Recording and Creativity

I spent about four hours last night at a local recording studio where our band is recording a song for a compilation CD that will be released in the Spring of 2007. The song is an original I co-wrote with two of my songwriting partners called "Grace in my pocket". I love recording - not that I have extensive experience in any way, but I love what I have been involved with so far, (four full-length CD projects and two singles). This coming Friday we will be heading back to the studio to continue working on our third project as a band, an album with primarily original music.

At first recording is weird, and tense (at least it was for me). It is an artificial environment, everything is augmented and amplified, and you hear every mistake you make. But what I love about recording is the creativity that comes with being able to take something you do and then improve it. Add to it. Change it. Experiment with it. Usually when you create music in a live environment, it is there and then it's gone. You as the performer, as well as your audience, are left with the memory of the experience - which hopefully is a good one. In the studio, you take what you do and then have the chance to make it into the best thing that you are able to - within the limits of your skills and the finances available of course. In the studio I feel the freedom to try things I would never try in a performance, and I also have the fortune of being surrounded in the studio with some people who can push me in directions I usually do not go by myself. Some of it is an experiment, and not all of it will ever see the light of day on an actual CD (actually most of it does not). But it is an amazing creative process and I love being back in it.