May/Jun 2009
Welcome to issue #71 of Tape Op.
Have you ever had an experience you assumed would go one way, but instead it lead in another direction? Like taking a bite of food you assume is chocolate and then tasting black beans? That sudden shock of your senses taking in something unexpected can be jarring, causing you to reevaluate the experience that is occurring. When recording music I find people being led astray by this all the time. Our mind fills in information around what our senses take in, based on experiences we've had before and knowledge we've gained. Everything we see and hear is not taken in as brand new information and "rescanned" so to speak, but is instead augmented by memories and knowledge from our brain's past. When you're locked in a room with no natural light, listening to the 100th playback of the same song, your mind might be lulled into assuming you're hearing what you think you should be hearing — not what is really being played back in the room.
Learning to recognize the times where you need to open up your senses, reset your assumptions and reevaluate what you are hearing is as important in creating great music in the studio as it is to a chef tasting their creations in a kitchen with no bias towards what they think it should taste like. Make sure you are really hearing what is going on all the time.
