Guitarchitecture.org

One of the things that attracts me to improvisation is the immediacy of it.  You perform and then it’s done.  I like documenting these improvisations – but fully recognize the danger of doing so.  (The danger being that when you record something – there is a tendency to say, “Oh that sounds pretty good. I should just tweak a couple of things and then it will be perfect.”)

The way records used to be done – back in the day – was a bunch of musicians would get together in a room.  Mics would be set up – levels were typically set by putting loud instruments in the back of the room and softer ones up front (soloists would literally step up to the mike to solo and then step back) and the record was recorded.  Multitracking came along and studio time was still prohibitively expensive enough that you wanted to get the tracks done as quickly as possible.  I played in several bands that did weekend cd’s tracking and overdubs on day one and mixing on day 2.  There were always things that you wanted to tweak – but 2 days later you had a CD and it was done.

Now everyone has a multitrack recorder called a computer that can edit audio to the millisecond and the temptation to play god and make the perfect aural universe is a dangerous one to productivity.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love my computer.  I love Logic.  But I know that if a take is 95% of the way there in terms of recording – that it may take all day at best to get that extra 5%.  In a worst case scenario – it might take forever.

Perfection is over rated.

Midi can be “perfect”.  It can be quantized and performed uniformly ever single time.  From a performance perspective – it can play things faster and cleaner than you will ever be able to with millisecond accurate timing.

Midi is also typically boring.  No one wants to watch a sequencer play things on a stage.  They might listen – but they’re not going to give it their full attention.

In Pop music (i.e. “rock” music) – pro tools and midi as a performance standard have increasingly become the goal.  Once I was sitting with my friend Brian.  Brian is a world class engineer.  We were talking about how out of control the pursuit of perfection is.  He said, “let me give you an example” and proceeded to bring up a track he was working on on his desk top.  It was going really slow.

“Is that an old computer?” I asked.  It turned out that it was the newest version.  Top of the line.  Everything maxed out.  The track finally loaded.  I then saw why it was taking so long.  There were eighteen thousand edits on the drum track.  18,000 edits!  On a 4 minute song.  Every single drum hit was cross faded.  Every single hit was moved and jostled to fit a midi track.  It sounded like every other programmed drum track you ever heard.  From a timing point it was perfect.  From a performance perspective it was boring.

I am not advising you to give up on bettering yourself.  Quite the contrary.  But my general advice to any artist is not to get seduced by “perfection”.

To paraphrase a quote that I should be able to cite, “A true artist never completes a work but merely abandons it.” Deadlines are your best friend.  Deadlines allow you to get things done. Deadlines mean that you might not be able to get that extra 5% – but that you realize that 95% of something is more than 100% of nothing.  Work at the highest level that you possibly can – but realize when it’s time to move on to the next thing.  As Steve Jobs once said,

“Real artists ship.”