I've been doing a lot of recording lately, and one of the questions I keep asking myself is, "Just how perfect does this recording have to be?". Then other related questions spring to mind:
"If I make a mistake, can I fix it in the mix? Or should I even bother?"
Maybe the recording would sound even cooler if there were a few lively mistakes (not large ones, of course)! Maybe not... to be honest, I'm not really sure what the correct answers are to these questions.
As an example, some would argue that a song is less perfect if the "preamble" is left in (by "preamble" I mean the stuff that happens before the musician actually starts playing). But sometimes it just sounds cool - a number of tracks on Oasis' "The Masterplan", a collection of B-sides have some of this extra audio left in, and I think I like those songs better because of the extra stuff at the beginning.
I've also done it in my own song before, although it was at the end of the song, not the beginning.One of the songs from my first album, "Don Quixote", has a bunch of talking at the end that was supposed to be deleted, but once I heard it in the mix, I had to keep it. (I'll be putting up a link to it soon - I haven't forgotten!)
Should I edit my mistakes? Is it okay for me to "punch in" and start recording the guitar again at the chorus, and mix the two together? Isn't it worth it if the song sounds better?
I think for now I'll err on the side of re-recording until my gut tells me that what I've done sounds good. I expect that means more takes, more recording, and a lot more time and effort, but I'm okay with that. I'm sure the occasional quirk will find its way onto some of the tracks and I'm fine with that, too, if it sounds cool.
In conclusion: no "fixing it in the mix", but leave in any cool quirky stuff that comes up while recording.
No comments:
Post a Comment