Why I Love Recording Music
Last night, I was watching School of Rock with my girlfriend and it sparked an interesting conversation - that's a sentence I have to say I never thought I would use. There's a part in which Jack Black is making listening assignments to the students based on their abilities and he recommends one of the singers listen to the vocal solo from Pink Floyd's The Great Gig In The Sky. We got to discussing the story we'd heard about the vocalist nailing the improvised solo in one take and how amazingly that came off which made me realize one of the things that has long fascinated me about recorded music and is one of the big reasons I started pursuing music recording.
I love to think about the artist in the studio while they track their take. It's astounding to think about the most iconic musical recordings and how it all came out of the studio. When I listen to Coheed and Cambria's sophomore album, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 - easily the most influential album on my personal musical taste - it's wild to think about the music that became so important to me when it was being recorded. Imagine being in the studio when Zeppelin was recording Black Dog or any number of other well known artists as they laid down the iconic tracks that we can now recognize within a couple notes.
That's part of why recording music gets me so jazzed, because it's a snapshot in time that expresses exactly what the musician is thinking and feeling. Being able to be a part of that is special. It's like a painting as it meets a canvas; the creative process of the artist from that moment is preserved past its inception and that's an amazing thing to me. That's also why I think it's highly important to bring as much truth out of the recording as possible so as not to do a disservice to the music. Playing the music is an art, but recording it, preserving it, and bringing it to life long after it's been played is an art unto itself.