Maybe the one thing that the Internet does well is put people with a purpose in touch with one another in such a way as to allow important things to get done. For me, important things are almost always related to music. I’m doing a lot of work now with a friend who is a short drive to Austin away and another who is up in the frozen hinterlands known to the locals as “Canada.” I’m shuffling a lot of bits back and forth across these intarwebz and actually seeing some promising results.
Working with people at a distance on something as temporally volatile as music isn’t ideal. I much prefer sitting on the couch in my living room with the people I’m playing with so we can build something up and enjoy the give and take. A little eye contact to see when things are going to get quiet. Or watching hands to see what I just screwed up so I don’t do it again. It’s instant feedback and everything is so malleable.
Playing with a recording is like playing with a ghost. But playing with a ghost is better than being alone. Unless you’re in a “Poltergeist” movie. Or that one movie about the house that dripped blood. That was gross.
What I mean is that it’s difficult to play off of that wall that is the recording. It can be unnerving, that lack of responsiveness. Music is all about give and take and that constant flux. It isn’t all lost in a situation like this, but it’s harder to see it that way. What slowly changes is the way what’s played relates to what is recorded. Imperfections in the recording take on a different character and define what comes later. And in the give and take that happens over hours or days the natural cooling off period allows for a more critical eye. In many ways dragging out the process can improve it.
That sounds like a great way to dress up the fact that my friends don’t live next door and that I can only record at weird hours anyway.
There are a couple of things underway right now and hopefully there will be tunes to share in the very near future. I’m slowly becoming OK with sharing things that are in progress as a way of keeping myself honest. It doesn’t have to be finished, it just needs to be done. Watch this space for more tunes soon.
