production. "We build it up, and tear it down." Talking about how a lot of the songs on the album had lots of unused instruments tracks, recorded and abandoned in the final mix.
As I'm laying down tracks for the Retro Project (previously mentioned here), I'm kind of going through a similar process, but in a totally backwards way. Four track cassette recorders were designed as musical sketch pads for artists to develop ideas cheaply, at home, before going into the studio. Though some artists, like Bruce Springsteen, recorded his album, Nebraska entirely on a cassette 4 track. But what I am doing is using professional grade software, in this case, Logic, to sketch my the song for my retro project, which I will eventually record on a cassette 4 track, in a sense, not using it at all for its intended purpose.
You might ask what all this has to do with editing.
Well, I'm trying to plan out what I will eventually put on each of my limited 4 tracks. At most I can get 2 or 3 instruments on each track, if I can play them simultaneously. Some tracks will have only 1 instrument. So, at the moment, I building it up to tear it down. I have already laid down 9 individual instrument tracks of drums and synthesizers, trying to figure out where each one could go in the final recording and mix when I get to the 4 track. A wonderful benefit of only having 4 tracks is that I had to edit and remove some of the stuff already, and each time I did it, the song got better. So the 4 track has become an editor to rival Heather in my mind. It's forcing me to acknowledge "less is more" and forcing me to be a better musician. I don't have two tracks to smooth a crappy performance. I just have to deliver a good performance, every time. As a result, I can say, this retro project is going to be my roughest in years, not nearly the level of polish I'm accustomed to, but it will be much more honest, and I hope, in the end, better all around.
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