Some recording thoughts “The Joneses” effect
I'm sure everyone has heard that phrase about keeping up with The Joneses... It's the idea that your next-door neighbor (growing up I thought it was "next-store", although I also thought planned parent hood was "Planet Parenthood" you know, like Planet Hollywood, but I eventually figured it out) makes something better at their house and then your stuff looks like crap now and so you have to go buy something better... it's like some sort of race with your neighbor over who has the more top of the line garden equipment.... or something like that. Ok... welllllll the same thing happens to me when I'm recording...
So I was recording yesterday and I did some good takes during the week... but THEN I did 2 little GREAT takes yesterday. Well then I end up listening to it and the other stuff I did sounds not as good! So then I have to delete those tracks and re-do those. Then I give it the good old Siskel and Ebert two thumbs up.
Then I go to record or work on some other part of the track. I re-do some more of that... and then it sounds AWESOME... but then it makes the other parts sound like crap! So then I have to go back and re-do those...
Now, it's not really a bad thing, because it makes the song eventually sound pretty grandiose! So that part is good. But the thing about it is that there is a lot of re-doing... this means I delete a lot. I do, then delete, then do then delete. So that makes it so that recording a song takes sooooooooooo long! And especially when I want to get it all posted. Anywho so that was just a thought I wanted to share about recording.
Interestingly enough I noticed that this same thing happened while editing my first photo shoot thing... I didn't see this effect when I was editing one at a time and posting on my photo section. But when I did an entire shoot with LOTS of photos.... I noticed as I started editing I'd get one that I thought was amazing. Then I'd edit another and love that one even more and then not like the other one as much and want to go back and tweak that. Then I'd do a third that I was just WOWed by and then want to go back and edit the 1st and 2nd to make it like the third... etc. etc.
So again this drives the creativity and makes it better and better... but it can be bad because if I keep tweaking things for a long time then it can kinda wear me out! Soooo yea. Sometimes there's that whole... "ok... this works, just leave it." thing that I have to do at some point.
Anywho that's just something I was thinking/thoughting about yesterday when I was recording. I've never actually asked other musicians about this. I wonder if this happens to them as well? I'd be curious to find out. I think I'll bring it up next time I'm hanging out at an open mic. Oh it also happens when writing a song. If I write a fantastic bridge, or verse then I'll go back and re-write another part. I'm sure it happens to everyone in some way shape or form.
Actually now that I think about it... this kind of happened in school with presentations. The first person/group would go and they would have no idea at ALL what they were doing exactly doing. Then the second person/group after watching the first would tweak their game plan... and the third would do away with or add what needed to be there etc. etc.
And then I've been the first group or person to go before because I always like to get it done and over with so I just volunteer to go right away. Well by the 3rd 4th or 5th... I'm just like oh maaaaaaaaaaannnnnn... I should have done that! And then I want to go again.
And that's why I love recording so much. Because you can always go back and fix or re-do the messed up parts. 🙂 In school... you kinda just have to accept your sucky grade and that's that. Unless it's one of those funky cool new age profs that comes up with some way for you to "revise" your grade by adding "extra credit" or what have you. But that's rare.
So that's my theory on The Jonesesan Recording umm... theory.
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