Purposeful Failure

I’ve been recording music for decades. I’ve recorded five CDs (most folks are tired of hearing about it), six tutorial CDs for my students, a handful of local commercials, and a few scores for independent films. I’ve also produced a few sessions for others (a long time ago). But in all of those instances I worked in professional studios with talented engineers. These guys knew how to make my ideas and efforts a reality. And do it with a quality that I just took for granted. Paul McCartney was recently asked what made Abbey Road Studios such a great place to record and one of the reasons he cited was they’ve always had amazing engineers.

For the last few years I’ve been doing all of my own recording at home. That seems to be the way of the world anymore. I know of many award-winning guitarists who do all of their own recording and then send the files to their distributor. I don’t have all of the best-of-the-best equipment, but what I have is very good. Honestly, I would have loved to have had it forty years ago.

But having the whistles and bells is one thing. Knowing how to use them properly is quite another. I am now my own engineer and it’s a struggle for me. I still enjoy the process but I’m generally not too happy with the results. And there’s the ever present thought, “If I just buy this one piece of gear all of my issues will be solved.” I’m always looking for a checkbook solution to replace real learning. The silly thing is I have more time than I do money. The true and cheapest solution is to spend the time and learn how to do it properly.

The real problem is, of course, my own attitude. A truism of life is that if you want to do something well you first have to do it poorly. “Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.” We’ve all said it…..we’ve all heard it. “It just takes time”, we say. That’s easy advice to give but much harder to receive.

But it seems that the only way to gain the necessary experience to be an expert is to first be a dismal failure. (I need to speak with my friend the heart surgeon about this. I’m hoping there’s a middle ground.)

Lately I’ve been doing some high quality editing. I wasn’t able to do that a year ago. So I know I’m making progress. Recently I’ve started singing again for some of my offerings on my Patreon page (you’re probably tired of hearing about that too). That’s a lot different technique than just playing solo guitar or ukulele. I’ve been around studios long enough to know how it’s done but actually doing it is another level or two up. Think changing a tire or baking a cake.

The thing is I want to make a high quality product for people. If my singing or playing is bad I know how to practice to make it better. I understand the process. But when trying to make a decent (by my standards) recording I feel like a blind squirrel looking for a nut. And don’t get me started on doing videos. That’s a whole other level of frustration.

I’m better today than I was a few years ago. And I’m truly grateful for that. But I want to create quality stuff now. I’m impatient. But I’ll keep trying to improve. (I tried to write perceiver but spellcheck kicked in and my computer started to smoke) So I follow the sage advice of that great philosopher Curly of the Three Stooges, “If at first you don’t succeed keep on sucking until you do succeed.”  (Probably doesn’t work that well in sky-diving either, now that I think about it.)