Digital & Analog Recording

Now we bring the gear in. Since the recording process can refer to many things, we’ll stick to calling this stage “tracking”, and the goal is to capture a performance of the song.

A song exists in the ether. It’s just a collection of musical thoughts. What makes it tangible is a recording of that song at a certain point in time. Playing a song live would make it communicable, but it wouldn’t be tangible as the song would disappear when it’s over. It’s the recording that captures the song in a format that can be listened to continuously at will.

Tracking is the process of recording the various instruments that are used to perform a song. Usually, a song is recorded one track at a time. Every time you record a new track, you hear all the other ones you’ve recorded as well. This is the process of multi-track recording.

Why is it important to think of tracking as a separate process than songwriting? Because songwriting is a different kind of focus than performing. When you’re writing, you want your mind to be free to make all kinds of new associations and connections, so you experiment without any editing. However, when performing a song – for posterity, nonetheless – you need to use your mind to concentrate in a very different way. You need to be focused on playing in time and with the right feeling.

Although you have many editing options for fixing mistakes and helping a performance, there is a limit to what you can do while still having it sound natural, and nothing beats having a superior performance to begin with. If you try and combine the writing and performing into one process, then typically both suffer. To maximize the impact of your song, it’s best to focus on each one separately.

When you push record, give the performance of your life and think about nothing else. Every time.